Sigma 50-500mm
'There's no such thing as a free lunch.'
Ok, I admit it. I got drawn into the whole 'never mind the quality,
feel the length' thing. Allow me to explain.
I was looking for a long lens to let me try out my wildlife skills,
and maybe a bit of sports work. But which one? I needed to go longer
than 300mm because I already had a 70-300mm zoom and I knew I wanted
a longer reach but did I go to 400mm, or 500mm? Budget constraints meant
a 600mm was out of the question so I was almost there and then I had
a 'hang about!' moment. Browsing the ads in the back of a popular weekly
photography magazine, my eye landed on an advert for a second hand Sigma
50-500mm. I remembered reading about this lens when it was introduced
and scoffing like many others that such a range in one lens was bound
to result in poor quality results. A 10x zoom range? Surely no human
being could survive such extremes? But that was then and this was now.
It was an answer to my prayers. A good quality short end zoom, combined
with this monster, would allow me to cover sweeping landscapes and still
capture distant wildlife with just two lenses. It was an EX lens, Sigma's
badge of quality, so I should have no problem with the optics, the little
voice on my shoulder told me. The same little voice then chipped in
with 'don't forget the sensor magnification factor'. It was true, bolting
it onto the Nikon D100 I was using at the time would actually give me,
in 35mm terms, a 75-750mm f4.0/f6.3. A 750mm f6.3 for a price measured
in hundreds, not thousands, of pounds. That alone was worth investigation.
I was getting a bit giddy by now. Just a minute I thought, if I stick
on my 1.5x converter I get, furious mental calculations going on now,
a range of effectively 110-1100mm!! Ok, so it would be slower than a
tractor in treacle, and I would have to focus manually, but a 1100mm
telephoto!!
So I bought it.
'Act in haste, repent at leisure' is a concept I am well acquainted
with. It was something that popped into my mind when I took delivery
of my prize a week later. I was expecting a big lens but I was still
taken by surprise by the sheer weight of this beast. Just a shade over
4lbs. The tripod collar is conveniently formed into a handgrip, and
with good reason. You will need a good grip when lugging this lens around
once a body is attached. After just two weeks I had a monopod on order.
No matter what I did I just couldn't hold it steady in anything other
than bright sunny conditions. If I'm honest I couldn't hold it steady
in any conditions, but sunny weather allowed me a shutter speed fast
enough to disguise my trembling. To be fair this is probably more due
to my naivety regarding long lens use than a fault of the lens itself,
but I was learning the hard way.
My inexperience was showing in other areas too but here the lens actually
helped. I had a tendency early on to zoom out to the length I wanted
for the final shot and then go looking for my quarry, but then if the
subject matter moved any faster than that treacle bound tractor I couldn't
even find it, let alone track it. Forget about taking a picture. Actually
if a subject moved at all I was lost. But here the zoom came into it's
own. I quickly learned that I could pick up an object at a wider setting
and then zoom in. Not always successfully but with practice my strike
rate started to improve. This was definitely an advantage over a prime
telephoto as far as I was concerned.
As I spent more time with this lens I started to understand it more.
The bulk and weight were a trade off for the quality of the optics and
the construction. Now that I was habitually mounting it on a monopod
or, more often, a tripod, I could appreciate the smoothness of its action
and nice touches like the zoom lock. My results were improving but still
I wasn't entirely happy.
Little things irritated me. The aperture ring for example. Users of
Nikon's recent lenses will have no doubt noticed that this feature is
absent. (Unless they have only ever used recent lenses in which case
they will have no idea what I am talking about.) With these lenses the
aperture is set electronically from the camera body. This is the way
of the future, but in an effort to maintain compatibility with older
bodies the manual aperture ring is still present on the Sigma, though
how you get to it once the lens is mounted is anyone's guess. This is
a very laudable effort on Sigma's part but I wish they hadn't done it.
To use it with an auto focus body this ring needs to be set to f22.
It's even marked in red to remind you. But here's the rub. It's right
next to mounting collar. So when you are attaching the lens it is very
easy to catch the aperture ring in the process and if you move it even
one notch the camera won't function. This caused me no end of sweating
and cursing the first few times as all you get is an 'E' error code
but no explanation as to the cause. It would seem the men in white coats
at Sigma spotted this issue as they saw fit to install a lock to prevent
this very problem occuring. Trouble is, the way the lock works, a tiny
slider that moves toward the camera body to lock, makes it very easy
to unlock by accident when putting the rear lens cap on, and without
knowing until the next time the lens is used. If only it slid away from
the camera body to lock. Like I said, little things.
The filter size was another. At 86mm the only time I have seen a larger
front end was on the 45-90mm zoom on my Bronica. On a pure telephoto
lens filters are not normally an issue, but the range of this lens implies
you are expected to use it in circumstances where filters would play
their part. Indeed the focussing arrangement results in a non-rotating
front end, so in demand with the landscape crew as it makes using graduate
and polarizing filters so much easier. I'll let you do the maths but
a circular polarizer and a set of ND grads that will cope with an 86mm
mount is likely to be, shall we say, not cheap.
Filters aside, and assuming you succeed in getting it mounted without
issue your troubles are not necessarily over. I mentioned earlier that
the bulk and weight were a trade off against the quality of the construction
and I stand by that, but the trade off you make to allow for the relatively
low price is speed. We have all suffered 'lens envy' watching the professionals
at sports events with their huge f2.8 telephotos, but consoled ourselves
with the knowledge that they have had to get a second mortgage to pay
for them. As the economist Milton Friedman famously said, 'There's no
such thing as a free lunch', and the price you pay for the biggest zoom
range on the market and a 500mm reach at the long end, for under £1000,
is a maximum aperture of f4.0 at 50mm closing to f6.3 at 500mm. This
has caused me problems too many times for me to ignore it. Too many
times I have missed a shot because the auto focus just didn't have enough
to work with. Even slight drops in the light levels have caused me to
have to switch to manual. And that's a shame.
It's a shame because in most other regards this is a cracking lens.
It is built like a tank but once suitably mounted its weight becomes
a positive in terms of reducing vibrations or combating a windy day.
The quality of the glass is excellent and if you can get it to focus
the results will be crisp and sharp. Overall though, all things considered,
I have to admit to being just a touch disappointed. Size isn't everything.
A 10x zoom range sounds great, a lens for almost every occasion, but
I would never use this lens for portraits for example. Truth be told
I have probably rarely used it below 200mm. So I am carrying round a
great deal of spare capacity.
So, in summary, if you are considering the purchase of one of these
lenses don't let me stop you, it's not a bad lens, but give some serious
thought to either the Nikon 80-400mm VR or, if you don't use Nikon bodies,
the Sigma 80-400mm OS.
That's what I am doing.
Update 09/11/07
When I originally wrote this review I didn't include any sample shots
as I felt the conversion to the web and the variances on monitor settings
would mean they wouldn't be a fair representation of the lens. However,
from feed back I have received it seems that test shots would be appreciated.
So, here are some sample shots. Never let it be said that I don't listen
to my readers!
All the following were taken over two days on reasonably bright November
afternoons. The camera is a Nikon D200 set to RAW capture. White balance
is set to auto and in-camera sharpening is off. For all the tree shots
the lens was set at f8 for consistency and the ISO was set to 100. The
camera and lens combination was mounted on a tripod to minimise any
human vibration and the shutter was released by remote for the same
reason. The duck was taken as more of a field test at 500mm with the
kit mounted on a monopod and with an aperture of f6.3 (the best I could
do at 500mm). The ISO was wound up to 400, which gave me a shutter speed
of 1/100th, and the shutter was fired in the 'normal' way.
Post capture manipulation consisted of a slight tweak to levels, one
pass of unsharp mask (amount 100%, radius 1.0, threshold 0 for the tree
and 150%, 1.5, 0 for the duck) and then conversion to JPEG at the maximum
quality setting to make them fit for web use.
I think that's everything. Oh, one last thing, I was approximately 150ft
from the tree and 60ft from the duck, and I used auto focus for all
the images. I hope you find them useful.
50mm
300mm
500mm
'Duck'
About the author: David Stanley is a freelance photographer concentrating
on landscape
and travel images. He has growing portfolios of royalty free images
with Alamy
and istockphoto.
For more articles and reviews, along with a selection of his work available
as open and limited edition prints, please visit his website at www.davidstanleyphotography.com.
(If you are reproducing this article please ensure you include the 'About
the author' footer in full on each occasion. Thanks.)
