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As I wrote in an earlier post, I now have a SIGMA 50-500mm f:4.6-6.3 EX DG HSM APO zoom telephoto lens in my collection.  Lately I have begun shooting with it a little more and so I thought I’d share some of my observations and a few photographic examples.

The first observation I made when shooting this lens actually happened over a year ago when I borrowed the lens from a friend–the same friend from whom I later bought it.  The Sigma 50-500 is challenging to shoot well.  There is no image stabilization, which is to be expected in a lens this long and this inexpensive.  Hand-holding this glass, which weighs just under five pounds, is even more of a challenge though it is possible under the right conditions.

I’m not Ken Rockwell, so I can’t put any science behind this, but I have always felt like the Sigma 50-500 is soft compared to my other lenses.  Here’s a shot at 50mm.  Pretty nice.

Here’s the same thing at 500mm.  It’s pretty soft, but withhold judgment for now.  This was hand-held.  I’ll show you some better stuff.

Here is another example.  This was tripod mounted and lit with a Nikon SB-800 speedlight.

Here is a 100% crop from that same image.  None of these have been processed other than adding my Copyright notice, resizing the long dimension to 700 pixels, and cropping this image.

Nice image, though a bit noisy.  The bird exposures were done at 500mm for a 500th, at f6.2, and ISO 800.  Here’s one more example for you to examine.

And the 100% crop…

I’m definitely not an expert with this lens, and I know that it is capable of better work than I am displaying here–I’ve seen examples elsewhere.  Still, I think this is the type of output most less experienced photographers can expect.

I love the lens, and I’d buy another if it broke.  You simply can’t get 500mm (750mm full-frame equivalent) any less expensively.  I’ll leave you with one final shot.  This is the moon (obviously) shot using a tripod at 500mm, for a 500th of a second at f8.  I think it’s good.  I did adjust this image for color, noise reduction, and sharpness–using Corel Paint Shop Pro Phot XI.  I also cropped it.  Notice that there is very little chromatic abberation, however.  Good job Sigma!