Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM Lens – First Thoughts

Santa’s pretty cool. Last year he got me a wide angle lens… this year was a monstrous telephoto lens – the Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM Lens. It’s BIG, and it’s heavy – weighing in at roughly 4 lbs. It comes with a tripod collar (attached but facing away in the pictures below), a lens hood, and a carrying case and strap.

Side by side: Canon EF 70-300mm and Sigma 50-500mm

Lenses fully extended.

Walking around without a tripod or monopod wasn’t bad, although the camera does get a little heavy after a while. The wobble from trying to hold a leans this heavy still is very noticeable at 500mm, so a monopod is going to be necessary on anything but a sunny day. I tried it out on my Canon Monopod 100, which was able to handle the weight but was a little bit awkward. I think this lens may be near the upper limit of what that monopod is designed to handle.

The zoom range is incredible, as you can see below.

Zoomed out to 50mm

Zoomed in to 500mm

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the lens does fairly well up close as well. This shot of a peacock was taken at roughly 2 feet.

So far I’m thrilled with the “Bigma”, and looking forward to summer and some more opportunities to put it to good use. The auto focus performed on par with my Canon USM lenses, and the quality of the pictures overall is really good – there’s no noticeable distortion at either of the extreme zoom ranges.

~ by Justin on January 14, 2008.