Awaken your inner spy

Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM Lens on a full frame Nikon D700.

Or I could simply have said there are some great deals on very long lenses in the used market. Nahh...

For a relatively compact and not-too-heavy long reach zoom lens this lens can open new photographic opportunities at a very good price in the used market. Let's take a closer look.

Now I did not buy this lens. It is on an open-ended loan from a friend. In this article I wish to share a few basic ideas on my opinions of this specific lens. I trust that these ideas will be of value for you in lens purchases, whether new or used. Let's very quickly deal with all the alphabet soup in the lens name.

Please note, this is not a fully scientific and comprehensive review of this specific lens. This is me sharing a few ideas hoping to make it relevant to you my reader for other lens purchases. A site I very much enjoy and trust has an exhaustive review of this lens here. For those who wish to dig deeper, please pop in here.

Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM Lens. That is quite a mouthful. We need to pay close attention to all this alphabet soup. We often encounter 2-3 different models or more in one type or model of lens. Sometimes it is purely an updated model. This is easily spotted because you will often see the tell-tale "Mk I" or "Mk II" somewhere in there. This specific Sigma lens is no exception. From a very quick web search I see at least 3 versions. The original is from 2001. There was a 2006 upgrade and image stabilization was added in a 2010 upgrade. Every one of them will have slightly different letters like "OS" and "APO" and "DG" and "EX" but the essentials will remain the same. And this is only Sigma.

I believe this is the 2006 onwards version because the "APO" is said to be a rethink of the optical design but it does not yet have the "OS" image stabilization. Let's try to demystify all of this bit-by-bit.

The Brand - Sigma

The maker of the lens is Sigma. I have a love/hate relationship with Sigma that goes back a good few years. My experience with Sigma lenses span two lenses of which I only owned one. A very comprehensive set of data I build this opinion on then. The one was a friend's 50mm f/2,8 macro lens and it was beyond amazing based on what we thought we knew at the time. Sharp as anything and it simply WOULD not flare even if you pointed it straight into the midday sun.

The only Sigma I ever owned was a 24-70mm zoom lens and it was as soft as anything I have ever seen. My adventures with that lens could take two or three blog articles to tell. The short answer is that I (EVENTUALLY!!) sold it with a heavy heart. Once sorted, after more courier trips to the local agents than I care to remember, it was a really really nice lens.

Now don't lose all hope and run away screaming just yet. There are many photographers out there who do amazing work with Sigma lenses. Have a look here for a few and see their work.

Sigma makes good affordable lenses for all the mainstream brands of camera manufacturers. Don't let my experience with one lens put you off.

You will also see some S.A. locals here on the South African Sigma site.

The Focal Range of 50-500

OK, back to the 50-500...as the numbers suggest it is a very nice and wide focal range from 50 all the way to 500. This happens to be a 10x zoom range. Why? Simple really, 50 x 10 =500. On the "wide" end of 50mm you have a maximum aperture of f/4. Usable but slightly limiting for 50mm when we compare it to 50mm prime lenses capable of f/1,8 or f/1,4. At 50mm it will stop down to f/22.

At the "long end" of 500mm it has a maximum aperture of f/6,3 and will stop down to a rather small f/36. This long end maximum aperture of f/6,3 is only 2/3 of a stop better than f/8. This wants good light for fast shutters. Off-the-bat I would say this lens is not great for fast-moving indoor sport unless lighting is really good.

In theory this lens should be a very nice all-purpose lens that could live on the camera most of the time for most photographers.

Reality will dictate otherwise. Let's see how the big compromise which is photography affects this lens.

Sigma's 50-500 "Bigma" fully extended

A few random thoughts on used lenses

Cosmetic scratch damage to the inner zoom barrel

When looking at used lenses you might see some cosmetic stuff that might put you off. Test properly. It could look terrible but the lens could well work perfectly. Don't walk away because of cosmetics that do nothing but look ugly.

Scratch damage as seen above should be enquired about but if the zoom barrel works smoothly it is probably not a big problem. In this case a small screw probably came undone inside the outer zoom barrel. In stead of dropping out it sat inside the lens and made it less pretty while the inner barrel extended and retracted during normal operation. You will hear and feel this kind of thing if that offending little screw is still causing damage. Test the lens for full and free movement through the complete zoom range.

Another potential gripe would be the dust pump quality. This is not a Sigma quality. Canon's L-Series 100-400mm is very similar and it, too, is as much of a dust pump.

Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM Lens with internal dust.

From the above images you can see that the lens barrel extends and retracts quite a bit. Over time this will suck in some dust. Yes, it looks terrible. No, it will not play a role in image quality. And no, it is not reason to walk away from the purchase.

The Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM Lens has a HUGE front element of 86mm.

One concern would be the huge front element filter thread size. Most lenses from most brands have 77mm at the large end of the filter thread size. The occasional 82mm is also found. At 86mm this Sigma has a huge front end filter screw-thread size. This makes decent quality screw-on filters quite pricey and often also not readily stocked in most stores.

If you are scared enough yet to walk away from this lens, stop and take a deep breath. It really is a good to very nice lens. Many things in photography are compromises. This lens is no exception.

Let's see what it can do

All the images below are exactly as shot off-camera, shot with a 12Mp Nikon D700 D-SLR. The only changes made were cropping down to 1200px by 800px at 72 dpi for screen use.

Sigma 50-500 at 50mm on Nikon D700 - ISO 800 - f/6,3 - Shutter 1/2000.

As a quick first play I spotted a cricket game and thought let's play. This image shot at the "wide" 50mm end shows how far I was from the action. Then I played at the long end. Why wouldn't I?

Now it was not a perfect day to say the least. It was quite windy and clouds blocked the sun more often than not.

ISO 250 - f/6,3 - Shutter speed 1/500.

Note the dark corners. This is called vignetting. It is a drop-off of light towards the corners of the image. It is not a Sigma thing. It is seen in practically every lens out there. The only way to control it is to stop the lens down to f/8 or f/11. Remember that this lens at the 500mm long end does f/6,3 at best.

It is also not a long lens thing. My very wide 21mm f/2,8 Zeiss prime lens does about as badly at f/2,8 but it gets better from around f/4 to f/5,6. Of course, with the 50-500 you start at f/6,3 at 500mm which is only 2/3 of a stop open from f/8.

ISO 800 - f/6,3 - Shutter speed 1/4000.

For one of those brief moments the sun came through I thought I'd pull all the stops to freeze the ball. I cranked up the ISO up to 800 and got a shutter speed of 1/4000 whilst keeping the light meter needle centre. This is something I rarely do but the evil light meter is a story for another day. Note how the vignetting still darkens the corners.

Also, with such a long would expect the background to be blurred out of focus, right? Well not at this distance with this lens. I will play a bit more and come back with more examples showing what I think are more good and bad aspects of this lens.

I said it earlier and I say it again, this lens is the product of a few compromises. Photography is riddled with compromises. This lens is no exception.

Is the Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM worth it? Hell YES. You need to know about and understand the "shortcomings" of this lens though. Compromises are not a Sigma thing or limited to this specific lens. More next time when I explore the "all-rounder" capabilities of this lens.

How will the Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG HSM do as a macro lens? Can it do landscapes? Sounds nuts, right? Come on, a superzoom for macro and landscapes?

Happy shooting until next time. See you soon,

Anton