Sigma 150-500mm F5 to 6.3

I was recently told to expect a 50-500mm Sigma zoom lense for test purposes. What arrived was a 150-500mm lense. OK, I am happy to re-test this beast, having tested it in May last year. Besides, I was interested to see if it had been improved. What a nice surprise when I discovered that the old model which was fairly noisy in the image stabilising department has been vastly improved. Wonderful. This time I wasn't going to be the butt of the jokes for being noisy... (see old model test)

Again, opening the box, I found a high quality well built lense with nice balance and weight. Clipped on to my Canon 5D mk2 I found the lense to be nicely balanced and handy to use. I tried it out at Virginia airport briefly and took many pics of my fine feathered friends who come for food each day. The clarity is really good with sharp photos indeed. I am not a big fan of push-pull lenses so like Sigma's twist action lense. The action is smooth and fairly precise.

As stated, the glass is of a high quality and delivers high end photos - super sharp. For a lense that costs around R12000 it is excellent value for that kind of money.

Test pics

Technical stuff:

Lens name APO 150 - 500mm F5 - 6.3 DG OS HSM

Focal length 150 - 500mm Maximum aperture f/5 - 6.3

Minimum aperture f/22

Lens construction 15 groups 21 elements

Angle of view 16.4° - 5°

Closest focus distance 220cm / 86.6in

Maximim reproduction ratio 1:5.2

Aperture blades 9 Filter attachment size 86 mm

Focusing HSM motor with manual focus override

Dimensions 94.7mm × 252mm (3.7× 9.9 in)

Weight 1910g (67.4 oz)

Supplied accessories • Case • Hood (LH927-01) • Shoulder strap • Tripod socket (TS-31)