mickie12 Loc: Santa Cruz, Ca

Hi,

I own a 150 to 500 Sigma lens. I am thinking going to a 100-400. The Sigma is heavy. Do you think there is much of a quality differance?

Arnie

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

I have compared pix between the two on several occasions. The Sigma is at least as sharp and it focuses faster. The OS is really fast and accurate. And its quite a bit less money for more focal length. At least 3 local wildlife shooters have sold their 100-400mm Canons and switched to the Sigma after comaring identical shots side by side with my Sigma. But I am a Nikon shooter so maybe its an unfair comparison. LOL

JR1 Loc: Tavistock, Devon, UK

I have the 120-400 Sigma because I wanted the extra speed over the 150-500 Sigma, no contest, canon, overpriced and push pull telescopic focus awful

andrew.haysom Loc: Melbourne, Australia

I have the 120-400 Sigma too, cannot fault it.

Rodders Loc: Guernsey

I sold my 150-500 for a canon 400f5.6 and have never looked back. Much higher keeper rate.

oldtool2 Loc: South Jersey

I bought and compared the 150-500mm to the 100-400mm for a month and returned the 150-500mm. I had just the opposite experience as to the quality of the photos. Then again we know that no two lenses are identical. When comparing the two lenses I had to work with I preferred the Canon. As for cost the Canon is more but if you look hard you can find a good used 100-400mm for about the same money.

Sigma has come a long way with the quality of glass they are making but in my opinion they have not caught up with Canon “L” lenses.

I guess a lot depends on how lucky you are with the lens you get. There is no doubt you have taken some fantastic shots with the lens you have.

Jim D

mickie12 Loc: Santa Cruz, Ca

Thank you,

Arnie

mickie12 Loc: Santa Cruz, Ca

thank you,

Arnie

Gary521 Loc: Colorado

I have the Canon 100-400 lens and get super great results with it. The push / pull on the telephoto takes a couple of minutes to get used to BUT once you get used to it, you can zoom faster than twisting the barrel ( just my opinion ). I zoom the lens while holding the focus ring and you can tweak the focus if so desired. The Canon lens allows manual focus and auto focus at the same time. Try that all that with another lens. Obviously, some do not like this push / pull zoom, as mentioned above. The lens weighs 3 lbs and is fairly compact.

mickie12 Loc: Santa Cruz, Ca

Thank you,

Arnie

mickie12 Loc: Santa Cruz, Ca

Thank you,

Arnie

mickie12 Loc: Santa Cruz, Ca

Thank you,

Arnie

mickie12 Loc: Santa Cruz, Ca

Thank You,

Arnie

fstop11 Loc: Huntington Beach Ca

I have Canon 5DMK2 and 7D. I had a 50-500 4-5.6 non stabilized Sigma shot mainly BIF. Sharp lens but the ring focus was always a problem, auto focus was slow so used manual. I also used 2x & 1.4x extender manual focus required. I damaged this lens so I now have a 100-400 Canon. I like the telescope feature.I can recover faster if I loose a BIF and not loose my shot. I'm able to do better shooting BIF. I seem to get better BIF with lower F stop losts of light.

IMHO based on your subjects Sigma 50-500 is adequate the glass is a little better than the 150-500. Telescope feature is the tie breaker.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

While I can't speak for their 150 to 500mm personally, I'm a big proponent of Sigma. I just bought an 8-16mm ultra wide zoom and I'm astounded at the clarity it achieves. It's so crisp that if I try even minor sharpening in post-editing it's too much. It is also rated as having the least barrel distortion or other aberrations in its focal category - at any price. I'm very impressed.

If your lens isn't as perfect optically as you'd like, give DxO Optics Pro 8 software a 30-day free trial run. They test hundreds of bodies and lenses in a lab and create profiles to perfect your combination after the fact by altering your photo files to close to 100% optical perfection. Using it is just a matter of correcting your files as a batch with the optical adjustments as a first step immediately after loading them onto your hard drive.

As for it being heavy... there's a reason for that. More lens elements weigh more, more shutter blades weigh more, the auto-focus motor could be heavier built, there may be more metal rather than plastic parts used throughout, and the mounting plate is likely solid heavy metal on the Sigma. I was quite surprised to find that my new Sigma 8-16 zoom is physically twice as big as my 18-55mm Sony kit zoom and twice as heavy too.

My philosophies are:

If it any broke don't fix it.
If you are very satisfied with how something functions there's no logical reason to change to something else.