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500 mm lens (1 Viewer)

jos

Active member
Hi !

I want to buy an 500 mm lens. Been looking for the 500mm f/4 from Canon but I often see that some of you are using the Sigma 50-500. Since the difference in price is huge I was wondering was are your comments on both of them ?

Many thanks !
 
If you can't stretch to the big f4 Canon lens, I'd suggest a more suitable high quality alternative is the Sigma 500mm f4.5 or the old Canon 500mm f4.5. If you're on a restrictive budget, then the Sigma 50-500 isn't too bad and gives added compositional freedom.
cheers,
Andy
 
I'd agree with Andy. The 50-500 from Sigma is absolutely no comparison to the 500 f/4L prime from Canon. The 500 f/4 blows it out of the water. The Sigma 500 f/4.5 is fairly decent and i've seen reasonably good results with it, and it costs less than half of the Canon. However, you lose autofocus when you stick a 1.4x TC on it unless you are using a 1 series body like a 1DMkII or 1DsMkII (Yes I know about taping pins on the 10D and 20D before someone mentions that, but the focusing speed after doing that is horrendous...not something i'd rely on for sure).
 
cfagyal said:
However, you lose autofocus when you stick a 1.4x TC on it unless you are using a 1 series body like a 1DMkII or 1DsMkII (Yes I know about taping pins on the 10D and 20D before someone mentions that, but the focusing speed after doing that is horrendous...not something i'd rely on for sure).
And you can get rapid and reliable AF on a Canon 10d/20d using an f4.5 lens + a dumb teleconverter such as the Kenko pro series.
 
thanks you both...so I guess with my 20D and my 1.4X TC, my best choice would be the 500 f/4 from Canon. Since the 1.4X is not auto-focus with my 100-400 I'm in a rush to get the 500 now !
 
You get what you pay for, the Canon primes are good but the extra cost does not give comparable upgrade in lens performance. Any prime be it Sigma or Canon is better than a telephoto but the Sigma 50-500 is one hell of a bargain at approx £620 UK price. I have many shots in my gallery with this lens and several Canon L (100-400, 400) series if you wish to compare, but I have not used the 500L yet ;-)

I have used the Kenko Pro300 1.4 DG converter on the 50-500 and Canon 400L and it will autofocus in good light, but in the UK good light is not a frequent event.
 
cfagyal said:
Jos:

Yes the Canon 500 f/4 + Canon 1.4X TC will AF on any Canon body, and is still a very quick autofocus.



thanks...I was wondering about the speed of the auto focus.
 
Jos:
Just one more thing before you rush out and buy that prime lens. A friend of mine and I were shooting at a pond the other day ... he with his 500 prime and me with my Sigma 50-500 ... lost track of the amount of times he had to pick up his tripod and head and move away from our shooting location ... bird was too big in the frame ... all I had to do was haul back on the zoom ...

cheers,
jim
 
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