Birding with the Sigma 50-500mm Lens On The Pentax K-3 III
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- I recently bought the Sigma 50-500mm HSM OG something something lens. Nicknamed the "Bigma". It's a well known lens especially in the Pentax world where we don't get a lot of long range zooms like this. I'm trying it out on my Pentax K-3 III and sharing my thoughts.
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my friend just sold me this lens for $300 , cant wait to try it , should be here tomorrow
Gotta love Sigma. I feel like with some of their older lenses that have a bad reputation for softness, Sigma was literally the first company to make that kind of lens. Certainly they were the first with 12-24mm 4.5-5.6 and 8-16mm at the other end of the focal length spectrum (although those are pretty sharp).
Watching on my iPotato screen with two bars of internet, the image quality looked great! Actually, leaving aside critical critical sharpness since I couldn’t tell, those were just some beautiful compositions and expressions. I could see how having that much reach could be super useful, the most reach I’ve got has been a 200mm with 2x teleconverter on a crop body, which definitely helps with small birds.
I have a Sigma 120-300mm 2.8 bargain story that feels slightly relevant, but I’ll skip it for now. $300 for the Bigma is a great pickup, even if you don’t keep it!
I've heard of that 120-300 f2.8, cool find! Yes, I think it is performing very well once I learned it a bit better and made sure to stop down to at least f8. As I kept saying in the video, I feel bad not liking it because it is quite excellent! And the bar I'm comparing to it is unfair: a much more expensive prime lens.
8-16 is one of my favourite lenses and widest rectilinear AF lens available for Pentax K mount, although no longer produced. And of course older 12-24 is the only ultrawide for Pentax FF like K1.
@@xmeda Wait, who made the 8-16? I don't think I've heard of that one before.
I am looking for a tele lens, thanks a lot for your video sharing. Could you share about the Auto Focus experience with K-3 mark III ?
I've been watching your main channel for a while, can't believe I hadn't heard about this one until the community post! Time to binge all the videos ahaha! 😅😂
More fun stuff in the future too \o/ let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see
Sweet set up and great vlog as always! Thanks for sharing!
What a coincidence! I also live in Iowa and often go out into the woods with a Pentax.😂 Welcome to our boring (in a good way) state!
I am enjoying this boring (in a good way) state :) happy to be back in the Midwest.
Love that you did this lens, it is in my list of possibilities. Also love that you are walking the disc golf course, just watch out for flying discs on the fairways.
Haha yes! Might smack me in the head one of these days...
I agreed with your comment of Pentax doing another PLM lens!
Hey. I moved to WI. You wanna do a D FA 150-450 and Bigma head to head?
If I don't sell it by then 🤣 but yes, would love to meetup. Are two pentaxians allowed to be in the same state at the same time? Has anyone tried this before? 😅
Thanks. BTW, the first bird you photo'd was a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak. You'll love the male's colors when you find him! They have an equally beautiful song: robin-like but more flutey or whistley.
Thanks for that! I need to up my bird ID game. Lots of new species I'm seeing here in Iowa.
I have the older one 50-500/4-6.3 without OS but with aperture ring and reliable AF driven by camera. Not as good image output as 100-300/4, but with F8+ it does the job.
$300 is INSANE! Its like getting it for free. Mine was $900 and even that was good 2nd hand price.
50-500 is best for airshows and various battle reenactments where you need to constantly switch between various focal lengths. If you only need long part, then you can also get Sigma 150-500.
Still on the fence about it, although I am enjoying it more and more. I think any error I was having is really more on my part than the lens itself. It really is quite capable, especially when you consider the impressive zoom range.
James! The lens performs great!
But, maybe the da 300 + hd 1.4x TC are a better option?
You can always try to find a Sigma 100-300mm F4 but that might be not that long. But I think it might be faster than the bigma
I forgot you have the 100-300. I may try that. Or just go the TC route. Still deciding.
100-300/4 is grat. Even usable with Kenko SHQ 1.5x.
I found a Pentax 150-450 used at a price I could afford . It is a fantastic lens super sharp but a heavy lens to hand carry I generally use it at the 450 focal length on my Pentax APS-C cameras and on a monopod with a Argo-swiss plate so I can adjust the balance. With the Pentax 16-50 SDM WR , the 55-300 PLM WR and the 150-450 I have three lenses to cove the focal lengths I normally photograph in. All weather sealed sharp lenses.
Fantastic setup. I will probably try the 150-450 at some point.
I used to use the lense. Found to be soft ar 450 range. But versitile of having 50mm . Yes f8 was its sweet spot. So golden hour was null. And using a t.c for more reach not plaisible. .
I didn't think a TC would be any good, given how little light it would gather anyway, let alone any optical limitations.
I still use my sigma 50-500mm it's one of my favourite lens I use it with nikon body and it won me competitions and had my photos on TV.. bad photos come from the user not the equipment.
I had the 150-500 version of the Bigma (same era, supposedly slightly sharper then the 50-500) for about 4 months. I ended up selling it and going to a more expensive lens on Micro 43rds because it was still a little too soft for me, and the Autofocus was all over the place just as you mentioned. But the biggest complaint is I couldn't stand the weight, which is why I had no real interest in going for the 150-600 either.
The 50-500 OS is the sharper between the two. This lens loves F8, I have a couple of them.
What's your m43 setup now and how do you like it?
@@TheCruisinCrew I wound up going with finding a used Panasonic 100-400 and at the same time upgraded the body to a Panasonic G9 (First Version). The 100-400 is an amazing lens and is incredibly light for the amount of reach you get without feeling plasticky. I would definitely recommend this kit.
@@NorthWolfPhotography I'm leaning towards the Olympus E-M III, but yeah, that 100-400 lens sounds good... :)
The Bigma did not appeal to me, I ended up with the Sigma DG APO OS HSM 120-400mm. It's pretty good, but the AF is slow, but I do not find that it hunts on my k3. Interesting, you use the optical stabiliser with the in body SR, when I use mine with the OS I only leave the horizon correction on in camera...
I have been playing with different combination of the stabilization, but I'm happy with the ibis on camera so I am mostly leaving it on and fiddling with the lens on and off
I settled on almost the same lense. I went for the non-OS version to save weight since the camera has SR, also the lens "should" be just a touch sharper given it doesn't have floating glass for OS. Pretty good lens, but I agree that the AF is SLOW.
what camera bag are you using?
Tests show that this Sigma 50-500mm HSM OG lens shines on full frame. But it does not have the resolution required for 26Mpix APS-C crop sensor.
I have come to the same conclusion, that zoom is very old with many versions but I think that optically it only varied from F4.5 to F4.0 in the most modern ones as maximum aperture. In my case I bought an analog camera from the USA that came with several lenses including the Bigma, we are in 2006 I think but the lens was already a few years old because the owner used it with the camera I bought, a Minolta 9, A-mount. I started using it with my first DSLR which was a Konica Minolta 7D with 6 Mp. In low light the lens seemed to have low resolution with that APS-C sensor. When I tried it with a roll of film in the Maxxum 9 I got much better results. I did not use it for a long time especially because it was so heavy. But when I bought a Sony A-900 with a fullframe sensor I remembered that it existed and I started using it again, with very good results, it was another lens and the image quality was very good.
I shot a Bigma for 5 years, with a K20D, K7 and then a K5. It was a great combo, I also alternatively used a Pentax SDM F4. Let it go, I wanted full frame and a real 500mm F4, Pentax had nothing then.
The long lens offerings for Pentax are slim pickings :(
@@snappinessvlogs Back then I befriend the Pentax Rep, I tried for a day the 560mm F5.6, slow focus, purple fringing. Very light but in a sens no better than the Bigma. So because my main subjects where birds, I decided to jump ship with Canon, bought a 500mm F4 and a full frame, never looked back. Using a R5 right now. I loved what Pentax did and a I have a soft spot for the company and its products. I hope they keep going. I still have an K5 and a few cheap old lens that I lend to my daughter when she travels and wants better than photos from a phone.
can it be used on canon cameras?
Does the pentax not have the sigma 150-600mm?
It does not :(
Well if you want longer Pentax* lens there is 600 f4 FA* but is far from cheap and I'm not sure how good it is because I just know it exist
Yeah that is an insane lens. Of course I'd love to try one, but the price and also the size would have me weary! I'm not a very patient tripod shooter!