articles/Nature/walk-on-wild-side-page2

Tom Lee's Walk on the Wild Side - part 2 of 1 2 3 4

by Tom Lee Published 01/08/2015

Pricing
I'm a great believer in having the right tools for the job, whatever the cost. In most cases, when working on professional assignments this means that eventually it's your clients who pay for your equipment, but as this was for mainly personal use I wanted the purchase to not only give me the performance but should be good value for money.

There are numerous makes on the market that will give you a long focal length, but this doesn't mean you should buy 'cheap'. At the top notch money-no-object end I could have shelled out on the 600mm Nikkor. Whilst this would assure me of the quality and performance I needed, it's a hefty chunk out of my business for little gain financially. At the bottom end of the market I could trawl the internet and find myself a lesser make such as Opteka for around £150 or even go for the £190 Samyang 800mm mirror lens I tested for the Oct/Nov 2014 Imagemaker, however, I know that performance would be an issue.

Given my previous experience of the Sigma stable of lenses, I was pretty sure of the quality and performance I would get for a given price tag. As I said earlier, my preferred lens, the 150-600mm f5-6.3 was unavailable (and at the time of writing was still unavailable due to demand) so I opted for a shorter focal length but a lens that had been around for a year or two and had been proven to deliver. At around £600 it appeared to fit well within my budget and I could afford a 2x teleconverter to go with it! This retails for around £200, but was unable to purchase one before my trip. You should be aware that only the Sigma teleconverter will work with this lens.

Quality and Performance
It amazes me that some lesser reviewers will say 'you can feel the quality of it just by the weight!' Anyone with any sort of a pea for a brain will realise that the majority of the weight in a lens is in the glass. Mounting the glass in metal as opposed to carbon fibre or other lightweight composite has no bearing on the quality of build - ever! What really matters is how it's put together and materials used in construction, and one of the main purposes was to find a lens suitable for the job which was lightweight.

The body is solidly put together and has 21 glass elements in 15 groups. Lenses of this focal length and complexity benefit from image stabilisation and this is no exception, particularly at the 500mm end. The rubber focusing and zooming rings were tight fitting and delivered smooth operation. The lens is also fitted with a rotating tripod collar allowing for fast landscape to-portrait shooting whilst still mounted on the tripod or monopod. The collar also doubles as a handy grip and ensures that the camera is well balanced when carrying. The lens is available in Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax mounts.

• Tom Lee's Walk on the Wild Side page 1
  
• Tom Lee's Walk on the Wild Side page 2
  
• Tom Lee's Walk on the Wild Side page 3
  
• Tom Lee's Walk on the Wild Side page 4
  

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