Sigma 5,0-6,3/150-600 DG OS C/AF HSM Contemporary Nikon

Naturally this is a big and heavy lens, and with the tripod mount it works extremely well in all lighting conditions as you would expect. The image quality is excellent and I've attached a photo of a robin with some zoomed in insets to give you an idea. If you look carefully you can see the reflection of my house against the blue sky in the Robins Eye. It's that sharp. However, it doesn't stop there. That image was taken hand held at the full 600mm zoom. Yes, the light was good, and I'm using a Canon 6D at 1000 ISO, but to me at least that is pretty impressive. The autofocus was almost instant and spot on. Being a big telephoto, you are having to be at least 2-3 meters from the subject for focus! The other feature I like is the manual focus override. If you have the time, and birds are not very patient usually, you can fine tune the autofocus manually. The second sample was taken at night indoors and also handheld. This was at maximum ISO and the autofocus does hunt around a bit, but not bad for hand held indoors at 600mm. There is a feature to set the autofocus range to basically near or far and that reduces the hunt time in low light. You can see here that at max aperture the depth of field is insanely narrow, so when doing wild life stuff it's better to go up to F11 or so and have a higher ISO unless you have manged to squash your subject flat somehow. So the final picture was hand held at around 500mm with the lens resting on a railing to provide some extra stability. The bottom left inset shows the sharpness that can be delivered, the numbers on the blue container are perfectly readable. Again this was at 1000 ISO. I was a bit worried about getting this in my backpack, but the solid zoom cover is reversible and it all fits in very nicely after a bit of reorganisation. I've not bothered with the USB tuner. The results are amazing without it. But I can see how it might be useful. Finally, don't bother with a 1.4x converter. The images are better if you just crop! Sigma do seem to make very good lenses! My Sigma 12-24mm ultra-wide angle is also excellent!

Read the 5 star reviews. I can't add any more info to help you. It's heavy, it's quality and gives great close ups and vids. You can hand hold but I recommend a tri-pod.

I've just bought a "contemporary" version for my Nikon D810. I have only had it for a short while but am mightily impressed with both its image quality and the performance of the optical stabilisation (OS) system. Hand-held shots are completely viable, even at the full 600mm focal length. OS does its job well. Autofocus works well and fast, even in poor light, with very little "hunting". Build quality is good, zoom action is smooth. Image quality is excellent. I have bought a lens dock but in fact I don't think I'll need it as focus is spot-on out of the box. I bought this lens because I am frustrated with the performance of my Nikon 28-300 zoom at its long end, it never seems to be quite long enough and the image quality degrades a bit. Comparing images from the two lenses side by side is a revelation: not only do you get over twice as close but the image quality is also massively better. Downsides? It's heavy, but then it's a large lens with a reasonable maximum aperture so it can't be otherwise. I wouldn't want to lug it around all day though. Incidentally just for fun I tried it with my 1.4x teleconverter. Auto-focus mostly worked but it struggled a bit at longer focal lengths on poor contrast subjects. Maybe worth it for a static subject where you can set focus manually but not usable for anything which would require active focus tracking.

I'll start off by saying I'm a rank amateur photographer, just a hobbiest really, but felt I needed a telescopic lens purely for animal pictures. I opted for the Sigma lens because A) price wise it was perfect, B) I've already got a Sigma 70-300mm and it is a great lens. I use it with a Nikon 5600, no issues at all. It does have a bit of weight, you'll notice it immediately, but get used to it very quickly. The auto focus is quick and reliable, if you know you're camera, you'll be fine. Everything I've done with it so far has been free hand, it comes with a tripod handle (standard sized fitting) but I've not used it as of yet, it does make a good grip when carrying it around. The pictures I've added are of my first time out with it, picked a good day to practise with a touch of local knowledge and luck, and feel I've done not bad. Basically if I can manage it, anyone can. I've pushed the lens (and arguably my camera) to its absolute limit when taking pictures of deer at sundown, at full 600mm focal length, the pictures came out fine, but there came a point when the limit of f stop and ISO meant I didn't have time on my side, but this is a limit of any lens. The equivalent Nikon lens is around £300 more, so this one is perfect if the Nikon is out of budget. If I've one negative, it is the Sigma warranty. There is a 3 year warranty, but it isn't available for lenses bought via Amazon. When I've attempted to register it, I get an email stating it is not a genuine UK import so the warranty doesn't apply. So if you want the warranty, its an additional £41. I'm not sure if this is something Amazon is aware of and can assist with, but Sigma aren't budging on the matter. Anyway, brilliant lens, definitely worth it if you've any desire to photograph wildlife. At 300mm I was pretty restricted, even when cropping, at 600mm with cropping I'm not chasing an animal and only getting pics of its ass!

For the money, this is a pretty amazing lens. While heavy, compared to virtually anything else with 500 or 600 mm focal length it's pretty light and as a consequence, given the excellent image stabilisation, it's certainly possible to use hand-held in reasonably good light. But unless you've got quite strong arms - or something to lean on - I'd strongly recommend using a monopod. This will be a lot lighter to lug around than a tripod although obviously the latter will get you the best shots, and is especially recommended if you're staying in one place such as a hide. As many have pointed out, with its unspectacular maximum aperture the lens isn't great in low light (a wider maximum aperture would make it much heavier and much more expensive) and ideally it should be paired with a camera body that has really good low light autofocus ability and relatively low noise at high ISO values. If you're not used to using a supertelephoto lens - and it is quite a steep learning curve - you're going to find that smaller targets that are some distance away are hard to achieve good focus on using autofocus, especially if there is something else slightly further or nearer to potentially focus on such as water, branches etc. This isn't a shortcoming of the lens, more a question of technique and the quality of your camera's autofocus system. In particular, if you're photographing relatively distant birds on water that aren't moving around much, you'll get the best shots on a tripod using either manual focus or the manual override setting (where you can use autofocus and then fine-tune) using the camera's magnified on-screen view rather than the viewfinder where it can be difficult to see if you have optimum focus. While this isn't a criticism of the lens, it's worth knowing so that you don't think there's something wrong with it at longer distances when closer shots with autofocus are so sharp. And of course even with perfect focus, as your subject gets further away there is inevitably a law of diminishing returns with regard to detail and any subsequent cropping or sharpening will bring out any noise in the image. From an aesthetic point of view, the background blur (bokeh) of areas of the frame that are out of focus is not very attractive when the background is near to the subject - e.g. if you're shooting a duck floating on water, the duck may look fine but the water behind and in front of it less so. On the other hand, if the background is some metres behind the subject then the blur looks fine to me. The sharpness when you get a good focus on something is really spectacular - a small bird 5 or 10 metres away will show every filament of its feathers. The focus limiting switch, with three positions of full range, closest focus to 10 metres and 10 metres to infinity is really useful, - if you're trying to shoot a bird through gaps in branches or reeds or alternatively one perched on a branch quite nearby you can avoid the autofocus locking onto the foreground or background respectively and waste a lot less time hunting for focus. Obviously this lens is far from cheap in absolute terms, but compared to anything better it's a huge bargain and I would strongly recommend it for shooting birds in your garden or a park, at least as practice for using it in more challenging environments. As an example of what you can achieve when the subject is quite near, the shot of the robin is from about 6 or 7 metres away.

I have had this lens for 2/3 weeks now. I have taken over 500 images with it already. And I have to say it is fantastic. Well worth the money. 1st thing I noticed was the size, it's huge. Especially at 600mm. Now I knew it was big, but using it daily I realised how big. And heavy... When I 1st went out with it I thought how can you hand hold it? Now I'm a big bloke, and I felt the size and weight. However, as time has gone by, I don't notice it any more, odd what you get used too. Build is ok, very plastic. But feels sturdy and strong. The lens lock is invaluable, as it prevent lens extending as you walk. I use with a nikon D7200. And I can't quite fit the assembled lens / camera into my lowpro sling bag. I will upload some images of the issue later. If you want to carry around fitted then you need a bag that allows the m to be packed vertically, not horizontal across the bag. Focus is excellent, really fast. And zooming is a bit of a chore, in that you have to twist to zoom then release and twist again to full zoom. Not great if you need to zoom fast. But in general ok. Image quality is far better than my old tamron 70-300mm. (still a great cheap lens by the way). At this time focus at 600mm is slighty soft. So I neeed to tune it to the camera. Looks like another purchase coming up for the sigma tuning thingy. I have bought a gimble for my tripod to help . But all the images except the moon were hand held. And I did take moon shots hand held. the image stabilisation is very good, does seem to pust hand held shots slightly to the right. You can feel the motor working. But its good as you can see. I nearly bought the Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E, I tried it at Jessops (lovely lens) but I don't regret buying the sigma. I wanted the extra reach and boy do I like it. It is a slow lens though so brighter light is preferred unless you are happy with high ISO's. the D7200 is great, but I am noticing the high ISO, (so noise when shooting moon was noticable to me) Great lens, well worth a buy.

I bought a used one via amazon that has a small amount of lens fungus which was stated in the description so image quality is slightly below that of a new one, reviews of the lens are all on the plus side with the exeption of wide open at F6.3 at 600mm, I bought the usb dock after I bought the lens and spent 2 day's calibrating it through all 16 test point's and the degree of front and back focus varied at all 16 point's quite considerably, since it's been calibrated it's as sharp as a pin and I hand hold the lens on a nikon d800 at 1,000th of a second wide open, from small birds 8 feet away to sheep on the mountains 2 miles away it's a show stopper, if you use the usb dock and update the lenses firmware you'll double the autofocus speed making it extremely fast and reliable and improves image stabilisation, it's great for birds in flight but for day to day use if you're hand holding i'd set a minimum shutter speed of 1,000th of a second at 600mm or you'll lower the rate of keepers, the fact that mine has a small amount of fungus leads me to believe it wouldn't be a good idea to use it in the rain for extended periods, the plastic barrel is great for handling rapid temperature changes but as a general rule if I bring a camera with a zoom lens into the house when it's cold outside I put it in a cool room and extend the lens fully, number one tip, put the lens hood on and keep it on, i'm constantly knocking the end of the lens on gateposts etc while i'm out and the lens hood takes the flack not the front element, well worth the money, the 4 stars for picture quality is only with regard to an uncalibrated lens

I've wanted this particular lens for almost 2 years. Although it's a more budget friendly option compared to the £12,000 prime 600mm lenses it is obviously not a cheap lens by any means. I've only had a chance to use it late in the evening and around the house which is a worst case for this lens. But wow even at 8000 ISO I was still taking perfectly usable photos. And outside with more light, I was at full zoom taking perfectly sharp photos. The auto focus is impressively fast although it's not the fastest. The image quality compares well to my Sigma 105mm Prime Macro lens which is incredibly sharp and fast. The only thing with the 150-600mm is it doesn't perform in low light as well as a prime lens but I wasn't expecting it too nor do I intend to use it like that. The easiest way to sum it up is like this. Yeah a Bugatti Veyon is a nice car but you'd still be happy with something like a Lambo at a much lower cost. No it isn't as good as the Prime Lenses but I can't complain, it is an amazing lens. Only one criticism would be the zoom ring weirdly rotates the opposite direction to most lenses but that's not a big issue. It is big and heavy but you can't criticise it for that. It's big and heavy because it has a long zoom range and brilliant build quality.