using big zooms - 150-600

New_Zealand

New_Zealand

Veteran
Is anyone using 150-600 zoom lens? I'm looking at the Sigma Sports 150-600mm lens for filming with. If someone has used a similar lens before - any feedback would be great. Would like to have an idea of issues I may find using a lens like this before buying one. Thanks
 
It's very good optically. Couple of downsides - main one is that it changes length and therefore balance as it zooms, so at 600mm it's a lot longer and more front-heavy than at 150mm. Also has variable aperture, but that's not the end of the world, just less than ideal. It's also a little slow, but that's what you get for keeping cost and size down (get a Sigma 300-800 otherwise, it's a beast to use). If you need filters they'll need to be 105mm as has no rear filter drawer. Pros / Cons to Sport vs the Contemporary (optically there's very, very little in it) - Sport has smooth manual focusing, Contemporary does not (it's so jittery that's it's virtually unusable for movie work), Sport much heavier but better built, Sport has 3 1/4" holes on tripod foot vs 1 for the Contemporary (useful if you're mounting lens directly to tripod as with single hole it will twist).
As with all long lenses - get a properly good tripod if you can, ie at very least Sachtler Video 18/20, better would be a 150mm head like Sachtler 25 or Studio II, or even better O'Connor 2060 or Ronford Baker 2004 (for my opinions on heads see http://www.grahamhorder.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Tripod-heads.pdf)
Steve
 
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