Monday, July 21, 2008

The right tool for the job

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With all the birds we've been getting at our bird feeder, I was getting frustrated with the quality of my low-end telephoto lens. I was thinking I'll wait until I'm in Toronto again and go shop around for a deal on a Canon 100-400m zoom or something.

Only things is, it'll be a while before I'm back in Canada and the birds are here now, so when I read good things about this new lens, I thought this could be the lens I'm looking for. Well sure enough, the initial reviews are very good and when I saw that I could get it for the same price here as in Canada, I went for it.

Here's my new Sigma Bazooka, it's HUGE!

Sigma 150-500mm F5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM

I'm still getting used to it, it's heavy (2.0kg), but it has image stabilization so hand held is still possible with good light.

Here's a sample shot I took with it. I re-sized it to 1600 pixels on purpose so you can see the detail in the feathers, I'm really happy with this shot. Standard sharpening (40/1/0) was applied after re-size.

ISO400, 1/800, f7.1, 150-500mm @ 450mm

We went back to Lone Pine Koala sanctuary on Sunday so we'll have more pics up soon.

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