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Niki is razor sharp at 500 mm and near minimum focusing distance. Just look at the hairs in front of this condor’s eye (Condor in release pen awaiting results of lead poisoning test). NIKON D4S + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 @ 450mm, ISO 1000, 1/640, f/9.0
At f11 the lens performs very evenly over its zoom range although diffraction starts to soften the very good results between 200mm and 400mm focal length. Hot Deal: Save an Extra 5% - 10% on Select Items With Payboo at B&H – Canon EOS R5, R3, and Many Other Items Included!However if you are shooting subjects like birds, which twitch a lot causing blurring even at 1/500th, then image stabilization performance will be less of a priority. NIKON D4S + Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 @ 600mm, ISO 1250, 1/1250, f/8.0 At infinity, it’s another story altogether with Niki showing noticeable softness, especially in the corners at all focal lengths but more so at longer focal lengths. NIKON D810 + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 @ 500mm, ISO 250, 1/500, f/8.0 All three lenses have a rotating removable tripod foot/collar. With Sigi the short tripod foot makes this a bit scary to carry by the foot – there’s not much to grip – my paws can only get two fingers on it. Hence why the lens comes with a strap that mounts to the foot. Furthering Sigi’s tripod foot woes is how the tightening knob jabs into your thumb if you hand-support the lens by the foot as I like to. I found my sample sometimes overexposed, but no worries: that's why there's an exposure compensation button on our cameras.
Niki at 500 mm and cropped to 600mm image size looks sharper than Tami. Mind you this is for a subject ~20 feet away, right in Niki’s sweet zone. Go to long distance (100 feet plus) and Tami wins this challenge. 6) Autofocus Performance
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Shooting stationary subjects handheld at 500mm yielded the following results: Nikon Sport mode gave good results to 1/125 sec (2 stops), Nikon Normal mode was good to 1/30 sec (4 stops). Sigma OS1 mode was good to 1/60 sec (3 stops). Sigma OS2 was good to 1/250 sec (1 stop). Tamron VC on was good to 1/125 (2 stops). Niki first, Sigi second, Tami third. Confusing matters more with Niki at distance is that on occasion I did get good results like this. NIKON D4S + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 @ 200mm, ISO 800, 1/640, f/9.0 Note that though I have evidence of this issue in Tami, all three of these lenses could end up have the same dust pump issue. My gut feeling is that perhaps the issue might be worse with Tami because she zooms faster and with less resistance. Unless you consistently shoot in dusty conditions I wouldn’t choose one over the other based on this.
Which leads us to weather sealing. All three of these lenses expand and contract the barrel a lot when zoomed and though they all have a rubber gasket at the lens mount, none of them are fully weather-sealed (however the Sigma Sport in the next price range up is).Corner sharpness is hurting at long distance and f/8 in this study of the Organ Mountains in New Mexico. NIKON D810 + Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG @ 360mm, ISO 250, 1/500, f/8.0 NIKON D810 + Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG @ 360mm, ISO 250, 1/500, f/8.0 Focus accuracy and repeatability is critical to consistently produce sharp shots. Repeatability (the accuracy of focus on the same subject after repeated focus-acquisition) of this lens is very good (measured 98.0% in Reikan FoCal) with no outliers over a series of 40 shots. And there is no performance variation whether the lens focuses from infinity or from a closer distance. At 500mm focal length the lens focuses in around 0.7 sec from infinity to 5m, which is pretty fast although the lens starts searching in the wrong direction (beyond infinity) on my test target before turning around. Without hunting the lens focuses in less than 0.5 sec which is very good.
I do this for a living, so I only use camera-brand lenses since the price of a lens doesn't matter because I use it every day. See Is It Worth It. NIKON D810 + Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6 @ 500mm, ISO 500, 1/500, f/7.1 Those big-webbed toes have gotta be cold The Tamron 150-600 has a magnification of 4 to 1 the Nikon 200-500 has 2.5 to 1, also the colour is a little more synergistically nicer on the 200-500 when on a D850.From a tactile perspective, the control ring surfaces on the Tamron felt more solid than the ones on my Nikkor 70-200 f/4. I am by no stretch of the imagination well heeled. And besides that I'm naturally a cheap bas*tard.... so upgrading gear for me is like grinding teeth. Thank gawd my wife isn't into photography but that's another story. Yesterday we had the chance to test this Tammy in a shop in Frankfurt (Germany) both with our Canon and Nikon gear and bought a copy with Nikon mount. AF performance with the Nikon (D300S) was quite good out of the box. With our Canons it was a mixed bag. AF performance of the test copy was overall okay with our 7D, but not with our 5D3. Lateral Chromatic Aberration (LatCA) is moderately apparent in both of these lenses, though correcting the issue in post processing is typically quite easy.
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