The photo immediately above is the Mt. Daimonji “大" visible from much of Kyoto. For comparison, this next shot was taken from about the same place, at 24 mm (as opposed to the 1,000mm of the picture above), from my Discovering Kyoto's Mt. Yoshida post a year ago...

Yesterday I offered some samples of Sigma's new "Bigma" 50-500mm superzoom with the 2× teleconverter attached, turning it into a 100-1,000mm f/9-f/13 zoom that also works as an almost 1-to-1 macro. I noted that first impressions were that using the teleconverter ("TC") lowers the optical quality considerably, and today's equally-informal tests support [...]

I've been busy busy busy with Lightroom plugin stuff and so haven't gotten much time to play with my new Sigma "Bigma" 50-500mm superzoom, but I wanted to post a few samples taken with the Sigma APO Teleconverter 2x EX DG attached, turning the Bigma into a 100-1,000mm f/9-f/13 zoom.

These aren't from a proper test... I just set the camera+teleconverter+lens's substantial mass on a table and pointed it out the open window, turned the lens' optical stabilization off, and fired off some shots....

The viewfinder was surprisingly bright for f/9, though the out-of-focus areas had all kinds of annoying [...]

The second day I had my new Sigma "Bigma" 50-500mm OS super-zoom lens, I took a short stroll around town in the morning. The first thing I found were these pretty pink blossoms, and I thought to try multiple apertures to see the bokeh. I like it a lot.

I'm less sure how I like it in the next shot...

Stepping onto the sidewalk, the first thing I see -- way down the street -- were some monks (or whatever... I'm not sure the proper term, sorry), so I thought to reach out with The Bigma's long arm to greet [...]

This continues from Part I and Part II on my new lens. A friend came over and I used his camera either to take some pictures, or to model the lens.

I'm no good at product photography (I tried it once a few years ago, and failed miserably), but I've tried spicing these up a bit to keep them interesting....

The puppies on the hood and under the lens are tiny chopstick holders, seen in my "New Camera" post the other day, and I used the "Mostly Monochrome" Lightroom develop preset seen in my Stupid Tone-Curve Tricks post as the [...]

This is a continuation of yesterday's post about Sigma's updated "Bigma" 50-500mm Super-tele Zoom, mostly to show more samples. Clicking through on the thumbnails brings up full-resolution versions.

I horribly missed focus on this one, as I have on many of these. The depth of focus is pretty thin at 500mm, so I was sometimes trying "C" continuous) focus mode on moving subjects, something that I have little experience or confidence with, so I accept all blame for the missed-focus shots.

Missed the focus on the one above as well, by just a bit. Adding a smidgen of extra sharpening [...]