NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

D700 + Sigma “Bigma” + 2×TC @ 410 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/11, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sigma Bigma at a Few Inches
With the 2× teleconverter, it becomes a 0.64× macro

D700 + Sigma “Bigma” + 2×TC @ 1000 mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/13, ISO 4500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sigma Bigma at a Mile
With the 2× teleconverter, it becomes a 1,000mm telephoto

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...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/16, ISO 2500 — map & image data — nearby photos

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 that understanding.

But what the pair lacks in pure optical quality, it makes up (for me) in fun, because I've never had a lens that could go anywhere near 1,000mm, or with magnification anywhere near 0.64×. The optical stabilization helps with the fun; both shots above — like all the shots on this post — were handheld.

The versatility is fun. I'd met some friends for lunch, and when one took out his small point-n-shoot camera to document the dishes we were about to enjoy, I retrieved my camera (with the very big Sigma Bigma attached) from its resting spot on the floor near my feet, to great laughter from those who had arrived after me and hence had not seen me with it. “Mine's bigger than yours... much bigger.” 🙂

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/6, ISO 4000 — full exif
Side Dishes

What I'm enjoying so much about this lens right now is that it's opening up my eyes to new ways to look at things.... “expanding my envelope”, so to speak. Its telephoto pull allows me to reach out and isolate in ways I couldn't before, and now that I know about its pseudo-macro ability, it's letting me get up close and personal.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/9, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dainty

Walking around the neighborhoods near Mt. Yoshida in Kyoto, I found a wall in deep shade with lots of bits of moss....

f / 6      f / 9      f / 13      f / 18      f / 29

mouseover button to see that version

A set of photos like this for comparison really should be done with a tripod, but I was just standing there trying to fire off the frames while maintaining focus and adjusting the aperture. Still, the results illustrate how much foreground/background separation you can get, even at f/18.

Update May 2015: I revisited these handheld shots to align them (using the software I created to help me build wigglegrams).

Around the corner, in the sun, I found a brightly lit little weed with which to test some more extreme macro shots. First, here's a shot at 50mm, long considered the “standard” focal length for a 35mm camera. The little weed in the wall is perhaps as big as the tip of my pinkie.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Then, a Sigma Bigma macro straight up, without the TC...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Close

I was at an angle to the wall, which perhaps explains the nature of the bokeh here, but I'm not at all a fan of the bokeh in this shot.

Then I added the TC...

D700 + Sigma “Bigma” + 2× TC @ 410 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/11, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos
Closer
With TC, wide open at f/11

The Bigma+TC combo maintains the quality much better when used for macros than for telephoto shots.

D700 + Sigma “Bigma” + 2× TC @ 410 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/32, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Closer
With TC, stopped down a fair amount, at f/32

Yet with the same lens you can reach out and compress distance...

D700 + Sigma “Bigma” + 2× TC @ 600 mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/18, ISO 5000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Top of Kyoto's Suburban Canopy

... and turn right around again and decompress distance, isolating...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/14, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
I Was Told What These Were Called
but I forgot
( update: flowering dogwood — hanamizuki )

By isolating the flowers from their environment, and arranging for a random tree in the background to provide a splash of green to complement the pink, I end up with the photo above, which I like, snatched from the relative ugliness of the urban jungle...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/14, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Same Tree, Less Isolated

I can do that with a lot of lenses, but it's the extreme flexibility that I'm celebrating here.

D700 + Sigma “Bigma” + 2× TC @ 750 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/13, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Camera Shy
even though I was fairly far away, shooting at 750mm

It's too slow a lens (doesn't let in enough light) for serious tele-nature photography, and with the TC, the quality is too low anyway. But it's fun to try, and even though I was balancing precariously on a short wall, hand-holding the big monster of a lens, using manual focus in the low light of the Mt. Yoshida forest, I would have been able to get a reasonable shot of the far-away bird if it had stuck around and stood still for me. 🙂

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/11, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Keeping Its Ear to the Ground?

Another benefit to a versatile zoom is that I can almost dispense with the exercise that photography normally requires and take all my shots from my easy chair. I took the shot above, of an Inari shrine guardian fox, while sitting on my scooter smack in the middle of the road. It's guarding the shrine entrance seen in this shot.

Continued here...

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 1000 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/13, ISO 1400 — full exif
Initial Test at 1,000 mm
Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS + Sigma 2.0X Teleconverter

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....

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 1000 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/13, ISO 1600 — full exif
1000mm wide open at f/13
a fair bit mushy

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 1000 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/64, ISO 4000 — full exif
1000mm at f/64
extremely mushy, but what do you expect at f/64?

The viewfinder was surprisingly bright for f/9, though the out-of-focus areas had all kinds of annoying chromatic aberration when viewed through the viewfinder.... but not, thankfully, in the photos themselves.

A Nikon D700 does not autofocus a lens whose maximum aperture is smaller than f/5.6, so with the teleconverter it turns into a manual-focus only lens.

Still, I took the opportunity for some guy crossing the little bridge I can see from my window (seen at 200mm in the first shot of this post) to try an optical-stabilization-assisted on-the-fly shot, and all things considered, it came out okay...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 1000 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/13, ISO 2500 — full exif
Test Subject

As a bonus, the teleconverter turns the lens into an almost true macro, at 0.64× magnification. I'll have to give that a try soon.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — full exif
Straight Up 500mm
for comparison
( seems a bit fuzzy to me... maybe it's the subject? )

Continued here...

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Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 2800 — full exif
Snack Time
Mommy and Babies

This morning I heard a duck outside that sounded more like the jarring alarm that a telephone makes when it's been left off the hook too long. I looked out to see a mommy duck with six fuzzy babies slowly making their way down the river.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 360 — full exif
Funky Reflections
that remind me of yesterday's “amorphous wavy lines” quiz

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 170 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 720 — full exif
About To Take the Plunge

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 1000 — full exif
Thar She Goes!

This is exactly the spot that the movie crew seen in the “Just One More and We'll Call it a Wrap” post was filming. It would have been fortuitous if the duckies had come when they were here.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 800 — full exif
Mommy Follows
once all the babies are through

After the mommy went, she started making that insistent off-the-hook sound again, and I realized that it's her calling her babies to her. To get to this part of the river, they had to come down a four-foot waterfall just up from where I first noticed them, so the sound I heard had been her calling them to her after that.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 95 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 2200 — full exif
Making a Bee Line
to the group of three babies who had gone first

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 240 mm cropped — ¹/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 3200 — full exif
Together Again

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/125 sec handheld, f/6.3, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Mysterious?

I gave my new Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm superzoom a shot in the dark (so to speak) yesterday evening, and while looking through the results today, came across this throw-away shot of a spotlight at a rock garden. The photo is wholly unremarkable except for some very weird indistinct wavy parallel tracks that can be seen in the full-resolution version, as if snails had been sledding over the rocks.

But it's not sledding snails. Can you explain the wavy lines?

As always with my quizzes, I will not make submitted answers publicly visible for the first day or three, to give everyone a shot at answering without being influenced by others' answers.

(The high-resolution version was exported from Lightroom in its raw “as imported” state, without any post processing. Normally on a shot like this my post processing would consist of the 'x' key (delete), but on a shot like this that was worth saving, I'd normally add some luminance noise reduction, because the D700's low-light ability at ISO6400 is good, but not that good.)

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sigma Bigma Bokeh at f/6

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/13, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sigma Bigma Bokeh at f/13

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/29,, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Sigma Bigma Bokeh at f/29

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...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 240 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/6, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Main Gate of the Heian Shrine

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 them...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos

They were plenty far away, so I had a few moments as they approached to think about a better framing, and tried to get them with some blossoms in the background, but it seems to fall flat....

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 290 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos

I switch to “C” (continuous) focus mode... something I've learned I'm not very good at... and tried to get their feet, and got one that I think has some merit...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 210 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Jag

(Pseudo-) macro of the grill of a Jaguar. The grill is not flat, and I was not perfectly perpendicular, so the pattern of what's in focus and not in focus is very weird, and frankly somewhat disturbing, because it brings to mind the same kind of fuzzy-at-the-fringes results one might get from a really bad lens.

Here are two more pairs of 50 mm vs. 500 mm photos...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Creamy Rich Colors
at 500 mm

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/4.5, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Same Scene at 50 mm

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Throwaway Shot of Urban-Jungle Japan
at 50 mm

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 460 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Japan in a Nutshell
koinobori, temple roof, utility poles, mountains, concrete buildings

And from the “okay, now you're just being silly” department, later that night...

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — 0.3 sec, f/6.3, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
500 mm, Handheld, 0.3 sec
same river as the evening movie shoot

Continued here...