Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM Review

The Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM is an outstanding lens, and considering its price, it’s an even better value. It is sharp, light, easy to handle, and its autofocusing system is fast and has a very short minimum focus distance.

I was completely blown away by how sharp the pictures are after being used to my Canon 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6L IS USM; I always thought my Canon 100-400mm was fairly sharp, but it doesn’t come close to the Sigma 500mm. Even wide open the Sigma is very sharp, which is very important when you want to blur out backgrounds or shoot in low light. I’ve also been very pleasantly surprised by how much easier it is to do bird photography with the 500mm F/4.5 lens than it is with my Canon 100-400mm; the autofocusing is faster, but more importantly, the extra focal length makes it much easier to fill the frame with a bird. With the 1.6x digital crop on the Canon Digital Rebel line and Canon 30D line, a 500mm lens becomes a 800mm lens. A 800mm lens is the real deal for bird photography. The Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM also has the closest minimum focus distance, 13.1’, of any 500mm or longer lens on the market. The Canon EF 500mm F/4L IS USM focuses to 14.8’ for comparison, and the Nikkor 500mm F/4D ED-IF II only goes to 16’. When you are shooting small and tame birds, those extra few feet make a lot of difference in how much of the frame you can fill without a teleconverter; it can become even more important when you are lying on your stomach shooting shorebirds, as those extra few feet can make the difference between being able to easily continue taking pictures when a bird approaches very closely or having to stop and wiggle your way backwards.

The Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM is also great for mammal photography. Mammals are large enough that it is usually possible to get tight compositions even from a fair distance with the 100-400mm, but pictures look much more striking with the 500mm F/4.5 than with the 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6. The reason for this is that the Sigma 500mm F/4.5 has a much shallower depth of field than the 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6, owing both to its greater focal length and larger aperture. In terms of real, visible, results the differences are very clear. Photos taken with the 500mm F/4.5 make the subject pop out of the picture much more vividly than those taken with the 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6 since the background is so much more blurred out. The depth of field is so narrow that I often need to stop the lens down to F/8 or more to get the entire body of a bird in focus. That is rarely a problem with the 100-400mm. Such an effect is even more pronounced with a faster lens such as a 600mm F/4.0 or 400mm F/2.8, but that extra speed and length comes at the cost of much more expensive and much heavier lenses. The Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM weighs in at a very manageable 6.8 pounds, which compares quite favorably to similar lenses (see below).

Note that a used Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM is $1000 cheaper than the next least expensive used lens and almost 1/3 of the price of a new 500mm F/4.0 lens, making the Sigma a truly outstanding value.

The Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM does have weakness relative to these other lenses. In fact, in terms of straight up quality (irrespective of price) I would argue that the Sigma is probably the worst of these options. First of all the lens is out of production as of 2005 or 2006 after being replaced by the Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX DG APO HSM. While people have reported virtually no differences in build or picture quality between these two lenses, replacement parts are likely to become more difficult to find in the future for the non-DG lens. Secondly, and most prohibitively, the Sigma 500mm F/4.5 loses the ability to autofocus with teleconverters on most camera bodies. There are ways to overcome that – you can tape over the third pin on the Canon 1.4 teleconverter and retain autofocus capability – but the autofocus on a now F/6.3 lens will be slow and inaccurate. You can also buy yourself a camera body that autofocuses to F/8, but if you can afford to do that your money might be better spent on one of the other lenses.

The over-riding point here is that a used Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM is by far the most bang for your buck, but it is not the best lens that money can buy. In addition to cost, the other advantage to the Sigma it its significantly lighter weight compared to newer Canon counterparts. I’ve never carried a Canon 500mm F/4, so I don’t know how much of a difference 2 pounds make, but I’ve heard people say that those 2 pounds make quite a bit of difference. Take that as you will. The main difference between Canon lenses and the Sigma and Nikon lenses is that Canon has image stabilization (IS), which neither the Sigma nor Nikon lenses have. Image stabilization is very worthwhile, so if money is not an issue then you should get one of the Canon lenses. Overall, if you think weight is an issue for you, the Sigma might be better than a Canon, but for me I would spring for the image stabilization and the extra weight if I had the money for it (even though I don’t think it’s particularly good value for your money).

As a short note, the Canon EF 500mm F/4L USM is a comparable lens to the Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM in many ways. The Canon went out of production way back in1998, so all Canon lenses are at this point quite old and may be difficult to repair due to lack of parts. It is also about $1000 more expensive than the Sigma, even though tests I’ve seen comparing the two lenses show very few differences in image quality. I therefore think the Sigma 500mm F/4.5 is a considerably better value than the Canon 500mm F/4.5.

In summary, the Sigma 500mm F/4.5 EX APO HSM is an excellent lens that represents enormously good value for your money. You miss out on an extra 1/3 stop and image stabilization compared to the Canon EF 500mm F/4L IS USM, but with the money you save by buying a used Sigma 500mm F/4.5 you could buy yourself a whole line of top-notch wideangle lenses (and camera bodies) to complement your new super telephoto.