Sigma 50-500 mm f/4.5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM review - Chromatic aberration

Have you rated your lenses yet?

Sigma 50-500 mm f/4.5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM

17 May 2010

Arkadiusz Olech

5. Chromatic aberration

When we operate in the middle of the focal lengths range the chromatic aberration shouldn’t disturb us almost at all. At 135 mm it is low and keeps the level of 0.06–0.07%, at 300 mm the results are even a bit better. At 400 mm it is worse for a change ( the level of 0.09%) but still there are virtually no reasons to complain.

Sigma 50-500 mm f/4.5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM - Chromatic aberration

The ends of the range can be a slight problem, though. At 50 mm the chromatic aberration increases to the level of almost 0.11% (it is low only at the maximum aperture) and it is already a medium result. The things are even more serious at 500 mm focal length, where, on stopping down, we pass from medium values to the high and medium borderline. Fortunately at no focal length and aperture combination this aberration becomes definitely high or very high. Overall, this category should be assessed positively.

Please Support Us

If you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - advertisement - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

How does the tested lens compare with its rivals? The Canon 100-400L wins again as it never exceeds the level of 0.10% and approached it only at 100 mm. For the rest of the range its chromatic aberration was low or even negligible. The Sigma 120-400 mm OS fared very much alike in this category and so its results are also a bit better than those of the 50-500 mm OS.

The Sigma 150–500 mm OS also performs a bit better than the tested lens. At shorter focal lengths it didn’t have almost any problems with the aberration, at 500 mm it showed a trend similar to that of the 50-500 mm OS but its level was by 0.01% lower.

At the end you can add that the tested lens corrects the longitudinal aberration very nicely. It can be seen in the chapter 10, in the picture where we tested any susceptibility to front or back focus tendencies. To sum up: although the Sigma 50-500 mm OS fares the worst of all the stabilized telephoto lenses of this class, it doesn’t mean the situation is bad. If we widen our comparison criteria, including non-stabilized models, we can encounter such devices as a Tokina 80-400 mm in which case the chromatic aberration could reach even over 0.3% - a very high level indeed.