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

Have you rated your lenses yet?

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

17 May 2010

Arkadiusz Olech

6. Distortion

We were very curious how the Sigma 50-500 mm OS would correct distortion. On the one hand we deal here with a telephoto lens, boasting such focal lengths which usually don’t cause any problems when it comes to geometric deformations. On the other hand, it is, after all, a device with 10x high zoom ratio and such lenses in the best possible case cope with distortion moderately well.

Fortunately the Sigma passed the test with flying colours. At the shortest focal length we have a slight barrel distortion which level we set as –0.51%. As the focal length increases this aberration becomes zero very quickly and changes the sign because at 90 mm it is already pincushion and amounts to 0.38%. With further increase of the focal length the distortion stops at the level of 0.61-0.62% - exactly these values we noticed at 135, 200 and 300 mm. The aberration increases as the focal lengths get longer but the changes are minimal – at 400 mm the distortion reaches 0.70% and at 500 mm – 0.80%.

Canon 50D, 50 mm

Canon 50D, 135 mm

Canon 50D, 200 mm

Canon 50D, 300 mm

Canon 50D, 400 mm

Canon 50D, 500 mm

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