A Reprieve for the Sigma

Well, yesterday I was ready to unload the Sigma 150-500mm lens and I even put up an ad on Craigslist. This morning, the sun was out, it was warmer than it's been in quite a while and I decided to give it one last try out - this time with my full frame 5D Mark III. The light was good enough that I could shoot at f/11 and 800 ISO while keeping shutter speeds fast enough for use with the monopod.

I was pretty happy with the results and will be keeping the lens for use with my 5DIII. The lens is definitely sharper at f/11 than it is at f/8. There are probably three reasons why the full frame camera gets better results with this lens than the smaller sensor cameras I've used it with.

1.  The sensor in the 5DIII is simply bigger, newer and better, and captures better files, as it should.
2.  The smaller apertures that get good results from this lens are less likely to result in softening from diffraction on a full frame camera as the pixel size is larger.
3.  The 5DIII has much cleaner files (less noise) at the higher ISO settings that enable smaller apertures.

These photos are all from this morning and are processed in Canon's DPP software so there is no lens correction done in DxO Optics Pro as with the other photos I've posted from this lens. The first shot is from a slightly different location and the second from my usual spot.

Both adults were around while I was there today. Here is a shot of one in the air and then after it landed on a branch near the nest. The second shot is a non-cropped image at 500mm with the full frame body.

After about 45 minutes of waiting for them both to be on the nest for a shift change, I gave up and headed out. Of course, as I walked down the trail what I had been waiting for happened. This is what I caught, from a bad vantage point.