"BIGMA" lens??

I was hoping that if I followed for long enough, someone would say what this is. OK, I guessed it was a SIGMA, and that it zoomed to 500mm, but now I know it's the 50-500mm.

I have the older 170 to 500mm 35mm film lens. It's prety chunky. Is the "BIGMA" that much better : I know it covers the 50- 200 range as well, but for the size, I'd still have a 50-200mm lens for most of the time, just get the big one out when I really needed it.

Cheers

Malcolm

I think you'll find the 50-200 will also knock spots off the Bigma in terms of optical quality inside its range (and maybe even out to 250 or so with cropping and resizing).

From what I have read the 50-500 is supposed to be optically better than the 170-500, but it's also larger and heavier. The reviews I've seen also say that it focuses faster, but since in Pentax mount it doesn't have HSM (yet) I'm not sure if that applies to us.

I'd be tempted to wait a couple of months before buying any long sigmas at the moment. We know Sigma already have HSM technology, and from what Chris@SRS has been saying it sounds like they are taking more of an interest in Pentax mount lenses. I would not be in the least surprised if HSM lenses are available in Pentax mount fairly soon after the DA* lenses come out. Even if you don't care about HSM this will drop the price of the older lenses on the second hand market, not to mention making more available as people upgrade.