Photoclubalpha

Hi folks,
Having spent a couple of hours reading through the lens discussion forum and not finding the answer to a question I have on choice of lenses for my alpha 550, decided to sign up and ask!!

Current lenses I own are Sony 18-250mm f3.5-6.3 as a walk-about and Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 for those wideangle landscape moments.

I am keen to move up in quality and reach as I'm well aware of the shortcomings of the 18-250mm lens at 250mm (way too short) and f6.3 (way too small) for decent wildlife shots, and miss the out of focus effect when having to stop down to f8 to get reasonable sharpness. The 70-300mm kit lens which I've now given to my girlfriend (along with my alpha 100) easily out-performed the 18-250mm in this respect, so I'm now looking to spend some reasonable cash and seem to have a choice of either the Sigma 150-500mm f5-6.3DG OS HSM or Sony's much vaunted SAL70-400G f4-5.6 SSM, which everyone seems to love.

The question I have is which lens will perform the best for wildlife photography at the longest zoom and biggest aperture, and which lens is best suited for adding a 1.4x teleconverter to really open up the possibilities.

I have read on this forum that adding a Sony 1.4x teleconverter to the Sony lens will automatically change the autofocus function to manual focus, but what about a Sigma 1.4x teleconverter on the Sony lens? Will this retain the AF function and does it really matter anyway? Presumably the all-Sigma combination will not result in loss of AF.


Any advise would be welcome as I go on safari towards the end of the year and want to take the 3 lenses with me.


Many thanks

I don't have the Sigma 150-500, but do have the Sony 70-400G and the Tamron 200-500. I've really heard very little reliable comparisons of the 150-500 vs older Sigma 50-500 or the Tamron 200-500, which would be it's natural competitors. The 70-400G is simply in a class a bit above these for IQ. So it's probably the one for best performance if 400mm is not a problem.

The 70-400G will AF with the Kenko 300 Pro series 1.4x TC for good results, though don't try BIF or such with that combo. The IQ is still slightly better to my mind than switching over to the Tamron 200-500, so my 200-500 is still around when AF is important, which for me is not that often. I've not tried the Sigma TC on it, but I doubt it would be an improvement over the Kenko.

On the safari end of things this link might be helpful to read:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essay ... Tips.shtml

Walt

OK Walt, many thanks for the tips. I'm in the States on business this month and may well check out the prices of both the Sony 70-400G and the Kenko 300 TC - they may be cheaper than UK prices but the exchange rate isn't too hot at the moment.

Regards,
Jim