I stopped in at the local camera shop near my home (The Photo Center in Brick, New Jersey) earlier this week to pick up the Panasonic 50-200mm lens for my micro four-thirds kit.
It's a friendly, family-owned shop and when I spotted the 150-500mm Lil' Bigma in the case (for some reason I hadn't noticed it before), the owner offered to take it out for me. The only one he had in stock was a Nikon mount so he put it on a D90 and let me walk around with it and play for a while.
This was the HSM version with OS. I have to say I was very impressed. The build quality was higher than I expected and what fun it was to use! While far from small and light, it was lighter than I expected and certainly lighter than the "real" Bigma, the 50-500mm. A tripod might be the best way to use it but using it handheld was quite reasonable.
In the absence of such a focal length in the modern Pentax lineup (I'd love to see a 135-400 to go with the new 18-135), I could definitely see this eventually joining my kit for wildlife work.
Surprisingly, the lens sells very well despite its price and size. The shop owner said he sells roughly four a week, if all mounts are taken into consideration. Of course, this small shop can't match pricing from B&H, Adorama or Amazon. Even though I can (and often do) visit B&H and Adorama when working in New York City every day, I like having this local shop around and might try hard to see if I can justify the pricetag (just under $1000).
Edit: I take that back. The price is no cheaper at B&H.
But it won't happen right away. I'll have to see whether the K-5, some DA Limited primes or this Sigma 150-500 comes first. Any other Pentaxians have any experience with this lens?
Last edited by Biro; 11-11-2010 at 08:41 PM.