Originally posted by Rupert On a dark rainy morning a Bigma 50-500 @ ISO 6400, wide open 6.7, 1/160 Handheld, ISO 6400, shot through a double pane window.......
With all DUE Respect, for over twice the price of the Bigma the Pentax 150-450....
JUST WON'T CUT IT!
There is "Brand Loyalty" and there is common sense with cash. I have plenty of cash...do you?
Regards!
With respect, Jim, there are folks who have a use for the lens and those who don't. For shooting squirrels and birds at bird feeders, you may not see much improvement, but it does seem that there is some image quality boost for the 150-450 over the Bigma. It is great that you are satisfied with the Bigma, but not everyone is.
Quantifying what a boost in image quality is worth is hard. A DA 35 f2.4 is a cheap lens which can be had for 150-ish, a Sigma 30 f1.4 for 400-ish, and an FA 31 is 1000-ish. I ended up trying each one of these and ended up with the FA 31. The improvement in image quality and rendering of out of focus areas was enough better that I don't regret going with the more expensive lens, but each photographer has to make their own decision about these things.