Zoom lens to replace my 250 STM Zoom

I've witnessed demonstrations of optical platforms (trailer mounted) that could fill the frame with airplanes at flying altitude. The heat haze/waves on the video stream were crazy. But very impressive non the less.

FEChariot wrote in post #17861722
There are a few people on here that scored the Sigma 150-600 C for $700 US. Might want to keep an eye out there.

The Sigma 150-600 C is currently running at around £800 from a reputable UK store, or for that matter Amazon. This would probably be the OP's best option, but it is way out of his budget. That price at the dealer I usually use makes it the same price as the Tamron. IMO the Sigma is a much better lens than the Tamron so with the identical pricing the Sigma would be a no brainer. I absolutely love mine, but I got mine back in October when they were £875.

When it comes to LR I do not think that the way you are using the scale function will have any advantage for you. Whichever method you chose the final result when exported will be the same. Either increase the scale so that the subject fills the frame, provided that the subject is in the center of the frame, and that the scale option offers enough movement. Or you can simply apply a crop to the image, and then when you export you just specify the output size to be resized to. The only time that the exported image would be different is if you have chosen not to resize to a fixed image size on export. When you resize on export the algorithms used to calculate the pixel values for each pixel will be the same in either case. The real difference is in how LR handles the images internally. The scale option will effectively crop and scale the PREVIEW image. The fit to view would remian the same, but the other viewing scales would be different. I would suggest opening a picture in the Develop module, opening the crop tool, and then setting some random values for the transform sliders. The play with the constrain to crop and scale options and see what happens. If you add lots of negative scale things may become easier to observe. Also remember that when you export all of the changes you made are applied to the image in a fixed order that has nothing to do with the way you actually got to the required paramaters.

Alan

Here is one i have just done - it is off the original 5185mp long side RAW then using the lens correction scale tool i pushed the slider to the right to 150, this has almost doubled the size of the plane, i then croped the center to 1655mp and carried on with the rest of the edit, and saved it as a 100% jpeg at 1655mp long side file.

I dont think it has worked out to bad from an image where the plane was tiny.


P.

Oh can i just add - the pic is clean and free from noise on my laptop, so i dont know what is happening to the files when uploaded here but they are generating more noise


P.

BigAl007 wrote in post #17861977
The Sigma 150-600 C is currently running at around £800 from a reputable UK store, or for that matter Amazon. This would probably be the OP's best option, but it is way out of his budget. That price at the dealer I usually use makes it the same price as the Tamron. IMO the Sigma is a much better lens than the Tamron so with the identical pricing the Sigma would be a no brainer. I absolutely love mine, but I got mine back in October when they were £875.

Alan

The idea was to keep an eye out for sales. The $700US deal that people scored would put that lens around £500. I know its not a current offering, but where there is one sale, there are usually more.

Pagman wrote in post #17862025
5185mp long side RAW

That would be a big file!

Archibald wrote in post #17862082
That would be a big file!

Yep they are 5184 x 3456

P.

Here is a before and after -

First one is a jpeg strait off the RAW no work on it at all appart from slightly lower size to fit on here, the second one is after doing what i mentioned above, not sure how many times magnification that would equate to, but it looks a lot and not bad afterwards i think


P.

Pagman wrote in post #17862088
Yep they are 5184 x 3456

P.

Pixels, not megapixels.

Archibald wrote in post #17862100
Pixels, not megapixels.

Upssss my bad


P.

try to find a used sigma 150-500OS...it was a good bang for the buck lens when it was out, and now with all these new 150-600 offerings it's become pretty much dirt cheap on the used market...but that doesn't mean it's not a capable lens

Hey Pagman,

Just to give you some idea of what you can expect. Longer lenses give you essentially more magnification, or just think of it as putting more pixels on a target which gives you more detail. There's a ton more to it than that, but that's the simplicity of it really. We all get the idea of longer means more reach, meaning more detail on a target. The problem is... how much do we need? 250mm to 500mm gives you nearly twice as many pixels on a subject at distance. So really, think about what what you're shooting and how small they are compared to your sensor. For what you're shooting, you probably need a 600mm at minimum, and more likely need 1200mm or more, in 35mm format terms, to get enough detail on your subjects through atmosphere to really make it. And that's still not that much more magnification if you think about it. Going from 250mm to 500mm to 1000mm will give you more detail for sure, but relative to the cost, it's not a lot.

Example of 200mm to 500mm:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/obQT​Sk

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/nUm4​Rh

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qcPP​KE

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/pVry​Vg

Thank you for explaining all that i do appreciate it, its not an easy situation to find an answer to and my lens does not help, not because its rubbish or low on IQ quite the reverse, the 55-250 has really thrown the gauntlet down and is a Brilliant lens in every department except for length I have been through every lens test and reserched every lens and put them against the 55-250 STM and honestly/truthfully there are not many that are better or even equal, there is just no point putting a longer lens on my camera if the image is going to be closer but less sharp or even out of focus.

I have had bridge cameras before one of them had a 600mm eqv lens, but its IQ was very very poor so that is a route i dont want to go down, a scope is no good either as i need to keep what i do portable - just me handholding my camera.

I think a crop frame with perhaps 30mp might be the answer, as i kno my lens can cope with it.


Regards

Pagman

I do see closer sometimes - this was right overhead flying at about 1000ft, still a max crop.


P.

If you are going to post to POTN using the forum to host the images then you want to export the image so that it is 1280 pixels on the long edge, and also less than 150KB in size. That way the forum software won't have to resize/compress your image. Using the scale tool is not actually giving you any advantage in this situation. Just crop the image so that the subject fill the frame the way you want it to, then when you export the file ready to upload just have LR resize the image to the 1280px long edge 150 KB requirement of the system software.

Here is a screen shot of my file and image size settings that I use when posting to POTN. As you can see I have sRGB JPEG selected, as well as Limit File Size To: set at 150KB. The image size is set to Resize to 1280 pixels on the long edge, enlarging the image is allowed. I have the output resolution set to 100PPI, because I use Output Sharpening, and the value in the resolution box is used in the algorithm that calculates the amount of sharpening to apply.