My Sigma 150-600 C got that firmware upgrade & is a killer at my R/C work plus pretty sharp. I don't think I've shared this here but a good friend & pro Canon shooter is also a very skilled R/C pilot. A few years back he had ISS Commander Chris Hadfield plus all the Snowbird pilots autograph 1 wing of a plane he flies & for fun I'd try to get a crisp enough shot to read the autographs. I had been trying at a shutter speed that gave prop blur on a few occasions but on 1 pass on a nice sunny day where he was flying l to R and doing a constant set of rolls I got this shot. The first sample shows the full frame at low res & the second is a crop of the signatures. Canon 1D4, ISO 200, f6.3 @ 468 mm, 1/2000 sec hand held. I have rotated the frame so it & the crop are oriented the same. Remember it's moving left to right & constantly rotating.
@ebiggs1 wrote:" I spent months testing and adjusting my lens, and got it pretty sharp below 400mm."
Prhaps you would care to show us some before and after shots?
I tossed all of the test shots. So, I went through and tracked down a couple of similar "before and after" shots. Both are photos of a robin, using the 6D at 600mm. No crop, but I used LR to limit file size to 4500 kB. All of the shots are more, or less, straight out of the camera. I only applied an import preset with lens correction, default LR settings, and WB adjustments.
The first image is a "before", which was taken not long after I had purchased the lens. I noticed that it was slightly front focusing at short focal lengths to major back focusing at longer focal lengths. It was all over the map, and did not seem to focus consistently, either. Most of the apparent blur and bokeh distortion is from the OS.
The second image was taken after I was more or less "done" with calibrating the lens. At some point, I had to stop tinkering with it, and just walk away from that project. I tried to find a similar shot to the first one, but one that showed DOF.
I have no comparison shot of a robin after the firmware upgrade. So, here is a shot of 12 year old, Pee-Wee football, which was shot at 600mm with the 6D Mark. This shot has +1 Ev of exposure added in LR6.
Let me know what you think of the differences.
My lens does not and did not exhibit what the first photo shows. The others look typical for that lens.
As a matter of fact none of the other three or four "C" lenses I have used show what yours did for whatever reason. I suspect yours did have an OS problem. Even the first two Sigma Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM Lenses I had didn't do that. They were pretty bad believe me. The third one is nice. One even went to Sigma but was not any better when I got it back.
The "C" just isn't in the same class as the "S", IMHO. I rarely use it anymore.
"C" below (before FW update)
"S" below.
If menory serves me well, I think both were shot at f8 but different FL. The Franklin's Gull being the more difficult to do, however. I usually shoot f8 with Av with any or all of these lenses. Makes that easy to remember.
I cannot tell which of your shots was taken with which lens and update.
Meanwhile, here is an uncropped shot from the same game, but at 300mm focal length. This lens is all I need!
Cropped version. Look at the big kid's eyes.
[turning cartwheels] I am not sure how they were able to fix an OS problem through firmware, but I would suppose that OS is a 100% software feature, anyway. Typo in the previous post. All shots are with the 6D.
My 1D Mark IV is starting to show it's age. Newer camera bodies seem to get much better performance out of the newer generation of lenses, than the 1D Mark IV. However, the 1D Mark IV more than holds its' ground with older lens designs. The Sigma 150-600mm is an older lens design, but the firmware upgrade is really a killer, Ernie.
