My wallet is not happy! I've just bought a new Sigma 500/4.5 lens... at a substantial discount courtesy of Sigma Imaging UK, but the net result was still a big hole in the pocket. I outsmarted myself and ended having to choose between wasting the best part of 500 quid (that's British pounds to those who wonder ) or paying a big chunk more and ending up with a new lens at much less than the regular street price. So I made the sensible choice.

The lens was delivered on Saturday and I had to wait until Wednesday for some sunshine to make an excursion to my regular haunt, Kelsey Park.

This is lens is one big sucker: almost 14 inches long (350mm) and just shy of 7lbs - three thousand one hundred grammes!! It appears solid and well-made. It uses drop-in filters and comes with some kind of UV or daylight filter and a polarising filter. Auto-focus performance seems pretty good, but I used manual focus for the most part 'cos the camera kept picking on the wrong subject. This worked well and I'm sure with more practice I can become quite proficient, but I was glad of the big, bright 1D MkII viewfinder. I used my monopod and wound up the ISO so I could keep shutter speed up. There's a variety of shots in the gallery mostly - but not exclusively of the nesting herons and fledglings - including some with the 1.4x extender. Most are downsized from full-frame, but there are a few crops of assorted sizes. Image quality seems pretty good, though, not surprisingly a bit soft at 700mm, and I'm not sure about the bokeh. Still, on the whole, I'd have to give this lens a big .

I'm still using Photoshop CS2 to produce web galleries as it's very quick and easy, so you need to allow JavaScript and flash to view the gallery.

Kelsey Park & The Sigma 500