Duade Paton hat im Zuge des Pulsings am 150-600 einen neuen Beitrag (auf Englisch) verfasst. Dabei soll das Pulsing mittels Einstellungsänderungen an Kamera und Objektiv verhindert werden. Ich kann es leider nicht mehr ausprobieren. Aber vielleicht hilft es ja dem ein oder anderen:
G'day all I have a Sigma 150-600C AF Update on Canon Mirrorless bodies. Simon Thibodeau has undertaken extensive testing with the R7 and 150-600C and has discovered some very important settings that will improve the lens on mirrorless bodies. I have summarised his points but have included his full post below.
1. Pulsing appears to disappear from 7m/22ft to infinity.
2. Use Moderate OIS - (You need the dock to change this) This increases keepers as the Standard and Dynamic OIS try to keep the viewfinder steady which appears to be causing soft shots in bursts as it is trying to reset the lens. You can use moderate whilst using a tripod or monopod.
3. In AF menu set accel/deccel to -2, Tracking sensitivity +2, Switching tracked Subject to 0.
4. Using the Sigma Dock set to slowest AF setting.
I do apologise that I did not discover this myself when testing the lens and I highly encourage people to try these settings out to see if it helps. I no longer have the lens to test but Simon's findings do help explain why I was having so many issues when using Standard OIS within 7m. If you shake like I do, using moderate OIS may make the viewfinder pretty jumpy so you may need to use a tripod or monopod to help stabilise the viewfinder.
The AF issues will still impact you within 7m/22ft however many people do not get that close such as BIF and bigger birds/animals so I think these settings will make this lens a lot more usable and is an option for you to consider.
Please feel free to share your pulsing AF experience with the lens below and if these settings have helped.
Thanks to Simon for letting me know, Cheers, Duade
Simon Thibodeau
"After spending many hours doing some extensive testing with the R7 and Sigma 150-600C on both toy bird props (similar to your Gary the Gallard method) and live birds near feeders with various conditions/settings, I've come to the conclusion that with my lens and the R7, the pulsing completely disappears at around 7m to the subject. The pulsing is at its greatest at around 1m past the MFD and gradually tapers off until 7m when it disappears. At that point the AF motor is also noticeably more quiet which suggests it stops bugging out. Using my current settings which I'll share later down in my comment, the pulsing is not constant in and out of focus, the lens focuses perfectly for a few seconds, then pulses in and out of focus for about 1/2 a second, then comes back to perfect focus for another few seconds. And only within 7m to the subject, the AF behave exactly like it should to my eyes past that distance, which I think is far from a deal breaker considering the RF800 f8-11 has an MFD of 6m anyway, at which point the pulsing is barely noticeable on the sigma anyway.
It appears that lighting conditions and SS/ISO/aperture settings have no influence on the specific pulsing behavior. Indoors vs outdoors and any combination of the three settings did influence the ease of the camera to track in general, but not the specific pulsing behavior of the lens. The only outside factor that seems to influence it is background separation, as a well separated subject within the 7m threshold will have much less pulsing. But I reiterate, after around 7m, in any conditions, was I able to manifest any pulsing in my lens.
To me that is a pretty important information and I was wondering if you had tested this for yourself with the R7 or R5. I have shared the results of my extensive testing in various forums/FB groups and I've had about a dozen users of the combo corroborate that their experience is pretty similar to mine. All users seem to report zero pulsing past a certain reasonable distance. All of my testing in controlled conditions seemed to corroborate with the few times I had experienced it in the field.
I should note that I've also tested the pulsing with just about every combination of camera settings I could think of, and found some that drastically reduced the pulsing. In the AF menu, accel/deccel tracking is by far the most important, and should be set to -2 pretty much at all times to reduce the intensity and frequency of the pulsing. At +2 the pulsing will be so intense that it can cause it to completely lose focus even on a perfectly still subject on tripod.
Tracking sensitivity however seemed to do better at +2, but didn't do nearly as much difference, it seemed to slightly help recover focus after each pulse but performance was still okay at -2 or 0. I also set the "switching tracked subject" to 0 (initi priority) to reduce the hunting and losing target in general. Using the usb dock, the slowest AF setting seemed less jumpy and helped with tracking in general, perhaps helping a bit on the specific pulsing behavior too. That slowest AF setting is still plenty fast enough for all but the fastest action and is much less jerky and noisy than the fastest one. Standard speed also did okay. On fastest, sometimes the focus will make big jumps when hunting and go way out of focus, which is why I only use it for really fast action now. Didn't seem to to do much difference with the specific pulsing but maybe it helped a bit.
One last thing I want to mention is that I've also tested the three OIS modes very extensively as well. Standard seemed to perform the worst but was similar to dynamic. Moderate was by far the best, and although we don't have the same hands, I can say that my keeper rate with short bursts at 1/100 was quite a bit higher than 20%.
Moderate mode behaves very differently to the two others. It does not stabilize the viewfinder at all and while you can hear the gyros spinning, the lens stabilisation motors are off until shutter press. This results in much much better stabilization than the other two modes with short bursts and I'll try to explain why.
With standard and dynamic, the lens stabilizer is constantly trying to keep the image still (you can hear it as high pitched beeps when using them). This results in the stabilizer having to "reset" the optical units back into the original position every few seconds, and actually a lot more often if you have shaky hands to begin with. During a "reset", all images from a burst will be completely ruined, which is why in long bursts standard and dynamic are pretty horrible actually. With moderate, the lens stabilizer is in "ready" position everytime you press the shutter button, and with quick short bursts "feathering" moderate performs pretty well, much much better than the other two. Even in single shot the other two are hit or miss because you might get a shot during resetting.
Another fun fact about moderate is that it can be used extremely well on tripod or monopod, as there is no feedback loop between the gyros and the OIS motors as they are off. Moderate performs even better than OIS off on tripod as it compensates for hand shake from operating the camera, if you're not using the remote shutter.
If you were not using accel/deccel to -2, I think you might want to give the sigma a second chance in your testing, if you ever have the time of course. I think knowing that the pulsing behavior is absent past a certain distance would be crucial info for someone considering this lens for a purchase. Knowing that it only happens below 7m really puts it in perspective to realize it will really not be a big deal for most.
I personally think your review of the sigma is extremely fair, and considering the enormous amount of time that went into this comparaison, I totally understand why you didn't spend the 10 hours I did testing different conditions and settings related to the pulsing. But I've heard of a few people saying you might've been a bit unfair to it. I think the big problem is that many people have been misquoting your fair review noting the few quirks (as you should report them!) and rumors have started to spread now saying that the combo is incompatible and unusable. That is obviously through no fault of your own, but unfortunately it seems confusion is still present in the community.
Thanks again for the great video and taking the time to read, I didn't want to criticize your methodology as I think it was appropriate for the comparaison you did. Just wanted to give some of my information on the combo I got through my testing so maybe you could try it again and see if you get similar results to me and/or better results than in your initial testing. I think sharing that info and those settings would be really useful to your subscribers who are using that combo or considering it for a purchase. "
