C. Lens Sigma 30mm f1.4

[tonycro]

Sigma 30mm f1.4

Having wasted money in the past on the wrong type of glass or on the odd whim, I promised my self that I would only buy things I actually needed.

I have the canon plastic fantastic 50mm f1.8 and its ok, useful at times but slow to focus, hard to focus manually, and soft wide open.

Down in Australia I wanted to take some star trails and some astrophotography, particularly of the milky-way and had expected the 50 to do the bulk of the work; but being hard to focus and I had to stop it down so much to get a reasonable image that in the end I used a 24-104 f4 ! Wide open this was so much better even allowing for its smaller aperture

So, after getting back I went looking for a better prime, the best shots I managed were are around 30mm on the zoom so wider and preferably faster.
After some hunting around, and making use of flickr groups particularly http://www.flickr.com/groups/sigma30mm/ I went down the sigma route.

I don’t think I have enough experience to do a formal review, but I can describe what I think of this; simply put, it’s a cracker


Feels solid but not overly heavy, quick and quite to focus, manual focus is smooth and it comes with a hood and is best part of £800 cheaper than the canon version ;o)

First time on the camera I was really shocked at how bright the viewfinder was!
In use, it is very good – with (or without) live view it is easy to focus on those distant stars, below is the autumn night sky and the andromeda galaxy is easily visible on the upper left third.



On brighter stars, I found that I’m actually over exposing the stars, when brought into Photoshop the brighter stars in Orion are completely blown out and there are bucket loads of fainter ones! In the one below the smudge of the M42 Orion nebula is easily visible




For portraits the lens is quick to focus and 30mm on an APC sensor gives a great focal length, 48mm as a 35mm equivalent, and even wide open its sharp and the limited DOF is adds a whole new dimension to photography

These of Emma are at f1.8 1/100 ISO200 and the flash used as fill in rather than the main light that it would’ve been on slower glass.





And being fast it helps no end in focusing in low light, Santa’s study was very dark but it coped very well.



All in all, cracking lens - I’m looking forward to using it an awful lot!

[Malcolm_Stewart]

Thanks for posting - I tried one at Focus 2009, and at full aperture it front focused by a very significant amount. This rather killed any interest I might have had, as I don't have AF MicroAdjust on my 30D.