Thomas Fitzgerald Photography

I made it out first the first time in a few weeks the other day (I’ve been battling a bad chest infection) and as always I brought my camera with me. (My trusty D90 and 18-200 lens for anyone who is interested!) Having been cooped up inside for some time it was good to get some fresh air and it was good to get the feel of a viewfinder again. I hadn’t gone out specifically to photograph but some interesting things caught my eye. It got me thinking though. I realised that I have a particularly bad habit when it comes to being out and about with my camera. I have a tendency to see something interesting, but for some reason I won’t take my camera out to take the shot. Usually it’s because there’s some distracting element, or I think to myself, I’ll come back and get it later. But the words of a recent interview I saw with a well known photographer were ringing in my ear: “take a lot of photographs”. They had gone on to explain that they didn’t just mean, take lots of shots of different things, but to take lots of shots of the same thing. Try different angles, different framing. I realised that there was one more thing I could add to that. Take the damn shot to begin with. It doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect. It’s still good practice.

Here’s an example. This isn’t a great shot because the bollard behind the bike is throwing off the composition. I could try and Photoshop it out but it’s a fairly complicated job and not really worth it. I could have just not taken the shot. After all, it’s not perfect and I’m sure lots of people online would be quick to point that out (using far less friendlier language) Instead though I decided to see what I could make of it.

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Shortly before Christmas in 2008 I started a little experiment. You see, for the longest time I had been a Canon shooter. I had been solely using Canon cameras since the days of film but I had become increasingly frustrated with my camera of the time and the way Canon was developing its products (rebel after rebel but no mid range replacement). Still, I had a significant investment in Canon lenses and accessories so I didn’t want to jump ship and then regret it. Instead I decided to buy a mid range Nikon and try it out before making any decisions on what to do. You can read about my original thoughts on why I was doing this on this post on my technology blog. It’s now a little over a year since I first got my D90, so how has this little experiment played out? Read on to find out.
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I was going through my web statistics yesterday and I came across a very interesting query someone had entered into Google. The search request was “Are the Canon 5D focus problems real?” This is one of those subjects that causes much controversy on web forums. On the one hand both the 5D and especially the 5D Mark II (which I’ll just refer to as the 5D from now on) have some very strong and ardent fans. Any talk of problems with this camera are quickly derided as “you’re a crap photographer and you don’t know what you’re doing”. On the other hand some very experienced Photographers do stand up and point out that the 5D does have some major issues and focus is a big one of those. The problem is the signal to noise ratio around the debate on this is very low and it’s often very hard to discern facts from fanboyism. I have owned the 5D Mark II for some months now and its predecessor for several years, so to answer the question: “does it have focus problems?”

Unfortunately, yes it does.

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I saw a good offer in a local camera shop the other day for a Sigma 10-20mm used lens for a good price, and considering I didn’t really have a proper ultra wide angle lens I figured why not grab it while I had the chance. I did some tests in the camera shop and it looked ok, so I bought it. This morning I went out for a walk around the city and to put it through its paces. Having such a wide angle of view really changes your perspective on things and lets you see even familiar surroundings in a whole new light. The widest lens I had before this was a 24mm on my Canon 5D. The Sigma, mounted on my Nikon D90 is equivalent to 15mm on a full frame, so it is quite a bit wider. Unfortunately though the light was pretty bad today. It was grey and overcast most of the time and the clouds were moving pretty fast so the light was constantly changing. To compensate for this I thought that I would shoot mostly in black and white, and I also did something I would normally never do: I shot JPEG. Why on earth would you do that in such difficult conditions I hear you ask? Well, I wanted to give my camera’s Active-D lighting a try. I’ve never really used it but it gives an almost HDR like look when turned up full. It wan’t really going to be a serious shoot so, what the hell. I regret that now.

Even though I shot RAW + JPEG for lot of shots, having Active-D on full lowers the exposure significantly, and in already poor light this ratchets up the noise, and dramatically reduces the quality of the shots. So much for that Idea. I could have labelled this post as “How Not to review a lens”. Still though, I did get some good photographs out of the mornings shootings.

My set-up mistakes aside, what about the lens?

Like I said earlier, having such a wide lens really changes how you look at things. DP Review gave this lens a good review, but I’m not sure I agree with them. It seems soft to me, but it’s inconsistent. It’s possibly a back focus issue, as some shots were fairly sharp, but others were not, and I was stopped down. Sharp areas of the frame were not where I had the focus point, so like I said, it could possibly be a back focus issue. Still, I got the lens for a very good price and it’s more than useable. I will have to do more tests, and on a proper shoot before I make the final judgement on it. I’m going to be using it in a proper shoot in about a weeks time so I’ll see then. For now though, if you are considering this lens, I suggest that unless you’re getting it for a good price, I would look at the Nikon (or canon) alternatives first, even though they may cost a little more.