Thomas Fitzgerald Photography

Canon has released an upgrade to it’s professional telephoto lens, the popular 70-200mm f2.8L IS USM adding a “II” to the already lengthy name. The new lens features a new optical design and new coatings to improve performance. It also decreases the minimum focussing distance. It’s scheduled to be released in April but price is not yet set. Expect it to be expensive.

(via Rob Galbraith)

I treated myself to a new Nikon 35mm f1.8 Lens for christmas and I took it out for a quick spin in the City today. I’ll have a full review in a day or two but for now just some quick first impressions and some Images. Overall, it’s a pretty sharp lens. Even at f 1.8 it’s sharp. Unfortunately it has one pretty big weakness. It has some severe fringing when used wide open and some pretty bad chromatic aberration too. The chromatic aberration you can live with as it’s reasonably easily removed in post but there’s not much you can do about the fringing. It’s like what you would expect on cheaper digital compacts. It’s a real shame because it’s a very sharp lens. Anyway, here are a few photos. I’ll post some more tomorrow. (I’m writing this pretty late so no large versions I’m afraid)

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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.