The Lenses and Me

I know all the photographers are more or less crazy about lens. And it's for good reason. I think they are probably the first thing you should invest. Camera body is important but without good lens, its useless. And you can keep the lens for many years but the camera body will keep changing esp in this digital day and age. So. I'm just gonna share about the lenses I have, how I use them and pros/ cons of them. Ok .. first of all , this post is not technical reviews about them. If you wanna know more about the sharpness and lens chart, you can find many information from the manufacturers site. And there's Fred Miranda's lens review site. A very good place to read lens reviews. But here, I will just talk about the pros and cons based on my use. Different photographers will have different needs and taste.
I'll start with my canon prime lens.

1. Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM
This lens have many unique attributes. Its the speediest(brightest) , sharpest and lightest lens I have. And its the only prime lens I have. I use it on many subjects and its used to be my main lens of choice . Butnow I am using more Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 EX DC for its flexibility.
I had EF 50mm f/1.8 before I bought this lens. That lens was really good value for $$ but It's lacking in USM, 5 blades diaphragm (bad bokeh), cheap plastic construction. That's why I upgraded to this f1.4 version. And I think it's a good choice.

Things I like about this lens;

• Fast f1.4 aperture allow me to shoot in any possible low light situation.
• Fast and quiet USM focusing.
• Super smooth Bokeh and depth of field
  
• Very light , Easy to travel with
• Super sharp. Probably the sharpest non L lens.
  

Things I dont like about this lens;

• minimun focusing distant could be closer
• 50mm on crop body like EOS 30D is a little long. Not suitable for tight indoor portrait, landscape etc. That hinder me from using it exclusively as a normal lens. Currently thinking of trying EF 35mm f/2.0 or EF 28mm f/1.8 USM. 35mm f/2 is very reasonable price around US$200 so i think I'll give it a try. I enjoy the fixed focal length aspect of using prime lens. It forces me to be more creative on framing and composition.

Some of my favorite shots with this lens.

This one is shot at very very low light with ISO 1600

This shot is very tightly cropped. Hence look a little blurry.

I will continue on these lenses later.

2. Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 EX DC
3. Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 EX DC
4. Tamron 70-300mm f4-5.6 Macro LD Di

but I already wrote quite detailed review on Canon EFS 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Kit lens here and here.

Canon 40D to be weather sealed?

According to some discussion and photos I found , 40D may be weather sealed after all? Or at least partially? It is a good news if it is true.. and seems like it's gonna have a newer shoe-mount just like 1D mark-III to mate with 580ex II for better fit and sealing.

Looking at these pictures from the Northlight site . it does seems to have some sort of weather sealing .. around the buttons and the new hot-shoe mount .. just like 1D mark III..
Lets wait and see..

UV filters (and how to choose them)

Usually, people get a UV filter to protect their lens from getting scratched and damaged. They serve that purpose nicely as they didn't really affect the picture quality. So you can put it permanently on the lens.. Or do they?

I now have a few lens in my collections but when I buy UV filters, I didn't pay much attention. I was not totally ignorant about it to get a cheapo generic ones though.. So I bought mostly the Hoya recommended by the shop.

Exception is that on my EF 50mm f1.4, there's a canon UV filter. I bought it off B&H together with the lens as I believed Canon will made the good filter for their lens. It may only half true.

I faced the problem when I was trying to capture the gig at the Sandwiches I posted earlier. In the low light condition of the pub, the filter was acting like a focusing screen.. I can see another image of spots and other lights faintly on different areas than the real image. Its totally distracting and its spoiling the image. In the end, I had to take off the filter and took the photos to eliminate those reflections.

When I got home, I started to look more closely into my UV filters I have. Most of them doesn't seems to have multi-coating.

Well, I should have known earlier. I was wearing glasses since I was 12. And I hated those early days when my glasses didn't have multi-coating.. Its very hard to see at night because of those extra reflections and glares. And when I was driving at night I have to pay extra attention because I can barely see the road when there's another car's head light or even bright lamp posts in my view. Only when I got my first multi-coated glasses, I can see clearly at night.

Its the same problem with the filters. I was putting a non-coated type UV filters and they are causing reflections and flares. You wont notice much until you started to shoot in very low light like me or pointing at a bright light source.

Here's some photo I took with Canon UV filter in front of my 50mm lens and without filter.
I boosted gamma a little in Photoshop to highlight the problem.

with canon UV filter

no filter ( bare lens)

So if you're getting a UV filter to protect your lens, try to get a good one if you intend to keep them permanently on the lens. Hoya made good ones and cheap ones. Those cheapest green color boxed Hoya filters are not multi-coated. I think you should get Hoya HMC Pro-1 for better quality protection. Or get B+W filters. Only thing is that they are expensive. But hey, that's why they said "You get what you paid for". I think its true here. well.. mostly..

I have a Marumi DHG UV filter for my Kit lens.. I bought it cheaply with my Kit lens. But when i check it , it have multi-coating on it. So, I put in on my lens and took this photo.

with Marumi DHG UV filter

As you can see, it's pretty good .. there's still a faint reflection.. but its not too bad.. And for a filter that cost NZ$20, its really good.

Well.. that's my findings on the UV filters.. I hope its useful for you. Untill I get a Heliopan or B+W one, I cant tell how good they are.. but I'll post again when I got one.

Cheers.

Sigma EX 10-20mm f4-5.6 vs Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 mini review

I have been thinking of getting a wide angle lens for my camera for awhile. There were not much choice. EF-S 10-22mm seems to be really good as i borrowed my friend Pete's one and played with it. It's a very solid lens. I was trying to convince him to sell it to me as he's not using it much but he didn't. :)
Buying a new Canon 10-22mm is no easy matter . Its US$700 affair. So i was looking around and found a few alternatives. Sigma 10-20mm , Tokina 12-24mm and Tamron 11-19mm. Out of all that, Sigma seems to have the widest focal length, on par with Canon. And it only retails at US$450-500. I was unsure about the Sigma quality but I found this amazing photographer from Flickr who uses the Sigma and producing breath-taking photos. So when i found someone selling one at Trademe (NZ eBay equiv), I bought it.

After I took this photo as a test and posted in office Photo mailing list, a few people asked me how it compare with Canon. So I decided to borrow Pete's Canon and did a few shots with it. Unfortunately, the weather is really bad that day and it start to drizzle, so I only manged to take a few shots. Here is the results.
Here is the results of the test. I took the same office building with my 30D with AV mode on my tripod and just swap the lens.
Two interesting thing is that Canon may be 0.5mm wider or Sigma is a bit short. And my 30D keep metering the scene more brighter with Sigma. (like 1/3-2/3 stop).

Both shot at f4 ( I shot canon in f4 for its favor, not wide-open)
Click on the image to see it bigger.

I can clearly see canon has more vignetting even though its not wide open.

Now at f8 for both.
Click on the image to see it bigger.

Now time to compare sharpness. 100% crops are here.

I can say Sigma is sharper in both corner and center, even wide open at f4. Look at the top 100% crop of the building . Even Canon is stopped down a little to f4, it cant match Sigma's sharpness. The rest are pretty much the same results.
In fact, I shot a few in between f-stops for both lens and it shows Sigma get really sharp by just stopping to f5 and it also clean up the vignetting a lot.

Canon suffer from strong vignetting till f8 but it can be corrected in Lightroom or Photoshop.

Conclusion, I am very pleased with my Sigma and its a fine lens. Its cheaper , sharper , lighter and smaller , comes with petal shape Lens hood and a nice pouch. I cant ask for more. But I am sure Pete wont be so happy to read this post. Hehe.

Cheers.

The EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 II aka Kit Lens

Today I am really bored. The reason, I sold my 400D body to replaced with EOS 30D. Well it's only arriving next week. I know what I've said earlier about the 30D and 5D but I got a really good price to upgrade. I was about to buy BG-E3 grip for my Canon for $200 but for just another $250, I could get EOS 30D and then I decided to get it.
So, it's back to those boring and lazy weekends I always had in Wellington. Just laid back and listening music.
Ok ok, enough of my boring weekend life here..
But here's my thought on the kit lens I always thought of it as a POS.
Even after many shots with my trusty EF 50mm f1.8 and newer EF50mm f1.4, I always had to use my Kit lens for wide angle shots and lately, Macro shots (combined with cheap NZD60 +2,+4 close-up filters).
It usually gave me uninspiring soft and dark images but when it's used properly, it has plenty of potential for a cheapie lens.
To prove that, both of my photos that got into Flickr explore are shot with this cheapie lens.

It's pretty sharp and constrasty as long as you shoot above f8 and with plenty of light or with strobes. Not bad for a sub $100 lens. I also starting to enjoy it's light weight so that I can carry anywhere in my back-pack and I dont even have to worry too much about spoiling it.

For this reasons, I'll hold back my priority to replace it with a fast f2.8 standard zoom lens. Contenders are either Sigma 24-70 or Tamron 17-50 f2.8 or similar. But I will focus on getting my strobe setup more complete and portable.

Probably getting a super-clamp and a tripod and also umbrella and light-stand soon.
The good lighting is better than good glass in all situation. And lighting is generally cheaper to get. With ST-E2 and 2 or more of 430ex / 580ex (with the help of super-clamps) will give me total portability and flexibility on my strobe setup.

Just my lazy weekend thoughts.. :)

Note: All prices I mentioned are in NZ$.