Originally posted by Dr Orloff I didn't really read the original brief. For low light portraiture then fast is a must. 1.4 or 1.8, no question.
This is what my thought train keeps coming back to. I've been using my 35mm almost exclusively lately and I feel like I'm finally making it sing. Still, winter is long and the light in my house is poor and I find myself often wanting the extra speed of my 50 without compromising the room for composition. The little bit of extra for subject isolation helps too (though I realize this also has to do with distance to subject and background, and tone and key, etc)
Originally posted by BradH I don't know why the Sigma 30 1.4 isn't getting that much love - I use it almost exclusively for indoor shots on my k5-iis. I have 2 very young kids and it is giving me plenty of keepers. Here are two (admittedly not perfect) examples. The lens is capable of much sharper photos than these but I'm at work and these examples are what I had on hand. It produces a generally very sharp image in even tough indoor lighting in my opinion.
This is great to hear. Two small children here and tough indoor lighting also. And those are great photos!
Originally posted by Tsuken Part of my ambivalence towards it is that it took me a long while to realise that yes it really did need *that much* AF adjustment (all the way, seriously). Once I fixed that, it was much better. However, the old Takette is much nicer to focus manually, and it imparts a quality I really like to the photos.
Really nice pics in your post
This and the other comments about the Sigma 30 being soft at the edges or having inconsistent AF are my concern. I flip flop between portrait where I don't care about the edges, and more lifestyle where sometimes I really do want sharpness all the way across. I don't want to fight it, I want it to work.
I think I'm going to start stashing money away with the FA31 in mind, and keep my eye out while I do. Maybe something else (preferably less $$, haha) will pop up that I think I need.