Originally posted by Bui Okay, it is LBA, I admit it at the first place to avoid hiding from myself
so I recently came back from a trip to Portugal, trying to bring all of my 3 autofocus lenses (DA 18-135, DA 40ltd and Sigma 30 Ex Dc), reviewing my photos taken there, and while I'm quite happy with the results, I stil have some
amateur questions that may be some of you could help to enlighten me
- I went to the Santa Justa Tower of Lisbon, trying to take thousands of panoramic photos there with both the DA 18-135 and DA 40ltd, It turned out that most of the keepers are taken by the zoom, not the prime, not because of the focal length but I prefer the sharpness and colour from the 18-135. For example here is the photo taken by the 18-135
PIC_2359 | Duc Hien Bui | Flickr and this is the 40
PIC_2384 | Duc Hien Bui | Flickr both at f8 and ISO 100, straight out from camera. Perharps it was the problem of focus, metering or my hands, or problem with my bad eyes?
- For night shots, I am not fully happy with both the DA 40 and Sigma 30, the DA 40 is a bit too narrow, there are a lot of small streets and corners there, it was difficult to use 40mm focal lenghth. Meanwhile the Sigma 30, while being perfect focal length speaking, was on-off. For every flat images without a main subject, for example a big square, or a panoramic landscape, it was soft and flat (again, I know this lens is not born for shots like that), I ended up shooting mostly at f4 and iso 1600 to keep the images sharp enough, effectively eliminating the advantage of its speed.
So I'm wondering if I should purchase a new lens to compensate for both of them for my next trip? A lens that is at the same time wide enough, fast enough, sharp enough, light enough and cheap enough than the weaknesses of those 2 lenses (it may not even exist I know
), for example the DA 35mm 2.4? It is really sanity when I want the DA 35 while having already the 30 and 40? Or is there a more reasonable option? Can a manual lens like the A 28 2.8 or M 28 3.5 work? If not I will forget about that and have fun with my current gear anyway.
Edit: what is your opinion of the DA 21ltd? Is it sharp enough from f3.2 for night shots? I don't want to use a tripod, walking around with the family, I don't have much time to setup a shot, just a quick snap :-)
Thank you and bonne journée à tout
Honestly from the link I find both picture sharp... In both case the focus is done on the front plane and the background seems less sharp.
What can I say? DAltds like DA21, DA40 etc are prone to focus issue, in particular if you don't use the center AF point and if your sample is not perfect. I have issues with the DA21 due to field curvature or if I don't use the center AF point. My father has the same issue with his own sample and his first sample of DA40 was decentered.
18-135 AF is truely great but the lens is too slow for low light.
DA35 f/2.4 may be a better fit for the focal lens and it sharp enough at f/2.4, but it is slow vs the sigma and the half stop isn't going to that much vs the DA40.
The lens you'd really want is the FA31 I guess; Focal length, rendering, apperture. The price is not the same.
Your sigma 30 from your own opinion is supposed to make things flat and all, but I'd really think this isn't really the lens fault. You should just have a bit more punching PP profile and the JPEGs are not corrected in body because it is not a Pentax. But I am sure that pushing a bit contrast/micro constrast/vibrance would solve the issue. The DA35 f/2.4 is a truely great lens, the sigma 30 too. but with the wrong light/scene in the city, like any lens they would not make for anything interresting because where the scene isn't interresting to begin with.
The problem is that what you need basically is to keep that 18-135 that work so well (yes! why throw away something that work so nicely ?) and learn to use the sigma 30 for the nights shots. The biggest improvement you would get is to shot RAW and perform some PP, adding punch when needed but more importantly for night shoot, work on the white balance.
Beside from you shots, you don't seem to use that much the f/1.4... Then you could replace that lens with a 17-50 from tamron or sigma. For similar price as the 30, you would get quite more possibilities in term of zooming.