| Review of: Sigma EX DG Macro 105mm F2.8 by automorphism on Mon November 18, 2019 | Rating: 6 | View more reviews | |
Views: 153191
Reviews: 43
|
First off, for about two hundred dollars, this lens is capable of some great shots with some patience. It is acceptably sharp for many subjects, and manual focus near 1:1 is not too bad. Manual focus in the portrait range is more difficult than average, and autofocus on this lens isn't that great, but it works.
Overall, I'm a little disappointed with this lens, mainly because it's not as sharp as I'd like. It doesn't have that razor sharpness that some macro lenses have. For most subjects that's not that huge of an issue, but if you want to crop a little and want biting sharpness, it's just not there. Even under controlled conditions with a flash (as in the picture at the end) and live-view focus, there is some lack of sharpness. The lens seems sharpest between f/5.6 and f/7.1 I believe it definitely improves the sharpness (and of course the DOF) when stopped down.
For the price it's pretty good, and for 80% of uses, it actually delivers. But there are certain image styles that are frustrating with this lens. If you are after the ultimate macro experience, I would suggest looking at other alternatives such as the Pentax 100mm macro.
Autofocus isn't great, but I don't use that for macro anyway. Theoretically this focal length is good for portraits, and I have taken some good portraits with it, but in practice it's inconvenient because of its focusing problems. This might have something to do with its extremely short throw at the portrait length.
 | |
| Review of: Sigma EX DC J 10-20mm F4-5.6 by automorphism on Sun October 28, 2018 | Rating: 9 | View more reviews | |
Views: 223632
Reviews: 66
|
This is a pretty cheap APS-C wide angle. For the cost, it is outstanding. It's hard to find fault with it. It is super-wide, and super-fun. For the casual landscape shooter, this is an amazing lens and I don't really find myself craving more expensive wide-angle lenses after getting this one.
It takes filters, so you can pop on an ND filter or polarizer. Beware that because it is quite wide, a normal polarizer will show uneven sky colours due to the wide range of angles at which light enters this lens. B+W supposedly makes a closer-sitting filter that ameliorates this somewhat but I've not tried it. Also, you can still use a regular polarizer if you're not shooting into pure blue skies (for example, if you want to cancel some reflections).
Let's talk about sharpness. In the center and midframes, it's pretty sharp. As I mentioned in the top of the review, the edge performance is pretty weak at the wider 10-13mm range. That, however, is improved a little upon stopping down. Also, at 14mm at above, it's pretty strong all around. Still, I wouldn't hesitate to use the 10-13mm range since for many compositions the very edges might not really have as much cool stuff in them. Overall, despite the weaknesses, even the widest setting can still make for interesting shots. In the evening, using a tripod at a narrower aperture will help tremendously.
The autofocus works well. Because the lens is so wide, you don't really need it to be top-notch to get sharp shots. Manual focus also works well too. For landscapes however, setting this thing up on a tripod and using Live View is still important.
The hood is a petal one. It snaps on and off easily.
What about flare? This lens handles flare pretty well. It does not lose contrast when shot into the sun. The flare is well-controlled, and produces minimal effects.
If you want to know the most serious downside to this lens as a landscape lens, it's the sunstars with narrow apertures. This lens has six aperture blades, and produces mediocre, uneven sunstars. I really like shooting into the sun, so I am a little disappointed with the look sometimes.
| |
| Review of: Tamron-F 1.4X Pz-AF MC4 by automorphism on Thu September 6, 2018 | Rating: 3 | View more reviews | |
Views: 66692
Reviews: 26
|
As Pentax users, we have limited options for longer lenses. One of them is this teleconverter. I've probably shot around 10K shots with the FA* 300 f/4.5 without the converter, mostly of wildlife, so this will be a real-world review based on my gut feeling with this teleconverter.
So, the idea of a teleconverter is that it magnifies part of the image circle onto the sensor. Attaching a 1.4x to a 300mm lens gives an FOV of 420mm. In reality, the effective detail you get will be somewhere in between an idea 420mm lens and the bare 300mm lens.
The good news is that in ideal conditions, this teleconverter can resolve more detail than cropping the 300mm image, which I've tested using a sturdy tripod indoors. So is this teleconverter worth it? I'd say no (at least on the FA*) for a few reasons.
1) Increased ISO necessary. Because you lose a stop of light, you also double the ISO, at least. You might also have to increase the shutter speed (decrease shutter duration). Typically, where you used ISO 400 before, ISO 1000 might be necessary. This is less of an issue perhaps on newer bodies and on full-frame especially.
2) Decrease in IQ quality. All teleconverters do this to some extent. I feel like there is a little too much degradation with this one, especially compared to the Canon series III teleconverters.
3) Pentax IBIS on my K-50 seems to be fairly bad when it comes to longer lenses. That might not be true of newer bodies, though.
Let's see an example:
This was taken on a Pentax K-50 with the FA*300 f/4.5 @ f/5.6 (effective, f/8) at ISO 1000, 1/1000s. No denoise applied, and default Darktable sharpening. Here's the same picture, cropped for actual use:
At viewing size, this Blue Heron nearly fills the vertical part of the frame and the shot looks pretty good. Even in a fairly large print, this would look pretty good. I have compared this shot to one I took of the same heron without the teleconverter. While there is slightly more detail present in the tele shot, uncropped, the non-tele shot actually looks better because it is at a much lower ISO and has that smooth crispness that is somewhat lost with the tele shot.
The bottom line is that at typical distances for birds, the cropped bare lens has superior "overall image quality" compared to the lens with the teleconverter, despite the teleconverter in good light having a slight edge with additional resolved details.
So, I strongly recommend passing on this one. The only exception would be is if you just use straight-out-of-camera JPEGS, and only shoot in strong, good light. In this case, this TC will save you from cropping.
| |
