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Do You Think These Look Soft?
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Well, don’t mean to be arsy either,
but if you were testing for sharpness,
you might not take a picture of a backlit tree-The last picture looks ok-
for the edge of the frame at 10mm at f/14- if that’s what I’m looking at-
it has been hard to tell-Perhaps I come from a simpler time,
but I might expect this to be a good result from a cheap zoom lens at 10mm at the aperture you chose-Can’t add anything more-
Sinead
I don’t have great eyesight, but it is possible that the apparent softness is a bit of movement. I looked at the second shot. The posts look fine as do the mountains in the distance. The reeds along the fence in the middle of teh picture appear a bit soft but that could be a bit of motion blur.
The first shot has a bit of flare – probably casued by s drop on the lens. It was awful weather on Saturday when we wer at that forest. Teh flare could be causing some blur.
I am also trying to come to terms with depth of field and hyperfocal distances. This might help:
http://www.aguntherphotography.com/tutorials/depth-of-field-hyperfocal-distance.html
I think in the f9 shot of the tree, the depth of field is a bit shallow. The branches at the top are a bit out of focus but the foreground seems fine. Again, I’m not an expert.
Be careful as well of reading too much into negative reports of the quality of these lenses. There may have been a few bad apples, but Sigma are a huge name in lenses and have been making quality lenses for decades. I checked these as well recently and the bad batch seems to have been ages ago. Such is my confidence in their quality that I bought one of these lenses last week specially for our trip to the Mournes. However, my pictures are so crap I can’t tell if it is the lens or me!
Sinead,all RAW images are going to look soft. You need to sharpen them at least a little. Also the light in both these photos is not great for this sort of test.
Sinead, I’ve never had problems with softness with this lens. I doubt very much it would beat a Nikon 50mm prime, but for what it is it’s grand. Sigma occasionally get accused of being a bit lax in the quality control department, but I’ve personally never had a problems with my Sigma lenses. The examples you’ve posted look ok to me, nothing there that a bit of sharpening wouldn’t sort out.
Regarding focusing, I rarely use AF on this lens. At 10mm, if the lens is stopped down to f8, where it performs well, and focused to 3m (autofocus on something 3m away, and figure out roughly where it is on the distance scale for future reference), then everything from about 50cm to infinity should be in sharp.
John
Thanks to all who responded to this question. Think I may have over reacted slightly, I guess this is where I show my inexperience.
At the weekend I was using the lens stopped down to small apertures a lot went out to the beach y’day and was much more mindful
of my settings, have not really had a chance to look at them yet.I have also only just started shooting in Raw and was not aware that they would need sharpened.
Am going to do a few prints and see what they look like after that.
Thanks again to all,
Sinead.
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