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Sigma 24-70 2.8F Lens Query
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… Thorsten is right in what he said about better to look stupid and become clever.
I thought the likes of this discussion was the reason behind these forums. If you don?t ask you wont learn.
I?ve no problem asking any question, if I don?t know the answer.Anyway … Will get back on on Fri after I get my hands on this thing and reveal all. As stated previously, the lens has been bought for its 2.8 aperture. If it has additional F stops, well and good, an added bonus.
Thanks for the help and explanations.
I think the issue re the 2.8 has been well & truly answered, one thing I want to add however.
If you intend shooting weddings with this, and want to avoid the use of a tripod, be wary. Most churches are quite dark, so, in order to shoot hand held, you could be looking at high ISO values, especially at the longer focal lengths.
I was shooting a wedding the other week, and inside the church (for informal shots) was using two fixed lenses (85mm & 50mm, both being F1.8 ) and even at 1.8 found it difficult to hand hold. Raising the ISO can be ok to a certain limit, but remember that the couple might want a shot 10*8 inches, or bigger, so the noise has to be a low as possible.
I would suggest investing in a sturdy monopod (next on my own shopping list :!: ) to ensure that you can keep the camera steady. Don’t worry about the vertical vs landscape angles, as, if the image is of decent quality, and low enough ISO, you should be able to crop the image to the desired format.
Rgds
Kevin
Cheers Kevin. An going to give this lens a good going over this sat to find out the pros and cons. I agree with what you’re saying re tripod & monopod. Ideally hand held would be best for what I want but Im aware that a hand held 2.8 aperture combined with a high ISO mighn’t just do the trick! Imay have to run with a stem of some sorts. Whether it’s mono or a tripod! These things I’ll have to figure out before hand. If it’s a case that the 2.8 isn’t wide enough then, it’ll mean reverting to my usual method of tripod. Better save than sorry. However, I’m sure at 2.8, I can get at least some nice candid shots at some stage during the proceedings within the dark environment of chruch/reception.
If your shutter speeds are slow, then there’s something else that might trip you up which neither a tripod or monopod will solve – subject movement! One of the reasons the Canon EOS 5D is so popular with wedding shooters is because of it’s extremely low noise levels at high ISO’s (even at ISO 1600). At the end of the day it boils down to choosing a compromise that works best – do you shoot wide open at f/1.8 and risk out of focus images because you didn’t have enough depth or do you risk camera shake or subject movement because you used a smaller aperture (and correspondingly lower shutter speed) or do you risk a noisy image because you used a high ISO or do you combine all of these to reach a usable compromise? Decisions, decisions…
Kevin, I’d suggest you get yourself a monopod tomorrow! It will be ?50-?100 well spent. It’s not something that’s going to become obsolete and should last a lifetime. Mine is some 20 years old and still going strong. ?75 over 20 years is ?3.75/annum. Not bad at all :D
I dont know if you’ve heard of Noise Ninja. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and apparently v v well.
I believe it’s for PC only though, but need to enquire fruther.
See linkhttp://photography.about.com/cs/digital/fr/digsw_noiseninj.htm
Hope it’s of use.
Niallo wrote:
I dont know if you’ve heard of Noise Ninja. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and apparently v v well.
I believe it’s for PC only though, but need to enquire fruther.
See linkhttp://photography.about.com/cs/digital/fr/digsw_noiseninj.htm
Hope it’s of use.
Yep, sure have heard of it. I use Neat Image Pro myself, although I find I rarely have to use it because the images coming out of the 30D are so clean, even at high ISO’s. And 5D images are cleaner again. Having to run an image through a noise reduction plugin is all very well if it’s just the odd image but when you’re dealing with a couple of hundred wedding images, every step you have to add to your post processing workflow adds to the time it takes to get the job finished.
i’m not a wedding photographer, but i don’t think i’d shoot the wedding at f/2.8. 5.6 should be decent enough, i got handheld shots inside st. patrick’s cathedral at 5.6. something else to keep in mind, lenses don’t perform at their sharpest at the widest and smallest aperture. most people recommend stopping down 2-3 stops to get the lens at its sharpest..
bethThanks Thorsten. Hadn’t heard of that one. Currently looking to see if I can get my hands on a version.
Have just downloaded the demo but it only appears to do a segment of the image and not the whole thing.I understand about the work load if you were to run a few dozen images through it, and how time consuming it would be, (so it would be smething I’d run just a few images through if they needed it), but can you tell me, it ip possible to record an action in photoshop which would do a batch process of whatever needed to be done to an amount of images, and that would also incorporate Neat Image? This would automate the workflow and make things easier?
Thorsten
I thought the 5D was better for noise, I understand the theory of bigger pixels better signal to noise etc.
But i was looking for some info recently about the dynamic range of the 30d and came across this article
its a techy test of the 30d, but part way down it, it compares the noise of the 30d with the nikon d200 and the 5d, and suggests that the 30d aint actually that far away from the 5d
I was quite supprised by this.
Niallo wrote:
Thanks Thorsten. Hadn’t heard of that one. Currently looking to see if I can get my hands on a version.
Have just downloaded the demo but it only appears to do a segment of the image and not the whole thing.I understand about the work load if you were to run a few dozen images through it, and how time consuming it would be, (so it would be smething I’d run just a few images through if they needed it), but can you tell me, it ip possible to record an action in photoshop which would do a batch process of whatever needed to be done to an amount of images, and that would also incorporate Neat Image? This would automate the workflow and make things easier?
The segment that you say Neat Image appears to do is simply a preview segment. At least that’s how it is on mine. You can move this preview segment to different parts of the image to see how it will affect your final image before committing the settings. I would caution against using any noise reduction software in a batch workflow as the amount of noise reduction required can vary quite a bit from image to image.
If I didn’t already have Neat Image, I would seriously consider using Noiseware by Imagenomic It has less settings to get confused with and works as well as Neat Image. There is also a free standalone version (their “Community Edition”).
stcstc wrote:
Thorsten
I thought the 5D was better for noise, I understand the theory of bigger pixels better signal to noise etc.
But i was looking for some info recently about the dynamic range of the 30d and came across this article
its a techy test of the 30d, but part way down it, it compares the noise of the 30d with the nikon d200 and the 5d, and suggests that the 30d aint actually that far away from the 5d
I was quite supprised by this.
Grr!!! Every time I try to follow that link, it serves me up a flash based ad with a little message at the top “ADVERTISEMENT – The page you requested will show shortly. Click here to go directly to the page.” Takes ages on my 56k connection so I’ve abandoned it. Will try again later.
But I’m not surprised to hear that 30D is almost as good as the 5D when it comes to noise and it’s why I said earlier that I hardly ever use any noise reduction software. I was at Tony Corbell’s seminar on Sunday and he was discussing his painting with light technique, which involves rather long exposures. There were two people in the audience that raised a question about noise, saying that they couldn’t handle the noise that their Nikon cameras generated with long exposures or ISO’s of 400 or above! I was very surprised to hear this as I’ve begun to take the low noise of my 30D for granted. Tony mentioned that he uses the Fuji Finepix S5 Pro (and if I’m not mistaken, the S3 Pro before that) and that it handles noise very well. I must admit, the EOS 5D is still high on my shopping list and one of the top three reasons it’s there is because of its noise profile.
The 30D and 5D mightn’t be far in terms in noise quality…but one is 1.6x crop and the other full-frame – totally different cameras. ahhh full frame, the main reason I went for the 5D…the noise factor was a bonus.
As for shooting weddings at 5.6…most of what I do in the church is wide open or close to it. You simply don’t buy a F1.8, F2, F2.8 lens to shoot at 5.6. You need every bit of light that the lens will give you.markcapilitan wrote:
…but one is 1.6x crop and the other full-frame…
Don’t remind me :cry: :cry: :cry:
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