Helping a lady out with her D7200

jcdeboever

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Interesting story. Yesterday, at lunch I noticed this gearthy lens on this lady's D7200 and I had to ask. It was a sigma 85 1.4 art. She said she wasn't sure about it. So I offered to help see if I could figure it out. I had a heck of a time recalling on how to use it (d7200) but Google is your friend. She had it set in af-a, matrix, focus lock, and shooting auto. Once we sorted spot meter, aperture priority, and unlocked focus point, we were off and running to test. Her lens was focusing way to left, just like mine did when I had the Sigma's, I put that focus point to the right and Bam, dead nuts. I told her I had the same issue and we looked up a link to a video explaining how to calibrate the lens in the camera. She was going to do it at home. Crazy how you spend good money on something and it doesn't work out of the box like fujifilm's do. Crazy how complicated the camera is compared to an XT2. Really made me appreciate what I have, ISO, aperture, shutter speed, metering, ec, all via dials on top, not to mention the joystick for focus point. She had her manual but I forgot how all over the place it is, very difficult to use, it's no wonder why so many people never read them. She thought it was her, she was giving up. I didn't have the heart to tell her my calibration never seemed to hold or work but I think hers will because mine was back focusing and to the left.
 
One of The reasons I prefer to buy OEM lenses

Buy sigma lenses for the Fuji film and see what happens.
 
I recall the days when Sigma stood for Sig nificant Ma lfunction.

Over the years, there have been some time periods when some Siggy lenses did/do not work all that well as the camera makers change button and focusing protocols; when the D200 was introduced, that camera "broke" a lot of older Siggy's.

My old Canon EF-mount Sigma 70-210 f/4~5.6 does NOT work on new Canon digitals..locks up the cameras! But works great on the EOS Rebel XT film camera it was designed to be compatible with.
 
I must say that I'm extremely happy with my recent tamron lenses. I had to dial them in, but they are sharp, and the 70-200 was half the price of the Nikon equivalent. The fiji lenses in the same spec range might be sharper, but they are also extremely expensive. I got the dock for the new generation tamron lenses, and it makes 'tuning' your lens, and updating firmware (when new cameras come along) much easier.
 
One of The reasons I prefer to buy OEM lenses

Buy sigma lenses for the Fuji film and see what happens.

They don't make x mount glass. I wouldn't buy one if it did, the build quality is garbage IMO, maybe I'm spoiled buy the fuji. I mean, why do you have to call something "art series" ? Gimmicky for a cheap plastic piece of trash that cant focus correctly. I don't have a nikon adapter. I did buy a couple of adapters (FD, M42) but not into the renders from the older glass on the fuji body. I don't get all the rage about adapters on the fujifilm X. They are not logical to me, maybe it's me, I don't know.
 
One of The reasons I prefer to buy OEM lenses

Buy sigma lenses for the Fuji film and see what happens.

They don't make x mount glass. I wouldn't buy one if it did, the build quality is garbage IMO, maybe I'm spoiled buy the fuji. I mean, why do you have to call something "art series" ? Gimmicky for a cheap plastic piece of trash that cant focus correctly. I don't have a nikon adapter. I did buy a couple of adapters (FD, M42) but not into the renders from the older glass on the fuji body. I don't get all the rage about adapters on the fujifilm X. They are not logical to me, maybe it's me, I don't know.
I think people don't want to spend the money on the Fuji lenses. And buying an adapter and some other lens reduces the cost significantly. Especially useful if one prefer Manual Focus.

I like all the old Nikon metal lenses. Nice and sturdy. The newer Sony and Fuji lenses are very nice in all areas.
 
I must say that I'm extremely happy with my recent tamron lenses. I had to dial them in, but they are sharp, and the 70-200 was half the price of the Nikon equivalent. The fiji lenses in the same spec range might be sharper, but they are also extremely expensive. I got the dock for the new generation tamron lenses, and it makes 'tuning' your lens, and updating firmware (when new cameras come along) much easier.

Tamron has really put out some nice glass recently. The g2 series are well made. I really didn't care for having to calibrate things, that seems odd to me. But hey, if it works for you, that is a good thing. When Nikon told me I had to calibrate my zoom lenses at each focal length is when I raised the white flag. I had all this focal length coverage between Sigma and Nikon and none of them, including Nikon were accurate. However, the calibration of the Nikon primes did work but lots of misses still, just not as many. The calibration made things worse with the sigma. I could get the focus point dialed in but then the front or back focus would be trash. I spent many, many, hours dialing things in, only to be extremely bummed.
 
One of The reasons I prefer to buy OEM lenses

Buy sigma lenses for the Fuji film and see what happens.
I agree, I learned my lesson the hard and expensive way. I cringe at the thought I recommended the sigma 17-50 2.8. However it worked fine on the D3300, just not the D7200.
 
At one time when i was experimenting with my camera/lens for my home studio I noticed that to gain focus that I was not in the middle of the lens. I started experimenting of how "off" from center the focus was. I don't recall what lens it was but I don't have it now. I'm curious if one of the internal elements was very slightly off from perfectly centered, thus a need for some type of calibration to compensate for some internal defect.
 
When I was shooting Canon I had a Sigma 20mm F/1.8 and a 50-500 (Bigma), both worked as advertised, no complaints. But these were purchased about ten years ago. I am hard on my equipment, and about once a year or so I'd drop them off at Dean's Camera Repair for calibration. Still have them.
 
I've had some poor luck with Sigma: their EX series 100-300 HSM, and their EX series 180mm f/3.5 APO-Macro, two of their older "best series" of lenses had focusing issues on Nikon cameras that were just a few years newer than the lenses...the macro would go off on wild,wild back-focusing tangents many times per day...the 100-300/4 HSm ostensibly useful for sports was ":eek:kay", but would also occasionally get very,very confused and back-focus 50 to 100 feet on dead-simple action shots.

Even WORSE though was the yellow cast of their warm-rendering older lenses; as Thom Hogan and others mention, this might be one of the single biggest issues with aftermarket lenses: color rendition that does NOT match Nikkor lens kits...you can not just adjust the white balance and get rid of this...Nikkors are pretty cool in color rendering, Sigma has always, always been warmer. Older Sigma lenses gave a sickly yellow-ish tinge; the ART series seems closer to neutral. Personally, I always felt that the Sigma older lenses were aimed at Canon users more so than Nikon users: larger market, more beginners, less hardcore, Nikon-or-nothing people,and the warmer color rendering of Canon EF lenses.

I dunno...my current aftermarket lens set is skimpy...a Tokina 70-210, and two Tamrons, and some Lensbaby lenses. Pretty much everthing else I can think of is a Nikkor.
 
I look at the third party lenses. But just can't seem to trust them that much. I do have 3 AF third party lenses. 1 - Sigma, 1 - Tokina, and 1 - Tamron. The rest of my lenses are Nikon. The Sigma had to go to repair, Tokina works just fine and is a good lens. The Tamron doesn't like the new digital bodies but still works. Focus hunts some on the new DSLR's.
 
.. Even WORSE though was the yellow cast of their warm-rendering older lenses; as Thom Hogan and others mention, this might be one of the single biggest issues with aftermarket lenses: color rendition that does NOT match Nikkor lens kits...you can not just adjust the white balance and get rid of this...Nikkors are pretty cool in color rendering, Sigma has always, always been warmer. Older Sigma lenses gave a sickly yellow-ish tinge; the ART series seems closer to neutral. Personally, I always felt that the Sigma older lenses were aimed at Canon users more so than Nikon users: larger market, more beginners, less hardcore, Nikon-or-nothing people,and the warmer color rendering of Canon EF lenses...

My Bigma 150-500 had a yellowish tint and the color rendition was slightly muted. Images that I could not get back to where the Nikon rendition was. before I bought the lens though I had read about it but still got it. Good lens, just if you are picky about the colors then it wasn't a good lens.
 
Same issue with the Sigma 180mm f/3.5 APO EX HSM Macro...all the good buzzwords! EX series build quality...Apochromatic...Hypersonic Motor Focusing..full 1:1macro at 18 inchesfrom the film plane....a good butterfly lens...but everything was consistently that slightly offputtting Sigma yellow...
 

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