got my sigma 18-35mm 1.8 art lens.

Peeb · Dec 9, 2015

What are your 'return' options if you decide to pull the plug?

dannylightning · Dec 9, 2015

Peeb said:
What are your 'return' options if you decide to pull the plug?

they say 30 days no questions asked on returns and i know it said no RMA needed just send it back... i sent them a email asking how to go about returning a item, if i do sent it back i want them to know its being returned.

Peeb · Dec 9, 2015

I kinda feel strongly both ways on this one- it captures some great images, but I just know if you can trust it....

dannylightning · Dec 9, 2015

now that it seems to be tuned, my main concern is will the focus be consistent.. got my speed light, set it to 35mm,, 1/80,, f/4 and iso 100 and hand held the camera.

i took my foamy RC plane and put it in a few locations took 10 shots in each location. kicked it out of focus before every shot

the first 2 photos are so you can see how far away i was. the rest of the shots are cropped to see if it missed focus or not..

i also did some test without the speed light and well the results were not as good for some reason. which is strange since it focuses on the subject before the speed light goes off. without the speed light some were in focus others were not. but i was focusing on a different subject for those.

dannylightning · Dec 9, 2015

here is a test with another subject, iso cranked up so there is some noise. 10 photos of this box without the speed light, all 10 photos were in focus.. with out the speed light these are the results i got.. which as i already said is strange because it does the focus before the speed does anything.. here are 6 of the photos with out the speed light and you can see its hit and miss on the focus.. not sure if that is something to be concerned about or not.. as you can see 3 are in focus and 3 are out of focus.

hand holding without a flash at those shutter speeds i may just be getting motion blur. maybe its not missing focus.

i really should be doing this on a tripod and all of that.

this weekend ill get the lens out, ill take my tripod and see how it preforms... right now i am just screwing around in bad lightning and subpar shooting conditions..

dannylightning · Dec 10, 2015

i think i am finally done tuning this lens. here are some low light shots from around the house. i would say IQ is excellent.

took the lens outside today too but just shot random trees and what not to see how well it focused on things that were really far away, seems to be doing alright.. not gonna bother to post any of those shots though.

DB_Cro · Dec 10, 2015

tirediron said:
In my experience things start getting sketchy below 1/60 - generally most people can hand-hold reasonably down to 1/30, but when you're that close to the target any little bit of movement will show.

Just following the thread, don't have the lens but looking into it.. but I had to reply to this one.
This is 1/5s, taken a few hours ago.

I've got over 140 more sharp ones just from today.

dannylightning · Dec 11, 2015

Nice. those do look good.

i did one final round of turning today since the lighting is pretty good out and i took my tripod out too just to be sure i was not getting any camera shake or anything.

focus at infinity, F/2.5, 1/500 i think it was, 35mm and auto ISo. 35mm was a little off so i adjusted that the rest looked to be right on.. so here is a shot at 35mm, 28mm, 24mm, and 18mm 100% crop i would say i got it doing what it needs to be doing for things that are off in the distance.

i could not get 35mm quite as good as the rest of them i even took a shot at +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +10 +11 +12 +13 and +14 and i settled on +9 at 35mm +12 at 28mm +6 at 24mm and 18mm for the focus on the infinity setting.

the last photo will show you how far away i was when shooting these..

DB_Cro · Dec 11, 2015

Dude, what a hassle.
The dock saves the day, but I'd never want to have to do that.

dannylightning · Dec 11, 2015

DB_Cro said:
Dude, what a hassle.
The dock saves the day, but I'd never want to have to do that.

I did not want to have to do that either. i am a bit upset that it was so far off especially for how much the darn thing cost. i really do wonder if that is a way to make people buy the dock. than again i bet allot of people would just send the thing back but that would be a big haste to send it back. wait for the new one so i figured i wold give the dock a try. its really easy its just very time consuming. if i had took the tripod out and shot a proper target like i did today in the first place i think i would have saved allot of time. it probably would have only taken me a few hours lol.. i probably spent 8-10 hours over the last few days playing with this lens, but now i think i have every focal length for every focusing distance dialed in as good as its going to get.

DB_Cro · Dec 11, 2015

A lot of people wouldn't know how to use that software anyways.
I seriously doubt this is a common issue, it really seems like they put it together and FORGOT to tune the focus AT ALL.

It's a lens that's too expensive (taking into account that it's aps-c only it's even worse) for them to play around with it like that.

dannylightning · Dec 11, 2015

your probably right, there is a good chance someone did not tune the lens or they had someone tuning it that had no clue what they were doing lol. i was a little unsure about the dock my self but i just plugged it in and went to town. i think anyone with a little common sense could figure it out, i have learning disability and i always got horrible grades in school, i have common sense and i seem to be smart just not smart at the junk they tried to teach me at school but i think most people could figure out how to use the dock if they really wanted to.

if i though i would move to a full frame some day i would not have go this lens but with my wild life shooting i like the extra reach of the DX format. if you could set the full frame camera to DX and not loose megapixels i would have probably got a D750 but i think in DX mode your at like 18mp instead of 24mp ( something like that ) due to the amount of cropping i sometimes do for wildlife photos the more MP the better if i want to make prints of them and i am quite happy with my crop sensor camera.

tecboy · Dec 11, 2015

There is could be 'sweet spot', but is rare. Sometimes, my Lens is not sharp at lower f-stop, but when I increase the f-stop to f/10, the image looks tack sharp.‭

DB_Cro · Dec 11, 2015

dannylightning said:
your probably right, there is a good chance someone did not tune the lens or they had someone tuning it that had no clue what they were doing lol. i was a little unsure about the dock my self but i just plugged it in and went to town. i think anyone with a little common sense could figure it out, i have learning disability and i always got horrible grades in school, i have common sense and i seem to be smart just not smart at the junk they tried to teach me at school but i think most people could figure out how to use the dock if they really wanted to.

if i though i would move to a full frame some day i would not have go this lens but with my wild life shooting i like the extra reach of the DX format. if you could set the full frame camera to DX and not loose megapixels i would have probably got a D750 but i think in DX mode your at like 18mp instead of 24mp ( something like that ) due to the amount of cropping i sometimes do for wildlife photos the more MP the better if i want to make prints of them and i am quite happy with my crop sensor camera.

Oh shaddap, I got a Canon T2i.