sigma 50-100mm 1.8 art lens review..

[dannylightning]

awesome lens over all. not so sure about it not having image stabilization if you want to use it in low light.

first the problem i see with this lens.. ...shooting around 1/200 or so i occasionally get some motion blur, not always but sometimes and you cant really notice it till you start to crop in a good amount.

shooting in my house during the day with no lights on i am still shooting low light, some places very low light, even at f/1.8 on some shots my ISO was is getting up around 6400, sometimes more with 1/200 shutter speed which seems to be the slowest shutter speed you want if your shooting on the long end around 100mm or so.... if it had image stabilization i could drop the shutter speed down and have lower ISO, so that is the main draw back of this lens IMO.. the lens is about 3lbs so its on the heavy side.. some times it seem to hunt a little in low light when trying to focus.. my 18-35mm 1.8 art lens does not hunt in low light.. it focuses quick and locks in fast.. this lens does not focus very close to your subject so you got to get back a good 5-7 feet or something like that which is not bad but if your trying to get a small item up close you will need to crop.... with the 18-35mm you can get the lens extremely close to what you are shooting..

the lens needed tuned, it was not perfect from the factory so i got the dock out and i tuned it..

the photos i am getting are of excellent quality IMO, very sharp even at f/1.8 same thing with the other 1.8 art lens i have. very sharp wide open at all focal lengths. great colors, great bokeh.. both are all around excellent lenses. besides what i have mentioned above i think this is a excellent lens..

here are some photos i have taken with the 50-100 1.8 art lens... there pretty much right out of the camera, a few of them are cropped and i adjusted the exposure a little bit on them and i left everything else alone.. here are the photos..

 

[dannylightning]

for some reason i could not post the photos, here is the first set.. could not shoot at 1.8 outdoors even with the fastest shutter speed possible way to much light was gettin in...

not sure why i was shooting at 1/1000 indoors in low light, i though i changed my shutter speed to 1/200 but well looks like i left it the same as when i was shooting outside..

i was definitely shooting at 1/200 earlier today in the house when playing with the lens a bit.. but i went out to shoot some shots and when i came in i forgot to change the shutter speed back to 1/200

1/1000 f/4 140 iso

1/1000 f/4 320 iso

1/1000 f/4 560 iso

1/1000 f/4 1600 iso

1/1000 f/4 100 iso

1/1000 f/4 140 iso

1/1000 f/4 2200 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 2800 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 4000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 4000 iso

 

[dannylightning]

here is the second set..


1/1000 f/1.8 1800 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 5000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 10,000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 10,000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 10,000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 9,000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 10,000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 8,000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 9,000 iso

1/1000 f/1.8 1,100 iso

 

[JacaRanda]

Looks like it works fine to me. Would be nice to see the settings on each photo.

 

[dannylightning]

Looks like it works fine to me. Would be nice to see the settings on each photo.

good idea. i will edit the post and share that info.. gonna take me a few to do it but ill do it..

 

[dannylightning]

here are a few more that i took tonight.. all photos are f/1.8 shutter speed 1/250 and the iso was on auto.. ill post the iso for each above the photo..

this was a very hard place to shoot. so many bright lights in the background.. a bit open window on the side of the stage.. i may have a really great exposure and than just pan the camera to the next person and i would have a almost pitch black shot due to the crazy lighting had to keep adjusting my exposure comp like crazy.. probably the worst place i have ever shot due to that fact.. but here are some photos... it was definitely low light right where i was shooting but all the bright crap in the background thew things off allot exposure wise... made for some cool photos though.. so here are a few of the ones i took tonight..


4500

2000

1250

2200

 

[dannylightning]

here are a few more photos of the band i shot.. i am really liking this lens allot..

20160507-DSC_9629 by Daniel Caldwell, on Flickr

20160507-DSC_9990 by Daniel Caldwell, on Flickr

20160507-DSC_9765 by Daniel Caldwell, on Flickr

20160507-DSC_9824 by Daniel Caldwell, on Flickr

20160507-DSC_9755 by Daniel Caldwell, on Flickr

 

[fmw]

Are these straight from the camera or did you apply some aftermarket noise reduction?

 

[Braineack]

I haven't seen an eclipse in some time. Don't even miss them... I hope that's not yours.

 

[dannylightning]

Are these straight from the camera or did you apply some aftermarket noise reduction?

the band photos have some editing, the other photos only have very minor adjustments but no noise reduction.... i used a brush on the background of the band photos in lightroom, i darkened the background slightly and did some noise reduction on the background which made the background softer and i think that made the people stand out a little more.. the background did not really need the noise reduction, i just liked the effect it made when i started playing with the sliders to change the background a bit.. i do the same thing with some of my wild life photos even if the iso is low, not because it needs it i just like the way it looks..

there were 42 photos total that i kept from this set, only a couple of them needed noise reduction, those ones were around 8K iso or higher.. from what i remember there were 2 or 3 photos where i did noise reduction on the whole thing.. i do not think any of those got posted here. and i do not remember doing noise reduction to any of the other photos here except for the background of the image...

I haven't seen an eclipse in some time. Don't even miss them... I hope that's not yours.

lol it took me a second to figure out what you were talking about.. no its not mine.. was parked in a driveway down the street..

 

[fmw]

Thanks, your stuff is handling low light very well.

 

[gckless]

Good review, written well and looks like you actually used it a bit before posting a review, which is always good.

Minimum focusing distance on paper is 3.12' (95cm), which isn't great, but it's also shorter than what you said you experienced. Does that sound way off?

 

[ClickAddict]

Mine focused at that distance no problem when I was doing a quick autofocus test. (On the Canon 7DmkII)