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12/13/2005 01:59:22 PM · #1 |
First, a big thank you to alixmiles for selling me this lens.
Review: HEAVY. 3 pounds heavy. this is an older discontinued lens, but it is still a 70-210 2.8 constant aperture SP lens. Came with both caps, hood, tripod collar (i think the lens outweighs my tripod LOL). This is the fanciest lens i own - it has the tripod collar, focusing scale in a window, a focus limit switch, can be manually focused without switching the AF/MF switch. Very sold construction. It has a sliding 'collar' that i have no idea what it does. It zooms internally (cool) but the front lens rotate when focusing (not so cool). Focus speed seems good, accurace perfect, but is is a bit noisy. It takes a HUGE 77mm filter. Also came with a carry bag with a shoulder strap - put this on your belt and your pants will fall down, so the shoulder stap is a necessity.
Now for some test shots - nothing fancy here. just grabbed a few shots around the house.
First, an unprocessed 100% crop at f7
and the processed image. Amazingly, i handheld this at 1/60sec at 123mm. A few stops under the optimum of 1/200 - who needs IS anyway? ;)
How does stopping it down affect sharpness you ask? Well...here are two 204mm shots, both processed the same way. F2.8 on the left, F7 on the right. The subject was a good 200+ feet away.
 
I see a good bit of difference, even in the contrast.
Here we are at 77mm, F7 and near the minimum focus distance. again, it has been processed
abuse time - backlit, 2.8, ISO 800...this had to be run thru neatimage, levels mangled, and then sharpened. But it is a fair test of tough real world usage. And you can see the bokeh. I think this lens has a 9 bladed diphragm.
A similar shot (iso 800) with my Sigma 18-50 at 50mm, processed. Much cleaner image (noisewise) probably because i did not have to push the exposure up via levels. No NI on this one. Just for comparison as i've had this lens for 6 months now.
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12/13/2005 02:19:35 PM · #2 |
| Looks, ehm, quite horrible at f2.8. Pretty nice when stopped down though. |
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12/13/2005 03:53:27 PM · #3 |
Originally posted by jansku:
Looks, ehm, quite horrible at f2.8. Pretty nice when stopped down though. |
Looks pretty good to me at 2.8, although the shot of the digger bucket looks to have been focussed on the ground behind. The narrow DOF, leaving the bucket OOF (perhaps too many TLA's here) may perhaps fool the viewer, at first sight, into thinking that the whole shot is OOF.
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12/13/2005 04:02:07 PM · #4 |
| I think the main difference between the bucket shots is the difference in glare from the snow. With the aperture open more it would be more prone to picking up glare. |
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12/14/2005 11:23:04 AM · #5 |
Originally posted by megatherian:
I think the main difference between the bucket shots is the difference in glare from the snow. With the aperture open more it would be more prone to picking up glare. |
I agree - the 2.8 shot dfinitely lacks in contrast, do to glare or flare. I did not have the hood on it and was sorta facing the sun, although it was a bit overcast.
The focus point does seem to be a bit beyond the bucket.
the shot of the little girl at 2.8 is not a good test as it was underexposed and pushing levels to get a decent pic pushed noise to intolerable leves, but running NI softened the pic...
I am off the next 3 days and plan on trying some shots with this lens. Actually, i need to enter some challenges with it as there are no pics on the lens page - so i (finally maybe) fill a lens page!
I like the warmness from sigma lenses compared to tamron, but the tamrons probably give more accurate color rendition. I can always warm up the image.
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12/14/2005 11:33:21 AM · #6 |
I don't see any intolerable noise levels at all.
This isn't the best test of a lenses sharpness or contrast and it's hard to tell from here how sharp or not it really is.
How much was the lens btw?
edit: I agree about the bucket, the focus point looks several feet beyond the bucket. The contrast at 2.8 is not very good, but it's MUCH improved at F7!
Message edited by author 2005-12-14 11:35:02. |
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12/15/2005 11:09:09 PM · #7 |
you are welcome fate and that slider is to protect the focus ring if you want to cover it up to keep from accidentally bumping it.
Glad you are happy with it. I know it was worth the 75 dollars you paid for it.
Barry |
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12/15/2005 11:14:44 PM · #8 |
I tried to use it for the DOF challenge, but i couldn't quite get what i wanted with it, so i used the old standby 50mm 1.8.
I will be out tomorrow to take some pics. I have no clue of what, but i want to get out regardless of the weather. About to go and rearrange the old backpack and see what i can fit or not in there. It's too damn heavy now and i got to put that monster lens in there too.
time for a new backpack me thinks. then a new back LOL.
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