I decided on Sunday to splash out and buy the lens I decided on. At the moment however, I am not sure if I made the right choice.
I went for the Sigma 24-70mm EX lens. Its nice, well constructed, nice and large and feels expensive. Last night I went to the Tichfield carnival. It was raining and we all got pretty wet, although I thought this would be the perfect time to check out the Sigma’s f2.8 low-light abilities (when it wasn’t raining of course!)
I didn’t take many shots, but almost all the ones I did came out pretty bad. I don’t know if this is because I am simply shooting at f2.8 and its generally just "soft", or if the copy of the lens I bought has "back focus" or "front focus" issues. Back/front focus problems on 3rd-party lenses is quite common I’ve read, and its basically when the lens focus’s a few inches in front or behind of the subject you are taking, hence the subject will not be in focus.
This isn’t a major problem, since Sigma can do a "calibration" with my lens to ensure that the focus is spot on. I have already contacted them about this and the work will be covered under the lens’s warranty, although it takes about a week to complete and they need my camera as well as my lens.
Anyway, at work today I had some more watches to photography and of course decided to use my new lens. To take these photos at work we use a lightbox with mini study lighting to ensure the objects we are photographing are well lit. Because of this, the camera was shooting at about f8 at 1/200th of a second. The photo’s I took of the watches today were simply outstanding! The crispness of the photos were amazing, nice depth of field, it was great, and this was with the Sigma lens.
So, now I’m not sure. It seems to be a great lens so long as I’m not shooting at f2.8. I will be popping back into Jessops later this week to explain the problems I am having and to see if they can swap my copy of this lens with the exact same lens. I’ve read that even if its an identical lens, quality and sharpness can shift between copies.
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[...] Following on from my short experience with my Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 EX lens, I decided that for the money the lens just wasn’t cutting it. The quality was down a lot when wide open at f2.8, and that was one of the main reasons of buying. [...]
26 Dec 2006 at 3:19 am
My particular copy has wonderful focus: dead on at 70mm. The front focus gets worse and worse as the focal length decreases, so that by 24mm the camera focuses at six feet for a target 10 feet away, making for visibly soft pixel-peeping (but not for 8×10’s, uncropped)
I’m working on talking with Sigma. It’s a great lens, indeed, and captures more information (by raw file sizes for exact same scenes) than the Canon lens of the same range.
26 Dec 2006 at 11:04 pm
Hi JD and thanks for the comment. I don’t consider myself much of a “pixel-peeper”, but a lens which doesn’t focus correctly - no matter what focal length - is just plain wrong in my eyes. Especially the price of this one.
Don’t get me wrong, the construction of the lens is superb, and if it did focus correctly I would have kept it, and probably bought more Sigma’s in the future - but it didn’t.
I’ve since upgraded (after my 28-105mm Canon) to the 17-40mm L from Canon. I’ll tell you, its simply outstanding. Its not as fast, but the sharpness is out of this world. Fantastic
25 Mar 2007 at 5:35 pm
“It’s a great lens, indeed, and captures more information (by raw file sizes for exact same scenes) than the Canon lens of the same range.”
….so are you telling me the Sigma 24-70 f2.8 is a better lens than the Canon 24-70 L f.2.8 ??? hmmmm…..better tell all those pros out there they made a big mistake …….(or didn’t)
16 Aug 2008 at 10:35 pm
Boy this is a problem.!!
I am looking at buying this lens on ebay. It would seem from reading feedback on all types of photography websites, that 50% of the Sigma’s have focusing problems.
Is this just poor quality control from Sigma, or is an issue with matching individual lense to individual body’s.
Seems every body is happy once the lens has been re-calibrated. But it should not be aproblem in the first place.
The lens I am looking at will be coming from Hong Kong, so if it had a problem I guess I am stuck with it.
19 Aug 2008 at 4:33 pm
Personaly I’d have gone for a full frame camera (like the Canon 5D) and the Canon 24-70L lens. Yes it’s more expensive but worth it
27 Aug 2008 at 12:15 pm
@ John
Yeah and I’d have rather gone for a BMW M5 than my Honda Civic.
But in all seriousness, I think buying lenses is a tricky business. The best thing you can do is possibly rent a few and decide which gives you the best results and which ones you’ll get the most use out of. For everyday use, the pros tend to all agree on one thing… a nice fast 50mm. But that, obviously only matters if you haven’t found your groove yet. If you shoot extreme sports, get yourself a nice fish eye, if you shoot wildlife then take out a mortgage on a supertelephoto lens like a 500-600.
Horses for courses innit.