Sigma 16/30/56 for APS-C sensors

[Marac]

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Tried the 16mm on the Panasonic S1R and the close focus ability has sold me on this lens, definitely a keeper for me.

Over the next couple of days I will check out the 30mm on both CL and S1R

The photo below is taken with S1R/16mm Sigma @f1.4 very close focus

 

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[gteague]

[del]

Edited August 1, 2020 by gteague

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The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[gteague]

2 hours ago, Peter Wright said:

I am surprised you pay shipping from b&h.  I am in Canada, and they ship here for free as long as the order is over $99 even if the order has to come in separate shipments due to availability.  (It isn't hard to get over $99 🙂).  I find b&h much faster than Amazon prime - almost always arrives in 2 days, even in these covid times.  I don't know how they do it.

before covid, i could get pkgs overnight or 2nd-day from amazon for free. this is now 7-8 days minimum. friends from other places say shipping times haven't slipped much and indeed the delay is getting it into the ups or fedex system as they haven't slowed down much at all once they get it. so 5-6 days from order to  getting it to ups means that some amazon shipping hubs and warehouses have nearly crashed. and indeed, amazon said a couple months ago they were hiring 175k warehouse workers. evidently, not many took them up on it.

anyway, i've used b&h from the 60s and trust them implicitly. and they have fantastic shipping prices--i can usually get next day before noon shipping for between $15-20 which i am glad to pay when i need an item very quickly. but since i ordered this lens late friday evening and b&h closes down over the weekend even b&h couldn't have gotten the lens to me before tuesday using next-day shipping and it would have cost me an extra $20 so waiting until thursday for free shipping seemed fair.. but i'm nearly always too impatient to wait on their free shipping which takes on average 4-6 days to get to me. i do live in a semi-rural area which sometimes adds 1-2 days onto shipping times.

but having said that, the usps has crashed completely. trump installed one of his clorox drinking goons as postmaster general about 3 weeks ago and indeed postal workers are speaking out about new regulations which have delayed mail delivery by days nearly everywhere. it's patently obvious trump doesn't want vote-by-mail and this is his way of killing that off before the election.

/guy

[gteague]

this thread and these 3 new lenses got me reminiscing about my history in photography.  i started back in the early 60s with very primitive and cheap cameras which only had 'normal' lenses and not fast ones at that. the first new camera i was able to buy was a yashica lynx 1.4 which had like a 45/1.4 lens which was softer than butter below f2.8, but i used that camera to death shooting available light candids. i worked at a local camera store so i could see the trends in photography change over the years. it took a long time for zooms to come on the radar, then longer for them to get to a useful quality, then longer for acceptance, and yet longer for them to become cheap enough for the average amatuer to buy. vivitar was a huge player in this category and the lions share of the market with a push-pull zoom that the ad pros embraced and made popular and then their very popular series-one line.

anyway. i've had to take many thousands of shots with nothing more than a normal lens and i learned how to vary distances and angles and zoom with my feet and thus i am understandably somewhat burned out with a normal lens and i don't think i've specifically sought one out for 20 years or more now that we are gluttons for choices in lenses.

back when i was only shooting in urban environments i learned that i could cover nearly everything except sports and concerts with a wide angle and a short telephoto if one or both of them was relatively fast. a 35 and a 90 were the norm, but a 24 and a 90 (or a fast 85) were ideal. this got punctured badly when i moved to a semi-rural area where i still need a wide angle for landscape and sky photography (although a fast one isn't necessary) and around a 90mm for a 'normal' lens and then a 200-300 for long shots and wildlife although the only reason i'd need a fast tele is if i want sharp dof isolation.

but if i was still in town, the 16 (24) and the 56 (85) f1.4 lenses would be flat out perfect as a matched pair which could cover everything but sports and concerts and suchlike. so even though these don't quite match my current situation, i'm very glad to see smaller faster lenses for the l-mount system.

/guy

[Peter Wright]

Your journey sounds very similar to my own.  I started in the early 60's shooting as much film as I could afford (which was actually not much at all).  I even owned the Vivitar Series 1 zooms later on:  24 - 70 and 70 to 210, if I remember right.  So I too shot a huge amount on standard lenses (one of which was a 45mm), but where you as a result seem to have turned more to zooms, I find that I most enjoy, and do my best work I think, with fairly standard primes.  I find that (on full frame) I can do just about everything I want if I have a fast 35mm and a 90mm or thereabouts.  If I add in a 21 or 24, I am ready for anything.

When it comes to the battle for democracy (and a working postal service) that seems to be taking place in the US, you have my sincere sympathy.

Peter.

[gteague]

27 minutes ago, Peter Wright said:

Your journey sounds very similar to my own.  I started in the early 60's shooting as much film as I could afford (which was actually not much at all).  I even owned the Vivitar Series 1 zooms later on:  24 - 70 and 70 to 210, if I remember right.  So I too shot a huge amount on standard lenses (one of which was a 45mm), but where you as a result seem to have turned more to zooms, I find that I most enjoy, and do my best work I think, with fairly standard primes.  I find that (on full frame) I can do just about everything I want if I have a fast 35mm and a 90mm or thereabouts.  If I add in a 21 or 24, I am ready for anything.

When it comes to the battle for democracy (and a working postal service) that seems to be taking place in the US, you have my sincere sympathy.

Peter.

i shot nearly exclusively primes up until i got laid off from the newspaper around  1993. i wasn't officially a photographer there, but i  was good at computers and could program them on autopilot and run by themselves for hours while i filled in at the photo lab and the copy desk--my true loves. we had like 5 photographers and all of them knew i'd practiced for years and worked at the local camera store behind the counter and in the new 24-hour lab. so they loved it that they could leave their film with me (b&w and c41) and go out on another assignment. sometimes i printed as well after they'd picked the images they wanted published.

anyway, they used nikon equipment because of nikon treating their pro customers like royalty.  so i had full access to every piece of nikon gear we owned as long as i didn't cause any conflicts and the photogs all had their own well-stocked bags and rarely needed the stuff in the pool. thus i had free access to nearly all the nikon lenses except the super rare ones which the paper rented when necessary. also, anytime my nikon bodies needed cleaning or repair the paper would send them to nikon under their account that covered all their nikon equipment. good times!

but i had to move to dfw to get another tech job and it was sort of dangerous to carry around a large photo bag and i gravitated to a one-lens workflow when i possibly could. i wasn't shooting for the paper or freelancing, so i didn't need the best quality as most of what i produced went online anyway.

my favorite lenses in that nikon pool were the 20mm, the 85mm, and the 180mm. i could have run my whole photo career on those three lenses alone. just two years ago i bought a used 180mm for one of my previous bodies but it wasn't like i remembered at all. the focusing was very stiff and it was way larger and heavier than i remembered. but then again, back then it was used on a nikon f3 hp with motor drive and felt like a feather on that monstrous and heavy body!

i do own one nikon lens which is more a collector's item than anything else although i have adapters to use it on all my bodies and i haul it out every now and then for the nostalgia. if you shot in the series-one days you remember the fame of the nikkor 105/2.5 which, in our camera store, was the most popular among pros and amateurs. the one i have is a very early model from the 50s in mint condition with hood and nikon filter and that unique 'bubble' case. back then the coating techniques were still in infancy, so you have to watch the light source when you shoot with it, but it still cranks out amazing results 70 years later. 

/guy

Edited August 1, 2020 by gteague

[Peter Wright]

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Yep! I owned the 105/2.5.  Can't remember why I sold it.  Looks like Sigma should change the name of this series from "Contemporary" to "Nostalgic" 😊.

[oldwino]

That Nikkor 105/2.5 is STILL a great lens. I occasionally pull mine out of the bottom of the bag and exercise it. 

[Marac]

Still in the garden I'm afraid but I did manage to put the 30mm Sigma f1.4 on the CL today and take a couple of shots. This lens also focuses close but not as close as the 16mm. This photo was taken at f2 where the lens really starts to perform.I also included a cropped version of the same shot. The lens works great on the CL, silent & fast enough to focus.

The 35mm Summilux TL was my favourite lens on the CL so I guess this is the competition, can it compare? Honestly it is not as good as the Lux but it can certainly hold it's own, it is light to carry unlike the Lux, and to think it's around £300 I think Sigma deserve a big pat on the back. So far the 16mm and this 30mm lenses have impressed me. There is CA present in both wide open, easily fixed in Lightroom. Every time I shoot with these new Sigma lenses I get a flavour of the old Contax Zeiss lenses and that is a good thing.

 

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[oldwino]

Had to go to my warehouse today, so took the CL + Sigma 30. Both shot at f2.8.

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[gteague]

56/1.4 came in just now. didn't realize it's a 'stealth' lens, they could have suffixed a /p/ to it if they were leica i guess. but nearly all the writing like focal length and things are just black indentations and you'd need a strong light and magnifying glass to read any of it. there's no controls except for a focus ring which is very wide and grippy and moves smoothly on the one manual focus shot i tried. oh, this is on my s1 body, btw.

i was very pleasantly surprised at the compact size despite the op kindly posting comparison images. i've taken to not using lens hoods on some of the larger or longer lenses such as the 70mm macro, but i'll leave it on this lens without even reversing it for storage. it feels solid enough--more like the 70mm macro than the 45/2.8 contemporary which was built like the proverbial tank and had a metal lens hood of the best quality i've ever seen. 

i'll take it out later during magic hour when it cools down a little, but i shot my usual knee-jerk inside targets at f1.4 and f2.8. shutter was around 1/60th and iso was around 6400. shooting inside with a longer lens is hard with the cl because of the lack of ois and my advancing age and shakiness.

i took 5 shots, but no need to inflict my tv screen with trump at a briefing on you innocents :). i'll post the first one here. it's f1.4 @1/60th @iso1600 and about 10-12' away. the mac finder reports fl as 56mm, but my exif app reports actual fl at 87mm. i took this same shot immediately afterwards at f2.8 and the very good news is that  it's plenty sharp at f1.4 and there's very little if any improvement at f2.8 at least in this scene.

i took some shots of my tv screen which is at a slight angle away from me and at f1.4 the chiron text at bottom was only in focus for a word or two, falling off to front and back in relation to the camera. which is, after all, what we'd want from an 85/1.4, right?

can't wait to get it outside. my s1 allows me to shoot at 1.4x and 2.0x with hardly any reduction in quality because it just outputs a smaller image. the tv screen test seemed ok at about 170mm, but the depth of field was very very thin at f1.4, as you'd expect.

initial impression is that this is indeed a true bargain for the price. i would expect to pay at least 1k for an 85/1.4 and it wouldn't have been nearly this small. 

oh, i had to reduce the size down  to post the image. sorry. i think this is 2400px.



/guy

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[gteague]

back from my walk. 'only' 102º out there today and very humid. i waited until very nearly dark and this was the lens to take for those lighting conditions. i think this is going to be my new default lens for the s1 although i'm eager to try it on the cl as well. i picked out two to post. this lens isn't quite as sharp as my 50 summicron or the sigma 70mm art, but i think it will do.

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  Edited August 6, 2020 by gteague

[gteague]

one more from the walk with the 56/1.4 and the s1. i overlooked this one at first but then realized it had some great depth and texture.

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[Guest]

On 8/1/2020 at 11:15 AM, Peter M. said:

TL+30mm 1.4

Yesterday arrived, silent AF and very good sharpness.

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Are you still pleased with the lens on your TL please? Any functionality/usage issues?

Has anybody tried the 16 and/or 56 on the TL2 please? I'm a bit concerned about compatibility, considering the "old" TL2 firmware...

[Peter M.]

Hallo,

still pleased.

In various Situations i have overexposed Pictures, dont know why,

[Guest]

Thanks, I've now confirmed directly that all three lenses work fine on the TL2 (and seem like a really nice match to me).

[Guest]

New firmware released a few days ago for the 16mm and 30mm - nothing very exciting though.

https://www.sigma-global.com/en/download/lenses/firmware/

[ayewing]

On 8/26/2020 at 12:12 PM, AndyGarton said:

New firmware released a few days ago for the 16mm and 30mm - nothing very exciting though.

https://www.sigma-global.com/en/download/lenses/firmware/

As manual focus with the focus ring does not work I am looking forward to the arrival of the usb dock so that I can apply the new firmware to the 30mm f1.4 Lens. The usb dock seems to be on back order at present.

[AdHox]

20 minutes ago, ayewing said:

As manual focus with the focus ring does not work I am looking forward to the arrival of the usb dock so that I can apply the new firmware to the 30mm f1.4 Lens. The usb dock seems to be on back order at present.

Why not apply the firmware using your CL? The procedure is the same as updating the camera’s firmware.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[gteague]

i have the 56/1.4 and it functions perfectly on the cl and my s1. what happened to the 30? that sounds like a dealbreaker to me. /guy