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- Name
- Marcel
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As many of you may know I've been pestering one or two of you on MSN About my recent purchase, the Sigma 70-300 APO DG Macro.
I've been reading (and thus expected) about this lens, and that anything greater than 200mm, shots are quite soft. Yet I have been quite disappointed with my lens. I'm not too sure what level of softness to expect, so started looking around.
Looking at EosD's shots (he has the same lens), Ive been thinking either I have a very very bad one, a faulty one, or I am doing something seriously wrong (which is more than likely )
Anyway, Ive been doing some more reading and I read mention of front/back focusing problems, so I did some more testing this afternoon.
I stood a DVD in the garden, mounted my camera on a tripod, changed to mirror lockup, plugged my cable release in, and took some shots, each time pressing the AutoFocus button before the shot (obviously giving the camera time to settle down before taking the shot).
Each time I pressed it, the focusing system twitched/moved a very little bit. Usually one press would knock it clockwise ever so slightly, the next press would turn it back a little, etc etc.
Anyway, I'm waffling, these are the three shots I took.
All taken f5.6, 1/125, ISO100.
As you can see, the point of focus is different on each one (more noticable on the third).
PS. I have the AF point manually set to the centre point only, which was square on the centre of the DVD box.
Thoughts? Faulty? User error? Am I barking?
I've been reading (and thus expected) about this lens, and that anything greater than 200mm, shots are quite soft. Yet I have been quite disappointed with my lens. I'm not too sure what level of softness to expect, so started looking around.
Looking at EosD's shots (he has the same lens), Ive been thinking either I have a very very bad one, a faulty one, or I am doing something seriously wrong (which is more than likely )
Anyway, Ive been doing some more reading and I read mention of front/back focusing problems, so I did some more testing this afternoon.
I stood a DVD in the garden, mounted my camera on a tripod, changed to mirror lockup, plugged my cable release in, and took some shots, each time pressing the AutoFocus button before the shot (obviously giving the camera time to settle down before taking the shot).
Each time I pressed it, the focusing system twitched/moved a very little bit. Usually one press would knock it clockwise ever so slightly, the next press would turn it back a little, etc etc.
Anyway, I'm waffling, these are the three shots I took.
All taken f5.6, 1/125, ISO100.
As you can see, the point of focus is different on each one (more noticable on the third).
PS. I have the AF point manually set to the centre point only, which was square on the centre of the DVD box.
Thoughts? Faulty? User error? Am I barking?