Two weeks ago I bought my first 2.8 glass. A Sigma 120-300 2.8 for WHE.
I had high hopes for the lens and will be using it for sports photography.
On my first assignment some of my shots were suprisingly unsharp and all required at least 50% sharpening (even though shot in jpeg) to be acceptable. I thought it might just have been me not getting focus totally right due no not being used to 2.8 glass. I was using a monopod and shooting at 1/500th at the slowest so I dont think it is camera shake.
I took some test images of a tree outside my house, ranging from 120 through to 300 testing all the apertures. As expected performance improves when stopped down slightly, but the performance is not what I would have expected.
I might have unrealistically high hopes for this though after eyeing up a 300 2.8 VR and then having to go for this instead.
I'm not sure how to resize the images to put them on here so that they maintain the same sharpness as they do now, without having to sharpen them.
If anybody could volunteer and PM me their email address to I could send them a few sample images and they could give me their opinion on sharpness I would really appreciate that. Either that, or people reccomend other more accurate tests OR if somebody knows how to resize and ensure it stays exactly the same.
Also, am using a D300 with it. I'm not a pixel peeper, but these images may well be used in national newspapers and the like, so obviously I can't go using a below par lens.
Hopefully the lens is fine and its just my hopes for it were too high, but I would like to know for certain before its too late to get the lens replaced for another copy of it.
As a first 2.8 lens though - the bokeh is just amazing!
Thanks all,
Alex
I had high hopes for the lens and will be using it for sports photography.
On my first assignment some of my shots were suprisingly unsharp and all required at least 50% sharpening (even though shot in jpeg) to be acceptable. I thought it might just have been me not getting focus totally right due no not being used to 2.8 glass. I was using a monopod and shooting at 1/500th at the slowest so I dont think it is camera shake.
I took some test images of a tree outside my house, ranging from 120 through to 300 testing all the apertures. As expected performance improves when stopped down slightly, but the performance is not what I would have expected.
I might have unrealistically high hopes for this though after eyeing up a 300 2.8 VR and then having to go for this instead.
I'm not sure how to resize the images to put them on here so that they maintain the same sharpness as they do now, without having to sharpen them.
If anybody could volunteer and PM me their email address to I could send them a few sample images and they could give me their opinion on sharpness I would really appreciate that. Either that, or people reccomend other more accurate tests OR if somebody knows how to resize and ensure it stays exactly the same.
Also, am using a D300 with it. I'm not a pixel peeper, but these images may well be used in national newspapers and the like, so obviously I can't go using a below par lens.
Hopefully the lens is fine and its just my hopes for it were too high, but I would like to know for certain before its too late to get the lens replaced for another copy of it.
As a first 2.8 lens though - the bokeh is just amazing!
Thanks all,
Alex
