Sigma usb dock demo

That looks very interesting indeed. As you say, lets hope the Big 2 adopt something akin to that.
 
First thought, wow that's cool :thumbs:

Second thought - but you've still got to do all the testing to get numbers to put in. And given how many people struggle with just one adjustment for both zoom and focus, how the heck are we going to get on with 16? Plus all the other options :eek:

Then, why should we have to spend days of testing and faffing around to fix something that should be right in the first place? And that new Sigma 120-300mm costs £3k.

Final thought - life is too short.
 
Am planning to get the new 120-300 when the price drops:)
Will be perfect for low light wildlife shots
Not sure about the dock tho I guess its for people who like to tinker
 
HoppyUK said:
First thought, wow that's cool :thumbs:

Second thought - but you've still got to do all the testing to get numbers to put in. And given how many people struggle with just one adjustment for both zoom and focus, how the heck are we going to get on with 16? Plus all the other options :eek:

Then, why should we have to spend days of testing and faffing around to fix something that should be right in the first place? And that new Sigma 120-300mm costs £3k.

Final thought - life is too short.
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Sums up my thoughts perfectly.
 
HoppyUK said:
First thought, wow that's cool :thumbs:

Second thought - but you've still got to do all the testing to get numbers to put in. And given how many people struggle with just one adjustment for both zoom and focus, how the heck are we going to get on with 16? Plus all the other options :eek:

Then, why should we have to spend days of testing and faffing around to fix something that should be right in the first place? And that new Sigma 120-300mm costs £3k.

Final thought - life is too short.
Click to expand...

No need to complain about getting more options, is it?
I am sure many photographers and business will be more than happy and rightly so.
Canon / Nikon do totally need to follow this given their terrible QC lately
 
I don't think testing is an issue run something like FoCal at different lengths would only take an hour or two for each lens.
Look at the amount of pixel peepers and people that like to tinker it would be right up there street.

I don't think it gives any company an excuse to push sub par products that should work out the box, but all manufacture produces variance and these have to be taken into account.
Even with top QC these could pass on one body and not another.
 
daugirdas said:
No need to complain about getting more options, is it?I am sure many photographers and business will be more than happy and rightly so.
Canon / Nikon do totally need to follow this given their terrible QC lately
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Fair comment, and not really a complaint from me ;) For £50, I'd definitely get one if I had certain Sigma lenses like the very nice 120-300 2.8 OS.

But I do rather disapprove of the concept behind it, that kinda implies that this sort of micro-AF adjustment is normal and acceptable.

If a lens needs adjustment at different focal lengths and focusing distances, then with good quality control those are known factors and should be constant. Therefore, any adjustments necessary should be pre-programmed into the lens at manufacture.

The only thing the lens doesn't know about is a potential miss-match with the body, but all that should need is one simple adjustment to bring the two into perfect calibration.
 
HoppyUK said:
Fair comment, and not really a complaint from me ;) For £50, I'd definitely get one if I had certain Sigma lenses like the very nice 120-300 2.8 OS.

But I do rather disapprove of the concept behind it, that kinda implies that this sort of micro-AF adjustment is normal and acceptable.

If a lens needs adjustment at different focal lengths and focusing distances, then with good quality control those are known factors and should be constant. Therefore, any adjustments necessary should be pre-programmed into the lens at manufacture.

The only thing the lens doesn't know about is a potential miss-match with the body, but all that should need is one simple adjustment to bring the two into perfect calibration.
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it should be. It just bloody isn't too often :bang:

Wait until they somehow get the actual sensor to do the whole AF business (10-20% transparent mirror and fully electronic shutter with better CPU would do) - you won't ever need to adjust anything again provided there are no centering defects.
 
I've got 2 Sigma lenses and the wife has 1 and for £40 http://www.sigma-imaging-uk.com/accessories/sigma-usb-docks it's not too expensive to make sure the lenses are in tip top condition. No more having to send away to calibrate would save time and money in the long run. Good idea, who knows what the potential could be for it in the future.

Would be a massive benefit for the people who don't have MFA on their cameras. That was one of the reasons, albeit a minor one, that I swapped my 60D for a 7D. Hopefully the 70D will have MFA ability, then I can swap my 7D for a 70D when it comes out.
 
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It's just like overcloacking your CPU on your PC, If you're into that sort of thing. I think it would be useful as a sort of "Cleaning process". Test the lens once every so often, if it needs adjusted, cool, you have the gear there to do so.
 
Pretty interesting too.
But to be honest for amateurs like me all this micro focus adjustments is little .. confusing.
If I don't get focus I need to find out exactly how much to adjust ?
 
I think it's a great idea and could potentially safe time AND money. I love the focus limiter settings etc for the new 120-300 lens. I am also really impressed with the price as I expected it to be a lot more expensive.

The only downside is that it's only for use with the new series of lenses and I have not read that it will be backwards compatible. I do hope I am proved wrong on this.

Andy
 
After my initial post and subsequently checking the Sigma website, i , like you Andy, was disappointed to see that my Sigma 150-500 was not included. Neither was my 10-20, though that isn't such an issue given the Depth of Focus at even the largest apertures on such a wide angle lens. Pity really but it may be something they add later if the lenses firmware allows.
 
When I first heard of this, I assumed it would do some sort of automatic calibration. I don't see the advantage of this over a camera body that allows MFA. I share my Sigma lenses between two bodies, and it would be useless writing these changes into the lens rather than the body.
 
Bad idea.......

I know where this leads, it leads to cheaper (maybe) lenses being produced and released without being setup correctly, then the manufacturer charging a monthly fee to use this sort of service.

A product should work as expected straight out of the box, this sort of thing gives them a way to release unfinished/untested products ahead of the competition.
 
Lyonspride said:
Bad idea.......

I know where this leads, it leads to cheaper (maybe) lenses being produced and released without being setup correctly, then the manufacturer charging a monthly fee to use this sort of service.

A product should work as expected straight out of the box, this sort of thing gives them a way to release unfinished/untested products ahead of the competition.
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IMVHO that's a bit of a simplistic view as these days you can get higher resolution bodies and lenses and you've got the ability to pixel peep at high magnification and these things combine to highlight any variations which will still leave the factory as within specification and tolerance.

The fact is that there are tolerance in both lenses and bodies and there always have been. If you're a pixel peeper you're possibly going to have to try multiple copies of lenses before you get the best match to your camera and then what are you going to do when you buy a new camera? I suppose you'll have to try all of your specially selected lenses on each body until you find one that matches your lenses?

Read this... https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2008/12/this-lens-is-soft-and-other-myths

So what should work straight out of the box? The camera or the lens? And what do you think each camera and each lens is going to cost if all the factory can ship is a smack in the middle bang on copy? In reality there are tolerances both + and - of "perfect" and with todays gear you'll see the variations if you go looking.

This Sigma dock is probably going to be of limited use to most people if they're not obsessive pixel peepers and don't print their images the size of a barn, remembering that many people rarely if ever print these days, but for people pushing what it's possible to achieve with todays gear it may be a help.

Good luck to them.
 
Body's apart from the 1dx I be leave can only have MA set for one no.
Zoom lens normally have a variance at different focal lengths so you have to decide which end to go or for a middle no. This allows t to be set to the focal length and distance, meaning it could be set perfectly if you take the time.
 
I'm writing from a semi-ignorant point of view, but what happens if you have multiple bodies that require different settings for the same lens?

One of my 1DMkIV's clearly had a negative MA offset when compared to the other and my 1Dx's exhibit the same thing (although to a lesser degree).

Bob
 
Canon Bob said:
I'm writing from a semi-ignorant point of view, but what happens if you have multiple bodies that require different settings for the same lens?

One of my 1DMkIV's clearly had a negative MA offset when compared to the other and my 1Dx's exhibit the same thing (although to a lesser degree).

Bob
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I was wondering the same. I have an 85mm on -17 on my 1DIV and 0 on my 5DIII. I may have not been paying proper attention to the video, but didn't see anything suggesting linking settings to a camera body.
 
Presumably any MFA on camera would be added to any adjustments made to the lens, ie if you have -5 on one camera and a selection of adjustments at various distances to get perfect focus, so that the -5 is no longer required, placing the lens on another camera that was -12, would I assume now be set to -7 to achieve perfect focus at the distances set in the lens, or is that not a reasonable assumption.

Perhaps better if we all stopped pixel peeping. :D
 
woof woof said:
IMVHO that's a bit of a simplistic view as these days you can get higher resolution bodies and lenses and you've got the ability to pixel peep at high magnification and these things combine to highlight any variations which will still leave the factory as within specification and tolerance.

The fact is that there are tolerance in both lenses and bodies and there always have been. If you're a pixel peeper you're possibly going to have to try multiple copies of lenses before you get the best match to your camera and then what are you going to do when you buy a new camera? I suppose you'll have to try all of your specially selected lenses on each body until you find one that matches your lenses?

Read this... https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2008/12/this-lens-is-soft-and-other-myths

So what should work straight out of the box? The camera or the lens? And what do you think each camera and each lens is going to cost if all the factory can ship is a smack in the middle bang on copy? In reality there are tolerances both + and - of "perfect" and with todays gear you'll see the variations if you go looking.

This Sigma dock is probably going to be of limited use to most people if they're not obsessive pixel peepers and don't print their images the size of a barn, remembering that many people rarely if ever print these days, but for people pushing what it's possible to achieve with todays gear it may be a help.

Good luck to them.
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But seriously, look at other industries, how long before you can buy a device, a camera, a lens dirt cheap, but then have to plug it in once a month to keep it running on a subscription based service? It's what Adobe are planning and there are plently of actual devices coming onto the market which effectively become useless without monthly payments.

When I say that things should work perfectly straight out of the box, as an engineer I firmly believe that in these modern times, there is no excuse for creating a product that doesn't.

It's just like internet censorship, it might seem innocent and useful at the moment, but in the future it could create a monster.
 
Canon Bob said:
I'm writing from a semi-ignorant point of view, but what happens if you have multiple bodies that require different settings for the same lens?

One of my 1DMkIV's clearly had a negative MA offset when compared to the other and my 1Dx's exhibit the same thing (although to a lesser degree).

Bob
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Jury's out I think Bob, until we've had a go with this new device. As I understand it, the USB dock only adjusts the lens* and optimises focus at numerous focal lengths and focusing distances. The lens then needs calibrating to the body, but should be the same on every body?

*If that's right, why can't this be done at the factory, especially on expensive lenses like Sigma's £3k 120-300 OS?
 
Lyonspride said:
When I say that things should work perfectly straight out of the box, as an engineer I firmly believe that in these modern times, there is no excuse for creating a product that doesn't.
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Have you ever worked in electronics manufacturing? I have. I worked for both component and product manufacturers and... components and products have specifications that include tolerances. Of course you can tighten them to a degree but there'll still be tolerances of some sort but with modern cameras you can now easily detect extremely small errors / faults / differences and I really don't know how much more could be done during the actual manufacturing process to make cameras and lenses a marked step better so that they work straight out of the box without micro adjustment.

If it's not practically possible to make things markedly better you could adjust during QC but just as tightening manufacturing tolerances will up the cost so will more time in QC and for many people it'd probably be unnecessary and take the product out of their price range. Just look at the top end of the market and you'll see that even cameras and lenses costing many thousands of pounds sometimes don't work straight out of the box so what chance for the mainstream stuff.

I know where you're coming from but I think that the problem is caused by it being very easy to take high resolution images and examine them minutely.

Possibly in the future micro adjustment wont be so much of an issue as focus will probably be done on the sensor and adjusted for best effect more effectively by faster and cleverer gubbins :D So in time this problem may be no more :D
 
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woof woof said:
Have you ever worked in electronics manufacturing? I have. I worked for both component and product manufacturers and... components and products have specifications that include tolerances. Of course you can tighten them to a degree but there'll still be tolerances of some sort but with modern cameras you can now easily detect extremely small errors / faults / differences and I really don't know how much more could be done during the actual manufacturing process to make cameras and lenses a marked step better so that they work straight out of the box without micro adjustment.

If it's not practically possible to make things markedly better you could adjust during QC but just as tightening manufacturing tolerances will up the cost so will more time in QC and for many people it'd probably be unnecessary and take the product out of their price range. Just look at the top end of the market and you'll see that even cameras and lenses costing many thousands of pounds sometimes don't work straight out of the box so what chance for the mainstream stuff.

I know where you're coming from but I think that the problem is caused by it being very easy to take high resolution images and examine them minutely.

Possibly in the future micro adjustment wont be so much of an issue as focus will probably be done on the sensor and adjusted for best effect more effectively by faster and cleverer gubbins :D So in time this problem may be no more :D
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Yep... Previously electronics and quality engineer, Automotive ECU, ABS, security and EPAS systems. Systems where 5% can cost a life, an expensive recall and a multi million £ law suit (or worse, a month trekking around a muddy field with a bunch of foreign temp workers fixing 50'000 new cars :( ).

The Japanese have the skills to produce bespoke automated test and calibration machines (the work that goes into them is just incredible), the additional cost per product would be negligable.

I just beleive that if you pay £500+ for a lens, it should be 100% correct and calibrated.

Ordinarily when a lens needs a bit of "recalibration", you'd have to send it back to the mfr, having a plug in lens that you can calibrate for yourself, does not put profit into the manufacturers pocket, unless they eventually start to charge for it's use.

I guess im always looking for the "catch" :p
 
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HoppyUK said:
Jury's out I think Bob, until we've had a go with this new device. As I understand it, the USB dock only adjusts the lens* and optimises focus at numerous focal lengths and focusing distances. The lens then needs calibrating to the body, but should be the same on every body?

*If that's right, why can't this be done at the factory, especially on expensive lenses like Sigma's £3k 120-300 OS?
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It would seem to make some sense for zooms then, Richard....tease out some of the inconsistencies in the heli-tracks...but it's "as you were" for primes (except for older bodies without MA possibilities.
Bob
 
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