Sigma 17-70 C Quick Thoughts

[mauckcg]

Went out of town this past weekend to visit some friends and to see some fireworks. I thought it would be fun to attempt to get some pictures of the fireworks show. In preparation I stopped by a camera store close to my friends house to pick up a tri-pod and a remote shutter release. The two sales people were both occupied so i meandered around a bit until i ended up looking at the lenses they had in the display case. To my surprise the Sigma 17-70 C lens was out, which for some reason i hadn't expected till later in the year. I picked one up along with the tri-pod and remote shutter release. Sadly the fireworks show was canceled because of the weather.

I took some pictures with both the sigma and the 18-55 nikon kit lens to compare the two. Using the same settings between the two lenses the Sigma was consistently sharper and much more accurate color reproduction than the kit lens. So far, I'm very pleased with the lens.

Next weekend I'll be at a small historic airshow at my brothers house on Saturday and then a Vintage race on Sunday. I should have ample opportunity to see what it can do.

 

[Ironwood]

That sounds like a nice lens, I will look forward to seeing some of your photos when you get a chance to post them.

 

[mauckcg]

Got bored so I decided to tinker with the macro function of the lens.


17mm at f2.8.


70mm and f4


Another 70mm at f4.

Over all i'm pretty impressed. I took a bunch more pictures of the bullets spaced out less than one inch from each other and less than two inches deep like this third picture. I couldn't get it quite as sharp as I thought they should be, so I'll try again tomorrow afternoon after work and see what sunlight will do for them that a table lamp couldn't.

 

[mauckcg]

The airshow yesterday was fantastic. I had the 17-70 out first and experimented a bit to see how it would do.

I was unbelievably stoked to see my first F4F Wildcat in person. This particular one is the FM2 variety built by GM.

36mm
ISO 100
F4
1/250s

There is only a little bit of purple fringing on the white bar behind the star on the body of the wing. Considering the bright sunlight with a reflective surface, I am really impressed with how little purple fringing I found on this picture.

70mm
ISO 800
F4
1/640s
Macro shot of the engine builder plate i guess you would call it.

50mm
ISO 800
F4
1/160s
Another kind of macro shot at a different focal length than the previous image. Not a lick of purple fringing and the fine detail is pretty darn good. On the full res image you can see splattered bug guts in the cylinder vanes.

17mm
ISO 100
F4
1/320s
Wide angle shot just to see what would happen.

17mm
ISO 100
F8
1/500s

38mm
ISO 100
F8
1/400s

62mm
ISO 100
F8
1/200

70mm
ISO 100
F8
1/250s
On the full res image you can see the brush strokes left in the paint for this nose art.

70mm
ISO 100
F8
1/640s
I took another image framed exactly like this with my 70-200 2.8 VRII, and the too images are almost identical. The color reproduction between them is slightly different and thats it.


The airshow Saturday was a lot of fun. It was at a small local airport but it managed to have a pretty good selection of aircraft to photograph. The images above looked pretty good in the camera, but once i got them into Lightroom the level of detail in them was amazing. A couple of 70mm shots i did with both the 17-70 and my 70-200 VRII. There wasn't much of a difference that I could tell in Lightroom between the two. I'm extremely impressed with how the Sigma did and am very happy i chose it over the Nikon 16-85.

Unfortunately I had to work today so i didn't make it out to the vintage race. But since this is Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix week. There will be car shows this week, next weekend, and the race in Schenley park next weekend. I should be able to get some shots in that aren't in screaming bright sunlight at 11am on an airfield at some point this week.

 

[RockyNH_RIP]

Nice airshow shots!

Pat in NH

 

[mauckcg]

Slight thread necromancy. Forgot I hadn't done any of the PVGP pictures. So here's a few using the Sigma.