Digital Diversity

I wrote an article a while back about the starter lenses for your DSLR. This was to help you work out what you want to get in the future and also give you a nice range of focal lengths to work with. In that article I mentioned I wanted an ultra wide angle lens for its very wide field of view and the way it distorts perspective.

Ultra wide on a crop sensor like the 500D (1.6x) is about 10-12 mm. This equates to the same field of view as 16-19.2. There are several options of lenses you can choose from. For my Canon 500D these were a few of my options.

• Canon 10-22
• Sigma 10-20
• Tokina 11-16
• Tamron 11-18

I wanted a lens that went as wide as possible so for me that ruled out the Tokina and the Tameron. This left it between the Canon and the Sigma. I read a lot of reviews and the two lenses are fairly equal. Image quality wise, the Canon tended to just about win but when I looked at the price the Canon was £200 more expensive. The image quality difference was small enough that you cant really see the difference without pixel peeping so that really wasn’t a factor. Both were very well built lenses as well. I also really like the finish on the Sigma EX lenses. Seeing as the lenses were fairly equal overall, the price was the deciding factor for me so I went online and ordered the Sigma 10-20 F4-5.6 HSM EX DC.

When it arrived it came in its own lens case and a lens hood which is nice. The lens is reasonably big as well with a 77mm filter ring. I haven’t got any filters for it as I am still trying to find out if any filters that fit wont cause vignetting at the 10mm mark.

I was impressed with the sturdy build quality of the Sigma and it looked great on the camera as well.

The lens cap looks a little cheap but that’s only really on when I’m not using the camera and it does its job which is what’s important. As you can see its a fairly big lens but it fits nicely in the hands when composing a shot.

The lens hood supplied is of the more attractive petal kind and is relatively small.

I have heard that Sigma has had some quality control issues in its time and sometimes you might get a dud lens from them. This isn’t the end of the world because if you do Sigma will fix it for free but its nice to be able to use the lens you buy straight away. The people I know who got a dud lens tend to buy them off Ebay so its not that much of a surprise really. With this knowledge the first thing I wanted to do was test the lens out a bit. I took a mix of garden shots at various apertures and also some inside shots with flash so I could eliminate any camera shake.

As a side note – the on board flash doesn’t work very well with this lens because a lot of the flash hits the lens and causes large areas of shadow. However it was good enough to test my copy.

After studying the shots this is what I learned.

• At F4-F7 the shots are a little on the soft side.
• At F8-F11 the shots are a lot sharper.
• I had fairly even sharpness across the frame with the sides being a tad softer.

This seemed about right to me but I went online to remind my self of what the reviews said. They confirmed my findings and my copy seemed to be working just fine.

The fact that this lens is a little soft at F4-F7 isn’t a problem because I would be almost always using it at f8-F11 to get everything in shot in focus.

Happy that my lens was working I took it to the park to try out some landscape shots. I had a lot of fun with this lens because it really makes you see the world in a different way. The perspective of near and far is greatly exaggerated. You also get distortion on the ends of the frame.  When you put the camera to your eye you really do get thrown by how much it changes things. You can be focused on something a few inches from the lens and it looked like its about 1-2 meters away.

This was the first shot I took at the park and is a great example of what I mean. That bridge is about half as long as it looks in that picture. The perspective distortion makes it look a lot longer that it really is. Also from where I was standing I would have been able to almost reach out and touch where the bridge starts but it appears to be much further away.

These things allow you to look at your surroundings in a different way. You really can turn something ordinary and mundane into something beautiful. I always appreciated some of the landscape shots I saw but never really understood how to replicate them using my kit lens (18-55). Notice how when using this lens in portrait orientation that you can see from the floor where you are standing all the way into the distance and then the sky. Well a lens like the 18-55 on a crop sensor just isn’t wide enough to get the effect to what I wanted. Its these portrait landscape shots that I loved and now I can finally take some for myself.

I moved down to the park lake and looked for some more subjects. I decided to try out the bridge. It took me a while to get the shot as people kept crossing over but eventually I got one I was very happy with.

What I loved about this picture is the way the lead-in lines take your eye around the whole image. They start at the stones at your feet, lead you up to the railings and then the bridge itself. From there you then notice the reflection in the water and the texture of the ice. I was also happy with the sky having some cloud coverage which adds something extra.

After getting this shot I moved further around the lake and noticed a broken tree branch sitting in the ice. It looked fairly ordinary from where I was standing but I thought it had potential. I started to compose a shot. I got nice and low to the ground which tends to help with a lens such as this. I had to keep reminding myself that I was NOT to walk forwards as otherwise I would fall in. It all seems so much further away when looking through the view finder. I took the shot and got me a keeper.

In this picture the lens has stretched the length of the branch making it appear much longer than it really is. Its angle also created the perfect lead-in line. When I look at this shot my eye starts at the bottom right then follows the branch up. It then notices the gulls in the background and that leads me to the sky which I love in this shot.

I was heading back to the car when something caught my eye. I stopped and looked for a while and saw a potential shot. There was a large patch of water caused by the recently melted snow. This led up to a tree in the distance which was perfectly reflected in the water. I took several shots with different compositions and managed to get one i was happy with.

For my first trip out with this lens I think I did pretty well. I managed to get 4 shots that I was very happy with and the lens performed perfectly. The pictures sharpened up nicely in post and gave me just the result I wanted. There was no noticeable colour casts either which is a common problem with many lenses. I absolutely love the field of view the 10mm focal length gives me and this lens has already become my favourite of the bunch. I can see myself getting into landscape photography a lot more now. It has earned its place along with my canon 55-250 in my small sling travel bag. When I go out this means I can take anything from landscape to nature and wildlife.

Maybe this means I can stop buying lenses for a while…..

Tags: 500D, black and white, bridge, Canon, colour, distortion, focal length, ice, landscape, lens, perspective, reflection, sigma 10-20

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 10:32 and is filed under photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.