A Walk in the Park

Ok, so it's my neighborhood and not a park per se, but "A Walk around my Neighborhood" didn't sound anywhere near as cool...

What IS cool is that I got a chance to play with a lens loaned to me by a friend - the Sigma DC 17-70 1:2.8-4 Macro HSM. My friend was concerned about the sharpness, and I offered to check it out.

All images were shot hand-held, and I had to deal with a bit of a breeze. It was funny, really - in all but the last shot I wanted crisp, sharp images. Yet every time I got set to shoot a breeze kicked up. So now my dogs and I are standing/sitting/crouching there patiently waiting till it stops (Good on my doggies!). On the last shot, I wanted to contrast the breeze in the leaves against the stationary branches and ... and of course, the breeze stops as soon as I get set... (sigh)

Here's what I came up with

(click on an image for a larger view)

70mm, 1/500 sec @ f/14 ISO 800

70mm, 1/500 sec @f/14, ISO 800

58mm, 1/1600 sec @ f/9.0 ISO 800

70mm, 1/1250 sec @ f/8.0 ISO 800

63mm, 1/2000 sec @ f/5.6 ISO 800

42mm, 1/30 sec @ f/13 ISO 200
(and I only got a little breeze - bummer)

All in all, I thought the lens did pretty good. No, it wouldn't give me the tack-sharp focus I've grown accustomed to with my higher end glass, but it still did well, all things considered.

Only one thing bugged me about the lens:  it's autofocus system. And a couple things bugged me about it. On my Canon glass I can manually tweak the focus even when autofocus is on. The Sigma lens locks the ring and won't let you move it. Yeah, I probably could have used brute force, but I long ago gave up the old paradigm "If it don't fit/move, force it!".

Lastly, I prefer to work in single point focus mode. I can move the focal point around within the view and selectively focus on the key point of interest. Unfortunately the Sigma lens autofocus system doesn't support this mode, so I had to disable selective focus to get the Sigma lens to start working. I didn't always agree with the focus plane the lens chose.

So, you tell me - the first 3 images were shot in manual focus mode, and the last 3 with autofocus on...

How do they look?!