28-300 sigma soft or ok?

[bigbelly]

Hi,

brought back my tamron lens 28-200 and tested the sigma 28-300 4-6.3

photos can be found here:

http://www.egocat.com/sig/104_0489.JPG

http://www.egocat.com/sig/104_0480.JPG

pics are not great.. didn't mean to make art.. just test several things :)

so is that softness ok at 300mm?

thanks a lot

t

[Moose Dawg]

Here is my 2 cents:

I had the 10D and the Tamron 28-300 and posted the same concern about softness at 300. What I learned is that 300 is really 480 and with that focal length, softness is often mistaken for camera shake and/or a slow shutter speed. I ended up sending that lens back and getting the 28-135IS and am happy with that. Try taking some more shots using a fast shutter speed like 1/500.

Also, set the camera to use just the center focal point. Try using F8 and higher.

check this out
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10099#46951

Hope this helps,
Dave

[CyberDyneSystems]

I have the Sigma 28-300mm and use it often as it is so portable.

The way I see it, the 10D is obviously a big step up form my olfd point and shoot Digicam. But there are time when that is all I ewant or need is a nice versatile Digicam. Thats when the 28-300mm goes on. It is so flexible in focal range that I just can't dislike the lens. It eprforms very well when you consider its size weight and cost.

Is it a 300mm f/2.8? No. Do I have better lenses,. yes. But to have a lens that can be carried around that easily and still offer the range that lens offers is a great option to have. :)

[bigbelly]

it's a 28-300 4-6.3

if u view the images in the first message of this topic, do you reckon that they are soft or are they ok?

[RichardtheSane]

Little bit soft, but I would say they are acceptable for a superzoom lens. Noting a bit of USM wouldn't clean up anyway. In my (limited) opinion that is...


Just had a bit of a play with unsharp mask in ps7 on a crop of your image. Used 200% rad 1.5 and threshold 2
I am no means an expert in usm but below is the (sharper) result.

http://www.richardlindley.co.uk/usm_eg.jpg

[evilenglishman]

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[Spinners]

I have the sigma 28-300. I find it a bit slow, but i think the problem is deffinetly camera shake. i had this problem for a while.. i just shoot at least 2x or 3x times the focal length. Took me a while to realize that i was the problem :). I find the whole 1/focal length not to work in most situations without a tripod. but thats me.. im a newbie.. so what do i know!

[CyberDyneSystems]

I agree with you on that Spinners.

I think part of the issue with these little Hyperzooms is that we use them incorrectly.

The fact that we have this tiny little lens that reach out that far lends itself to bad habits.

For one thing,. you can walk around with this lens on your camera and it is little more of a burden than a 35mm or 50mm prime. (granted when zoomed it is MUCH longer) But the point being that with a 50mm or thereabouts,.. camera shake is MUCH less of a problem. So now we have a lens that handles like a much smaller lens but is magnifying movement like a Supertelephoto.

The other thing is the difference in weight,. not only allows to to hold the camera with less stabilty,.. but the weight of a big telephoto also helps dampen the camera motion to a degree. On the super lite hyperzoom,. the effect of your finger hitting the shutter release is greater on the lens/camera assembely that has a liter mass.

All of the worst pics I have taken wih this lens were hand held on the fly. The pics I have taken on a tripod are much better.