Sigma 20mm

[vvizard]

What do you think? I'm looking for a fast wide-lens, and according to http://www.photographyreview.com and http://www.fredmiranda.com, this lens is very good, and comes with a pricetag I can survive.

Anybody got it? Pictures of it mounted on a 10D would be fine, cause as someone else mentioned, I'm only getting my equipment for the ladies anyway. I have a P&S which I actually use for the shooting ;)

No seriously.. I _need_ it :-P But there's no way I can afford a 16-35 f/2.8L, and even f/2.8 might be a little slower than I would appreciate. Although I gues that's where the Sigma will be shooting most of it's time, for according to reviews, it's quite soft at anything below (expected)

[dardman]

I have the Sigma 20/1.8 and I think it does pretty well even wide open - you just have to live with the fact that wide open on a wide angle is a real limitation on what you can do. This lens is fun to use and I am considering ditching my excellent copy of the 16-35 and just using this as my wide angle. The manual focus controls are funky but the lens has quite a few fans (check out DP Review and Fred Miranda Forum).

You can see some shots taken at f/2.0-2.5 on a 10D here: http://www.pbase.com/dardman/sigma_2018_shots

[vvizard]

Thanks. You shouldn't happen to have some pictures taken from the same place with this and a 50mm? I really want to find out just how wide 20mm (32mm on 10D) is compared to my 50mm (77mm on 10D)

[Guillermo Freige]

Thanks. You shouldn't happen to have some pictures taken from the same place with this and a 50mm? I really want to find out just how wide 20mm (32mm on 10D) is compared to my 50mm (77mm on 10D)

I have both lenses (Sigma 20/1.8 and Canon 50/1.8) and like most the 50. The Sigma AF is slower and not so reliable, and of course is noisier. Regarding sharpness, the 50/1.8 is sharper. I will post some comparative pictures later.

[vvizard]

I have both lenses (Sigma 20/1.8 and Canon 50/1.8) and like most the 50. The Sigma AF is slower and not so reliable, and of course is noisier. Regarding sharpness, the 50/1.8 is sharper. I will post some comparative pictures later.[/quote]

Yeah I doubt the 20mm will rival my 50/1.4 on sharpness, but I sure as h*ll hope it be _MUCH_ wider. The 77mm my 50mm is becoming on my 10D is next to useless for me :( It's not long enough to work as a telelens, and far from wide enough to be used indoors (or other places where space is an issue). So I seldom use it. Only for portraits. The times I'm outside, so space isn't an issue anymore, then I rather hook on my 70-200 f/2.8 instead of my 50.

Enough rambling.. Point is, a fast wide-angle suits my photographing very well, and the 50mm is far from wide enough. Therefore I need something wide. Would the Sigma be good choice? when peeking through the viewfinder, is this _MUCH_ wider than the 50 is? I know this should be newbie-knowledge, but I've never had any SLR before the 10D, so my brain isn't yet able to imagine the focal-length differences without seeing them. Guess this will be better with experience..

[Guillermo Freige]

Both taken in ISO 800 at f/1.8 with custom WB and converted using C1Rebel.
Resized to 1/3 in PS, no extra sharpening (except the one applied by C1Rebel and Bicubic Sharpen rescaling by default)
Focus is in the back.
And yes, is MUCH wider!! :)

20mm
http://gfreige.homelinux.org/DR_3800.jpg

50mm
http://gfreige.homelinux.org/DR_3801.jpg

(note from Pekka: I edited these to normal links because your server is so slow and that delays opening of this thread a lot)

[vvizard]

Thanks a lot. Do you (roughly) know the distance between the spot you took the picture, and.. let's say the lamp or the bench?

[Guillermo Freige]

Aprox. 3m to the lamp and 5 to the bench

[Guillermo Freige]

Pekka:
I'd some troubles with my provider the last couple of days. Sometimes performance drops to zero :(
Regarding the thread slowdown, I've noticed in my webserver logs two accesses for every picture, one from the forum itself, and one for the end user. This duplicates the bandwidth used and also make some threads with a lot of pictures very slow (to me as a client). Also I've noticed in the logs a lot of accesses to the same picture from the forum itself, always returning a 200 code, as if you aren't using any timestamping, expiration time, header checking or caching system. I assume the extra forum access is to check the image size, but it seems a awful lot of bandwidth (mostly yours) to check that. Probably a simple cache in the middle will reduce your bandwith use a lot, and a better response time
Just my two cents.