Sigma 70-200 2.8 problems?

[vvizard]

It's middle of night in Norway now, but in the morning I'm out to shot a dragrace. After tips from other forum-members, I bought a polarizer for it. After buying I went out to shoot some swans. (swans just tend to attract EOS-owners dont they =P). I thought the fjord with water-reflections would be the perfect place to test a polarizer.. First off, the shallow DOF at close range with 200mm is unbelievable. Tried some close-ups, as I got real close, and event at f5.6 I don't think I got more than 7-8cm DOF. The pictures here will speak for themself. But what bothers me.. Look at the quality!! It's so sub-par the closeups I've seen with the Canon-version of 70-200 (I'm already hearing you guys saying: Told you so!), but could you please look at this, and say what you think?

Here's one of my most detailed closeups, out of about 50. It looks a bit underexposed to me though. This was shot RAW, f4, 1/500s, ISO-200 @ 200mm. Also, the bokeh from the very shallow DOF have made it look like there's a USM-halo around it. It's not. I've applied some USM, but not much.
http://127001.org/div_pics/canon_forum/swan5.jpg

The details in this shot is clearly sub-par with KBMPhotography.com's closeup with the 70-200mm 2.8 IS, posted the other day, I've included it as comparison:

http://cakeru.image.pbase.com/image/24538101/original.jpg

So now I'm asking you. Is the Sigma a bad performer at close range? Cause I've been very satisfied with it until I tried theese closeups. Also: Could it be this is simply a "user-error"? I've uploaded the original RAW-file if anybody would be kind enough to take a look at it and see if I simply screw up the raw-conversion.

http://127001.org/div_pics/canon_forum/crw_5079.crw

I'm starting to get second thoughts of this lens now :/ Considering selling it and replacing it with a 70-200mm 2.8L non-IS, since it looks to be duck-incompatible with the 10D like the Canon-lenses clearly is ;)[/img]

[kahfluie]

I'm not an expert or anything, but I do have the 70-200 f2.8 Sigma and haven't had troubles with it.

I took your CRW file and converted using Capture One, then went to Photoshop and added a little USM. Here is my result. Again I'm not an expert but it looks fine to me... and doesn't look underexposed.

Where was your focusing point? Were you shooting manual? AV, TV?

Lou

http://www.debbielou.com/photography/images/crw_5079.jpg

[vvizard]

Whoho! Thanks! That was quite some difference :lol: I'm still thinking.. Is that show with my lens, or have you taken an identical one? =D Think I'll keep this lens after all, and start working on my RAW-conversion techniques instead :lol: Although I might want to replace my copy for a new one of the same brand, because of erronous focusing (see other thread). But I won't fork over Canon $$ for other than an IS-version now I think. And I really can't see that happening anytime soon. Lots of other stuff on my purchase-list before that one. Thanks a lot, you have clearly made me happy again :)

I'm not sure where the focus-point was. In it's forehead or the eye I guess. It was shot in Av.

[DaveG]

It's middle of night in Norway now, but in the morning I'm out to shot a dragrace. After tips from other forum-members, I bought a polarizer for it. After buying I went out to shoot some swans. (swans just tend to attract EOS-owners dont they =P). I thought the fjord with water-reflections would be the perfect place to test a polarizer.. First off, the shallow DOF at close range with 200mm is unbelievable. Tried some close-ups, as I got real close, and event at f5.6 I don't think I got more than 7-8cm DOF. The pictures here will speak for themself. But what bothers me.. Look at the quality!! It's so sub-par the closeups I've seen with the Canon-version of 70-200 (I'm already hearing you guys saying: Told you so!), but could you please look at this, and say what you think?

Here's one of my most detailed closeups, out of about 50. It looks a bit underexposed to me though. This was shot RAW, f4, 1/500s, ISO-200 @ 200mm. Also, the bokeh from the very shallow DOF have made it look like there's a USM-halo around it. It's not. I've applied some USM, but not much.
http://127001.org/div_pics/canon_forum/swan5.jpg

The details in this shot is clearly sub-par with KBMPhotography.com's closeup with the 70-200mm 2.8 IS, posted the other day, I've included it as comparison:

http://cakeru.image.pbase.com/image/24538101/original.jpg

So now I'm asking you. Is the Sigma a bad performer at close range? Cause I've been very satisfied with it until I tried theese closeups. Also: Could it be this is simply a "user-error"? I've uploaded the original RAW-file if anybody would be kind enough to take a look at it and see if I simply screw up the raw-conversion.

http://127001.org/div_pics/canon_forum/crw_5079.crw

I'm starting to get second thoughts of this lens now :/ Considering selling it and replacing it with a 70-200mm 2.8L non-IS, since it looks to be duck-incompatible with the 10D like the Canon-lenses clearly is ;)[/img]

As I look at your sample picture the first thing that I've noticed is that it's all soft. Believe it or not that's not bad. I don't think that the lens has a focus or sharpness problem. I think that it's camera movement.

What king of camea support did you use? A monopod would make a huge difference over handholding the camera. You are pretty close to the 1/focal length handhold rule when you use a lens of this focal length. Although it's a 200 it converts to a 320 and that should be your rule, 1/320, which would be 1/500.

Now as a I say to anyone who will listen, the 1/focal length rule is a minimal NOT optimal standard. All it really means is that you will get sharp photos more often than with a slower shutterspeed. But it doesn't mean that you will ALWAYS get sharp images.

Let's say that at 1/2000 of a second 29 out of 30 images are sharp, and at 1/1000 nine out of ten images are sharp. At 1/500 maybe two out of four images make the grade, and perhaps your shot was just one of those two that didn't make it!

So try some camera support - at least a monopod and maybe a tripod - and get back to us.

[kahfluie]

Whoho! Thanks! That was quite some difference :lol: I'm still thinking.. Is that show with my lens, or have you taken an identical one? =D Think I'll keep this lens after all, and start working on my RAW-conversion techniques instead :lol: Although I might want to replace my copy for a new one of the same brand, because of erronous focusing (see other thread). But I won't fork over Canon $$ for other than an IS-version now I think. And I really can't see that happening anytime soon. Lots of other stuff on my purchase-list before that one. Thanks a lot, you have clearly made me happy again :)

I'm not sure where the focus-point was. In it's forehead or the eye I guess. It was shot in Av.

To get it to what I posted, I guess you have to look at what you're using to convert, are you converting to a TIF or JPG (not sure if that makes a difference). The end result is very close to what your original CRW looked like (color wise). I ask this because I wonder why your rendering came out looking as dark as it did.

I agree with DaveG that everything looks more like camera movement. As he recommended, try getting a monopod for stability. Also, play with your settings. This shot was at ISO200, Aperture of 4.0 and a Shutter of 500. Try ISO400 and get a faster shutter speed and see what that does. Just a thought.

Lou

[vvizard]

Thanks for the tips. I guess I've underestimated the lack of ISO-noise in this "machine". I tend to always shoot ISO-100 unless I have no other way. Today though. I freaked out. I thought maybe I should seriously reconsider all aspects of my shooting, and start trusting my equipment more. So, as I'm one of many sponsors of a dragrace-team, I got into a dragrace event today as a "team-member". And whooopla, the Sigma 70-200 was pretty much enough press-credentials needed for walking around wherever I wanted =D Sure.. It's heavy, but size does sometime matter :lol:

So instead of keeping things my own way, and failing my own way, I tried to follow the advices I've been given here on dragrace-shooting. I shot ISO-400, I even did all shots RAW, and believe it or not, I trusted my X-drive for the first time :oops: Haven't seen if the X-drive worked yet, but I've just dumped the last gig of pictures I took from the memory-card, and the ISO-400 tips was real great. I could get 1/750 at f/4, and ISO-400 when there's not many dark areas really _IS_ great :) Mostly superstreet driving today, so I usually used 1/250 and panned to get the speed. Got apertures of f/7 and such then. I switched up to 1/400 and sacrificed some DOF when they ran Pro-mod and pro-stock cars. I'm going back to post-processing images now, and to you guys giving me tips on dragrace-shooting (you know who you are) thanks a lot :)

[kahfluie]

Yeah, I'd definately start trusting your camera more. Here is a shot I took using the Sigma 70-200 f2.8 at ISO400 during a high school softball game. I did not shoot this in raw, I shot this in jpg as I needed to get shots to the newspaper quickly. The EXIF follows the photo. I did sharpen it a little afterwards.

http://debbielou.com/photography/Sports/softball/middies_050604/img_4894_std.jpg

Date/Time: 2004:05:06 15:08:45
Shutter speed: 1/800 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: Continuous: frame 1
ISO: 400
Lens: 70.0 to 200.0 mm
Focal length: 110.0mm
AF mode: Manual Focus
Image size: 3072 x 2048
Rotation: none
Image quality: Fine
White balance: Auto
Color space: sRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Tone: Normal
Custom Functions:
CFn 2: Shutter release w/o CF card: Not possible
CFn 6: Tv/Av and exposure level: 1/3 stop

[drisley]

Awesome picture!
That really does look like a nice lens.
When you send to the newspaper, do you just send the jpg "as is"?

[Tom W]

As I look at your sample picture the first thing that I've noticed is that it's all soft. Believe it or not that's not bad. I don't think that the lens has a focus or sharpness problem. I think that it's camera movement.

What king of camea support did you use? A monopod would make a huge difference over handholding the camera. You are pretty close to the 1/focal length handhold rule when you use a lens of this focal length. Although it's a 200 it converts to a 320 and that should be your rule, 1/320, which would be 1/500.

Now as a I say to anyone who will listen, the 1/focal length rule is a minimal NOT optimal standard. All it really means is that you will get sharp photos more often than with a slower shutterspeed. But it doesn't mean that you will ALWAYS get sharp images.

Let's say that at 1/2000 of a second 29 out of 30 images are sharp, and at 1/1000 nine out of ten images are sharp. At 1/500 maybe two out of four images make the grade, and perhaps your shot was just one of those two that didn't make it!

So try some camera support - at least a monopod and maybe a tripod - and get back to us.

After taking a second "gander" at the picture, I see a little softness, but I also see the sharpness increases as you head to the front tip of the beak. I suspect that the focus point was that beak and that's why it stands out more sharply (and not quite "tack-sharp") against the rest. Your DOF is pretty shallow here - IMHO, the back of the head and neck are already into what I'd call the "bokeh zone", for lack of a better set of words.

And what Dave says is true - I've "smeared" (really bad) a few pictures even at 1/2000 with a long lens before. Give yourself the best support you can even if you have to kneel down on one knee.

[vvizard]

Awesome picture!
That really does look like a nice lens.
When you send to the newspaper, do you just send the jpg "as is"?

Without working at a newspaper, I know a photodog that does. It's a local newspaper, and he's the only guy working there as a dedicated photographer, without writing anything. They have their own "graphics-department", so he just sends the pics "as is" and they do the post-processing. And he's real pissed about it too, cause he mean they mess up many of his pictures. :(

[vvizard]

Started to convert my raw-files now, and the first picture I opened up looked good enough for me to getting thrilled with anticipation for what the other 200-300 (or so) look like :lol: The first picture I opened was this.. Only cropped off some parts, and scaled it down, and added a little usm..

http://www.127001.org/div_pics/canon_forum/biker1.jpg

I think it was pretty good at least. And clearly shows that ISO-400 is very usable. This haven't seen any noise-removal feature whatsover. Only USM, which probably is a "noise-adder".

[kahfluie]

Awesome picture!
That really does look like a nice lens.
When you send to the newspaper, do you just send the jpg "as is"?

I have to send as is. Usually they do a decent job... and it goes to b/w when all is said and done.

cheers,