Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM -SIGMALUX-

HelenOster wrote in post #15714099
OR - you use our pre-ship testing service?

We can do this, provided we have both the lens and a demo body in at the same time. You need to be aware of - and agree to - the following:

• we cannot guarantee 100% that you will not still need to send your own body and lens off to Sigma together for re-calibration, but we are definitely finding that by carrying out these checks beforehand that we've been able to reduce significantly the possibility of this being required

• your purchase will in theory be 'open box', but we will nevertheless need to charge you the full purchase price, as we are only opening it up to provide you with this additional service

• Shipping may be delayed by a couple of days as our DC manager does this himself on request, and needs to fit it into his existing workload.

What you need to do is call or email your order in to Manny in our sales department - annyn@adorama.com. 800.223.2500 | Local 212.741.0401

Explain to him what you want - he needs to personally forward your order confirmation number to Adam in our DC so that it doesn't enter the main shipping process.

Are you guys doing this with the Sigma 35mm 1.4 as well? Or (even better) do you not see the issue with the 35mm?

vertigo235 wrote in post #15715197
Are you guys doing this with the Sigma 35mm 1.4 as well? Or (even better) do you not see the issue with the 35mm?

As far as I know they will test any Sigma on request, prior to shipping.

Well my 50 is heading back to sigma less than two months after purchase. Stopped auto focusing (tested on 3 bodies) and causes the AF mode to flicker on the screen (One Shot, AI Servo, ect.). Hopefully they can get it fixed and this is the extent of my issues with this lens because the small amount of shooting I have done with it has been great.

Still testing my new lens.

There is something bothering me.

Like many others, mine front focuses wide open on my 5D2 when I am focusing near minimum distance. If I use MA to plus 18, then the wide open close shots are in the focus plane, but when I go outside and say, take a pic of my card rim at say, 20 feet or more, it then back focuses badly, I mean the grass on the other side of the street is in focus while my rim on this side of the street is blurry. If I set it to plus 3, or even zero, my rim is then in great focus, yet then close shots near minimum distance are front focused again.

I have seen several posters here say that this will always happen because when you use micro adjust you are moving the sensor in and out and that it HAS to effect focus at different distances. This sounds reasonable. So here's what is bothering me. Many people here say that plus 20 makes their lens focus properly, and I am having a hard time believing that because it just sounds like it is a physics things and that there is NO WAY you could have plus 20 MA and still have sharpness near minimum and at plus 20 feet as well.

So I really want an answer to this. Are the people saying they are getting good focus at plus 20 really taking their lens outside and making sure their focus is spot on at long distance? I have a hard time accepting that because mine definitely has either short or long in focus when you move the sensor that far in one direction.

I think that since there are so many people with these lenses, many are not doing all the testing needed and that makes the threads on this lens have a lot of mis-information.

I would love to know AS FACT, if it is possible to move your sensor to the extreme of +20 and yet still have both far and near in focus, cause it just sounds reasonable that what mine is showing should happen to all of these lenses if you move the sensor so far. I think of it as a teeter totter on a play ground. If one end is one the ground the other must be in the air, there's no way you can have both ends on the ground at once.

I need to know the specifics of this stuff so I can know the nature of what I am dealing with. I can see that by adjusting the lens itself you could get in in a middle area where both near and far are in decent focus. But I am feeling that you cannot do the same thing with micro adjust. In other words, I am asking if micro adjust is the equivalent of what they do to the lens at Sigma when you send it in.

So I would like someone to PROVE that they can set +plus 20, and then show us that they are sharp at a wide aperture both near Minimum focus, and then post a pic of your car rim at 30 feet and also show us that there is no back focus even at MA +20.

I am thinking that MA, at least drastic enough to get the near minimum focus stuff sharp will ALWAYS lead to back focus at long distance, which would mean that MA can never really be the true answer to getting your lens working at near and far distances.

Hope we can clear a lot of this up for each other. I have to decide if I am going to send mine to Sigma. And I will if it is true that MA can never really fix the problem. And that's just it. I don't know of MA can really fix it all the way because several people claim that MA DOES and can fix it all the way, which I have a hard time believing. We need to egt the proper info out to the owners of this lens. Either MA can be a true fix, or it can't. If it can't, we need to make that clear and get this info to become standard knowledge. We need to say to the posters here claiming +20 has fixed their lenses that NO, not really. You might believe it but it is truly impossible for you to move your sensor to an extreme in one direction and to have both near and far in focus, whether you believe it or not.

If i had that problem. I would make sure it focused properly at longer distances (when I would need a quick focus) and then concede to manual focus for close up using live view of focus peaking.

Yeah, I have come to the same conclusion, that +3 to +6 gives the best balance between the two, making my long distance shots sharp, and on my 5D2, if i stay at 1.8 and up the close stuff is fairly sharp, getting really nice and sharp at 2.2 and up.

So then there's my dilemma. Will I ever truly be satisfied just using Micro adjustment?

If i had to guess, I would think that what Sigma does when they calibrate is the same as what we do with MA, but the difference is that calibration is moving things INSIDE the lens, closer to the real heart of things, and that because of this the tolerances are much tighter and that you only have to move this calibration very small amounts and because of that it is easier to get the lens balanced on both ends. While trying to move a sensor OUTSIDE the lens in one direction or other will ALWAYS lead to one end being sacrificed for the other. If this is true, then I need to send my lens to Sigma and get this over with. I probably could just leave my MA set to like plus 4 and maybe be happy all around with the small amount of softness in near focusing and wide apertures.

I guess my main point is, first it would be nice if we were all sure that the proper information is on hand in this thread, that new folks won't come here and learn the wrong things. So if we can get some folks here who can truly explain the difference between MA and Calibration at Sigma, then it will help everyone know what to do a lot quicker and spend less time obsessing over MA thinking that they can use it to make their lens great on both far and near subjects. Maybe we could setup a faq site just for this lens, and the first thing would be (If it's true) MA will never be the equivalent of Sigma calibration. Using MA you will ALWAYS be sacrificing one end for the other. This doesn't mean you can't get it to where it is great for your shooting habits. You may only use the lens indoors on portraits and a +15 MA might get you to be happy with the majority of your shots because of what you shoot, and that's fine, but it will never be true that you can crank the MA to +20 and have BOTH ends in great focus, the physics just don't work that way. (if that's true)

I hope plenty of people weigh in on this.

vertigo235 wrote in post #15721302
If i had that problem. I would make sure it focused properly at longer distances (when I would need a quick focus) and then concede to manual focus for close up using live view of focus peaking.

At least MA is an option for you

guitarjeff wrote in post #15721289
when you move the sensor that far in one direction.

Just as an FYI MA doesn't move the sensor, it provides an offset in the focusing data sent between lens and body.

http://www.learn.usa.c​anon.com …oadjustment_art​icle.shtml

True, but is it only to a certain extent? Question is, can I use it just right so that I could be satisfied on both ends.

vertigo235 wrote in post #15721542
At least MA is an option for you

continuing to test, I am hoping that I have it the best I can do with MA at a simple +2. On my FF 5D2, I really amd getting the picture just how thin this depth of field can be.

I was at 1.8 and focusing on a perfume bottle using 1.8. And as I took each pic I made a mental note of whether I felt that I had stayed exactly still or not. If I felt even like I had moved the slightest bit, I made a menaal note of which pic I though I moved in.

Sure enough, pretty much every shot where I had the feeling I had moved, the focus was slightly out of the dof. I was amazed. And each where I nade a note that I felt like I had really been still, the shot was sharp and within the dof. These were at 1.8 with FF. That makes me realize that at 1.4 and 1.6, there are going to be several shots where it may look like the lens is misfocusing or inconsistent where the real truth is that I ever so slightly rocked back and forth out of the dof.

I am thinking that there have to have been a whole lot of people thinking this lens was inconsistent simply because they don't realize that even the slightest movement back and forth wide open can pull or push them out of the dof.

And then I was confused because I would maybe be outside or in good light and my shutter would be way up, like 1/1000, and I would think to myself "How can the blur be caused by camera movement when my shutter is so fast? Then I realized that this is not the same kind of movement. This is not movement while the shutter is open, cause equal blur all over the picture. This is swaying back & forth BEFORE you fire the shutter. If you pull back almost imperceptibly after you get focus confirmation, especially at 1.4 and 1.6, you are making that move before the shutter fires, so having a very fast shutter won't help at all. It's a completely different thing than hand shake while the shutter is open at say, 1/30 of a second.

I have heard many say they felt like this lens had an even thinner dof than 1.4 should be. I believe it, and it makes me now think that this lens has probably gotten a lot of unfair blame because of this dof.

I think I was blaming this lens and now I realize how crazy it was to move to minimum focus distance, with a FF camera, and at 1.4 and trying to get sharp pics when even the tiniest of sway can throw you out of the dof. I am thinking that with FF, and the amount of steadiness I have, that 1.8 should be as far wide as I should attempt when I am fairly close to the subject, like just beyond MFD. Since dof increases as you get further from the subject, then maybe I could go even more wide if I am quite a bit further away. I was expecting to be a couple feet away on my FF with not so steady hands and get sharp pics at 1.4, and for me, that's just crazy.

I wanted to post this so it might help others to make sure and give the lens a good work out and learn what it, and more importantly, what YOU are capable of considering you steady hands and stance. Everyone that buys one of these needs to learn its ins and outs completely to really know if it's the lens that's the problem or our own understanding of it and our own abilities to use it.

I wish everyone who first tries this lens would follow a simple formula. If you are full frame, and you get in close to the MFD, then since you are that close you really shouldn't need more than 1.8-2.2 to get loads of bokeh because being so close gives you more. Only go down to 1.4 and 1.6 if you are backed off the subject to like a waist up portrait with room on both sides.

Anyway, I am hoping plus 2 will work fine for me, I'll report back as I get more comfortable with it and post some pics too.

I don't usually shoot @ f1.4 because I don't get very consistent results, although today while my girlfriend was cooking I was playing around with the Sigmalux and was shooting wide open which I actually had better results. I shot this using a flash bounced off the roof which I found to help the AF accuracy. I was focused on the white "Giant" text on the bread.