My Search is over for that ultimate wide angle solution

Hi

My quest for that elusive wide angle solution for the D30 has led me to try nearly everything, from the Canon 17-35 f2.8L (too pricey for what it offers) to the Sigma 17-35 f2.8-4 (the one i tried was HORRIBLE, worse at f8 than my 28-135 at f3.5), to the older Canon 20-35 f2.8L (superb image quality, but alas not wide enough!!!) to the consumer Canon 20-35 f3.5-4.5 (cheap, decent quality, but again not wide enough).
I've also tried the Tokina 17mm prime, the Canon 20mm f2.8, among others.

I believe that quest has ended for me today. (at least as of the time of writing, 11:28pm at night). I picked up the Sigma 15-30 f3.5-4.5 today just when it arrived at my favourite store, and wow, what a lens! You got to look at it through a film body (i tried it with a EOS 30) to appreciate just how wide 15mm REALLY is! On the D30, it becomes a near 20mm lens - wide enough for me. Build quality is also excellent, though the zoom ring feels a bit stiff. It certainly is not creaky nor does it feel cheap.

Image quality seems to be very good, no, exceptional at the 15mm end, with minimal distortion and is even sharp with aperture fully wide open! For such a wide lens, I'm quite amazed. I admit i was quite skeptical when i tried it - afterall i've had bad experiences with Sigma lenses. I've tried 3 different sigma lens over the past few months and have bought none of them - this one looks like it's sticking to me now!

Here are some 15mm, f3.5 (wide open) indoor high ISO samples, handheld. They are full sized jepgs and straight from camera, with exif info. I'll be taking a whole lot more, just to make sure my enthusiasm for this lens is justified.

http://www.sg-gaming.com/photos/D30/​sigma/

FOr the last shot, it's a 15mm shot, at ISO 1600, f8 @ 1/40 sec....yup it seems i can also use it indoors for shooting those dim light church events and services which is required of me.....

Would be eager to hear others' opinion of this lens.....

looks decent, but to close for my tastes - I'll keep looking = (
I vowed never to get anything slower than 2.8 ever again. Hope you enjoy it.

I'm not adverse to shooting at ISO 800 or 1600, so I guess I can live with 3.5...

Actually, the ultimate solution to the wide angle problem would be a full frame digital SLR / the professional digital SLR from Canon.

Red Dawn

More samples

Hi
as promised, more shots with this lens.....
http://www.sg-gaming.com/photos/D30/​sgriver/

Shots were taken around evening time. The images were shot in RAW mode and converted by Yarc to 16bit tifs. Most of the images were not edited in anyway - some minor levels and curves were done to 2 of the images to correct exposure errors. Other than that, no colour balance changes nor sharpening was done on any of the images. From the tif files I converted them to jpg and resized them 50% using Irfanview. All of the images were shot at f8 or higher, ISO 100 with tripod, cable release and mirror lockup. (Pls note that CRW_9706 is a 28-135 shot, and not using the Sigma 15-30.)

Regrettably I can't provide full sized images - disk space on the server is costly these days....

I tried some unsharp mask sharpening on the images, and they looked great after that, as we've come to expect of D30 images. I'm definitely keeping this lens now - with a little post processing great images can definitely be obtained. By the way, CRW_9720 is my favourite...

Red Dawn