hubsand
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Upload & Sell: Off
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Most camera salesman are already asleep . . .
I bought an unnamed lens from an unnamed store this week, having ordered it a week before. On arrival home I get a call from the salesman:
'Sorry, sir, but that lens isn't suitable for your camera', he said.
'What do you mean?' I said.
'Well I just called 'company' HQ, and I've spoken to Canon, and they both say that the Sigma 12-24mm doesn't work properly with full frame cameras - and that's why you've had bad results with them before', he said.
'I've had three of them before', I said. 'One was soft all over, one was soft in the corners and one was soft on one side . . .'
'That's because they weren't designed for your camera', he interrupted.
'You see, that lens has DG written on it, which means it was designed for digital cameras, you know, with smaller sensors', he continued.
'You mean DX, for 1.6x crop Nikon cameras . . .' I explained.
'No', he said. 'Sigma changed the lenses and put DG on them and the new ones aren't compatible with your camera.' He explained: 'If you can find an older one, without DG on it, it should work fine.'
'You utter cretin', I thought. But I said: 'Oh . . . perhaps I'd better bring it back after Christmas, then.'
'Canon make a much better lens than that one which works on all cameras, I think it's a 17-35mm' , he suggested.
'Thanks for your help', I concluded.
Actually, that lens proved to be the sharpest 12-24mm I've ever seen, but suffered from the same long-end decentring that tends to afflict many of these samples which meant that it was unusable at 24mm. I returned it to the very helpful, but woefully uninformed salesman. At least he wasn't trying to palm me off with high-margin merchandise. Or if he was, he was making a very bad job of it.
Actually the 350D is pretty demanding of centre frame resolution, and you will notice the difference with better glass. Certain lenses, such as the 85mm f1.8, become absolute giant killers when used on a 1.6x sensor - and of course money invested in glass will long outlive the money spent on a digital body. Ignore the salesman and buy the best glass you can afford: you won't regret it.
And you won't need to keep borrowing them from Len.
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Otherwise, the 350 + good glass is (IMHO) better than a 20d and cheapo glass.