ReleaseDrive wrote:
I'm starting to warm up to this lens which isn't good. That means I'm about to drop a few $$$. Wll wait for Siggy announcement in a few days and see how that goes.
I am warming up to it too.
Mildly disappointed that I cancelled my pre-order but I just picked up a couple of long-desired lenses so I have plenty to keep me occupied.
I know I canceled my pre order than re ordered it. It's okay be here Wednesday so not in a hurry anyway. But I think I'll bring it to work Thursday morning. The scenery I work in is breath taking
After weeks of waiting, I eventually managed to pick up a copy of the GM 35mm f1.4 lens...very impressed with images taken wide open or stopped down :-)
Taken in Truro this afternoon.
I'm loving this lens as a walk around prime. Here's some friends showing their old golden some love. (Also using a Kase clip-in ND filter here)
I've also tried to shoot the pup running with it, and I'm experiencing most of the same sporadic back-focusing issues I had with the Sigma when he runs towards me, so that leads me to think its my RIV's animal eye AF that is the weakness. Operation convince the wife we need an A9 to take pictures of the pup now begins.
These are both RAWs with only exposure adjusted to preserve highlights.
I do notice that, in my experience, a lot of the 35 GM images have distracting (aka "structured" or "busy") bokeh.
I haven't seen so much distracting bokeh with the Sigma DG DN.
photosbyjaron wrote:
I'm loving this lens as a walk around prime. Here's some friends showing their old golden some love. (Also using a Kase clip-in ND filter here)
I've also tried to shoot the pup running with it, and I'm experiencing most of the same sporadic back-focusing issues I had with the Sigma when he runs towards me, so that leads me to think its my RIV's animal eye AF that is the weakness.
Great shots!
Your take on the possible A7RIV animal eye-AF problem is interesting. I have avoided the Sigma primes because of recent complaints of missed focus If, however, the 35 GM is exhibiting the same problems (missed focus on bursts with subject approaching or receding), then which 35mm lens to choose becomes a more difficult problem.
photosbyjaron wrote:
I'm loving this lens as a walk around prime. Here's some friends showing their old golden some love. (Also using a Kase clip-in ND filter here)
I've also tried to shoot the pup running with it, and I'm experiencing most of the same sporadic back-focusing issues I had with the Sigma when he runs towards me, so that leads me to think its my RIV's animal eye AF that is the weakness. Operation convince the wife we need an A9 to take pictures of the pup now begins.
These are both RAWs with only exposure adjusted to preserve highlights.
smpetty wrote:
There are some great shots in this thread.
I do notice that, in my experience, a lot of the 35 GM images have distracting (aka "structured" or "busy") bokeh.
I haven't seen so much distracting bokeh with the Sigma DG DN.
Do others share or disagree with my experience?
What have I been saying all along. Look at the dog image the background is simple, clean and not loaded with trees , twigs and bubble gum wrappers.
Simple works , being close also helps a great deal . Distance from subject to background the farther the better. All these combined make great OOF areas
smpetty wrote:
There are some great shots in this thread.
I do notice that, in my experience, a lot of the 35 GM images have distracting (aka "structured" or "busy") bokeh.
I haven't seen so much distracting bokeh with the Sigma DG DN.
Do others share or disagree with my experience?
I agree, but don’t think it’s a negative. Having owned both, I think having a lens with slightly more structured bokeh than other lenses in my kit isn’t a bad thing. I’ve also owned the Sony 35/1.8, and that thing was the king of structured bokeh - the GM is much better imo, and without some of the other flaws the 1.8 had. Honestly, I always wanted the 35/1.8 to be just a bit better in certain areas, and the GM is just that and some. I view the few instances where the GM is relatively more busy than the Sigma as just having character - it hasn’t detracted from any images in my experience.
Ive always been its nice to have different look lenses sometimes that may mean different focal lengths . From a commercial seat working for clients, your never sure exactly what they are looking for either until on set.
My mode of operation is not only be a great shooter but a even better post guru
smpetty wrote:
There are some great shots in this thread.
I do notice that, in my experience, a lot of the 35 GM images have distracting (aka "structured" or "busy") bokeh.
I haven't seen so much distracting bokeh with the Sigma DG DN.
Do others share or disagree with my experience?
I have had the opposite opinion. In fact, I have deliberately tried to take shots with crazy lighting and detail in the background to try to push the limits of what the lens does. It blurs and smoothes those better than any 35 I have used before and better than I would have expected generally.
If my images made you think the bokeh was noisy, it is important to factor in the deliberately challenging conditions. It is difficult to what to expect without standing in the scene sometimes.
What I have noticed is that it has a bit more DOF at portrait distance than you would expect from a 35/1.4 shot wide open. This lends it some help in its 3D character in that range but is a bit perplexing. See the last dog shot above, for instance. By contrast, it has far thinner DOF at MFD than either the ZA or the ZF.2.
Your take on the possible A7RIV animal eye-AF problem is interesting. I have avoided the Sigma primes because of recent complaints of missed focus If, however, the 35 GM is exhibiting the same problems (missed focus on bursts with subject approaching or receding), then which 35mm lens to choose becomes a more difficult problem.
Thanks! I think that if a person doesn't really care or want f/1.4 and if complete weather sealing doesn't matter, the Sigma 35i is a remarkable lens and less than half the price. It might not have the fastest AF, and it may not be the sharpest option, but it is a very nice size with excellent rendering and is capable of beautiful results (same with the 65 f/2).
I honestly don't have enough experience with the GM yet to say definitively one way or the other, so these are just my first impressions from this first weekend of using it. The GM was doing some strange pumping on a backlit subject yesterday, and it seems to be more prone to pumping than I'm generally used to. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony comes out with firmware to resolve any growing pains. Other than the pumping on backlit subjects, I haven't noticed any other AF issues with the 35GM (or the Sigma 35i) using human eye AF or AF-C in general. The only usage that frustrated me with the I series lenses was taking pictures of the little pup when he's running towards me and trying to use a wider aperture to blur out our neighbors' backyards. Both the 35i and 65i struggled there, but having a puppy run at you with a wide open aperture is a fairly challenging AF situation, and the 35GM is having similar difficulty nailing his eyes, which tells me the probable hindrance is the camera AF and not the lenses. Based on my experience so far compared to my recollection of shooting with the 35i f/2 is that using the Tracking Expand Flexible Spot gets maybe a few more hits on his nose being in focus than the back of his ears, but that is just my sense of it and not an actually tested percentage. When I use Wide Area and animal eye detect, both the 35GM and the 35i are predominantly focusing behind his eyes on his ears or collar. I realize that's a pretty big ask for the camera to nail a dog's eye while it's running towards you, so I'm not entirely shocked with the results.
Another reason I think it may be the fault of the animal eye AF not keeping track is that I had the same results with Wide Area, animal eye AF with the 100-400GM, which has no problems getting sharp images of larger BIF like a double crested cormorant. So I know my 100-400GM and RIV can produce tack sharp images of cormorants flying straight towards me, but then struggles with animal eye AF with my dog running towards me. It tends to focus on his collar, even though it is showing a green box on his eye. That being said, I think that I'd probably have better luck with the A9. *checks bank account*
And since this is an image thread, here's another one of the boy. Yes, I know, I'm obsessed with my dog.
smpetty wrote:
There are some great shots in this thread.
I do notice that, in my experience, a lot of the 35 GM images have distracting (aka "structured" or "busy") bokeh.
I haven't seen so much distracting bokeh with the Sigma DG DN.
Do others share or disagree with my experience?
Now, there's Fred's review thread I guess all we have to do is wait for the rendering section to appear .
To answer your question in a few words though, if I was shooting full body portraits in sunlit woods, I'd rather go with the Bigma .
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