Jazzgear296 wrote:
I have a wedding to cover in November. Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to take the Sigma 200, the wedding timeline and locations don’t lend themselves to such a long lens.
It would be impractical for that purpose, perhaps, overall. I'm not sure I would choose it for that either.
pasblues wrote:
I shot my first football game with the Siggy 200mm f2 Sport tonight.
Couple of thoughts. 1.) When using this lens for sports, if you are using a high resolution body, that's an advantage that may allow you to skip using a longer, heavier lens. Because high rez allows you to crop in more, but still maintain background blur, you may be in for a treat. Even with the 15fps limit on the Sony A1, the lens performed extremely well.
I found the lens to be snappy AF and rendering just fine. These are minimally processed with the last one run through Topaz denoise since it was in a very dark area at the end of the night - an interception in the last 1 second of the game.
I’m really liking the output from the lens. But the jury is still out if I will end up keeping it as I also ordered the Sony 50-150, and will test them out this weekend against each other to see how close the 150mm end of the Sony compares.
I had a model shoot yesterday I purposely shot 1 long burst 78 pictures, 37 in focus that's less than 50%. EFCS off didn't have time to test more so I'll have to go out with my wife to test it. I hope it's just user error
71sbeetle wrote:
I had a model shoot yesterday I purposely shot 1 long burst 78 pictures, 37 in focus that's less than 50%. EFCS off didn't have time to test more so I'll have to go out with my wife to test it. I hope it's just user error
Wow! Was the model moving? Not that that's any excuse.
…… you’ve got me wondering now, especially while I’m in the return window. I’m going to try and replicate the scenario and see if I get the same poor focus rate
Jazzgear296 wrote:
…… you’ve got me wondering now, especially while I’m in the return window. I’m going to try and replicate the scenario and see if I get the same poor focus rate
I did more tests today with my wife, then my dog and then my car, same poor results on all. I also reset my camera to factory settings and did the v3.01 firmware update (A7R5) still same results, I haven't had time to drive to my local store to test the one they have in stock. I did call Sigma and they asked me to email one of their techs which I did.
71sbeetle wrote:
I did more tests today with my wife, then my dog and then my car, same poor results on all. I also reset my camera to factory settings and did the v3.01 firmware update (A7R5) still same results, I haven't had time to drive to my local store to test the one they have in stock. I did call Sigma and they asked me to email one of their techs which I did.
I haven’t had a real subject to test this on except my mini Bernedoodle pup, and despite his eyes being mostly obscured, my A9III nails focus every time, the hit rate is much lower on my A7RV — but not to the degree that I’d classify the focus as poor
Jazzgear296 wrote:
I haven’t had a real subject to test this on except my mini Bernedoodle pup, and despite his eyes being mostly obscured, my A9III nails focus every time, the hit rate is much lower on my A7RV — but not to the degree that I’d classify the focus as poor
Ok! I'd be happy if the A7R5 hit at least 70% which is still worse than on my other lenses but 30% or less isn't great. Waiting to hear the final word back from Sigma but it sounds like I'll have to send the lens in
I think I did some initial tests with my dog with the Siggy right out of the box just to make sure it was working well and that I was familiar with operating it.
But I got this lens for sports and for a couple of reasons that others may or may not agree with. I really value subject-to-background separation and I'm routinely for very low light sporting events.
Last night, I took the Siggy to a college volleyball game. I wasn't sure if the 200mm would be too long or too short. But the challenge was "shoot with what you've got" so I took only the Siggy on the A1 to force myself to make it work. Just to be clear, I disabled the shutter button focus and used only BBF.
Part way through the sets of the game, while reviewing some shots, I felt like 1/1250 wasn't fast enough SS - so I bumped it to 1/2000 and upped the ISO a bit, which I feel resolve the tendency towards some slight motion blur.
I admit I had some concerns about what has been posted here about "keeper" rate on AF issues. But my first thought was to check my camera settings to give the kit the best chance to succeed. So, I checked my AF settings and exposure settings to see if any of those adjustments made a difference.
Sports is probably the most challenging test for AF subject tracking performance - volleyball in particular - with competing obstacles for the kit to choose on what to focus (e.g., the net, other players moving in front of the scene and overall unpredictable erratic movement.) No benefit of a zoom so choosing shooting distance and positioning is critical also.
Alright so I found someone locally who has an A9III and a 200 f/2. I tried his lens and he tried mine. Results were interesting, my lens on his A9III had perfect hit rate, his lens on my camera had low hit rate (just under 50%) so I borrowed another A7R5 and it acts the same as mine, basically it will lock focus on the first shot and the 2-4 shots it appears the focus does not update so those 2-4 pictures progressively get more and more out of focus, and then it refocuses and again 2-4 where focus progressively gets worse, and the cycle continues. So it appears either the A7R5 just can't keep up when the Sigma 200mm f/2 is mounted (have had no issues with my other lenses) or perhaps some communication issues between the 200mm and the A7R5? No clue. I did notice that if the subject is more at a diagonal instead of walking directly towards or away from the camera the hit rate goes up which makes sense since it's less of a focal plane change but it goes up more than I would expect (from 30-50% I'm getting 75%+)
