love the shots, especially the sharpness in #1 and #3 (opening post, love the subsequent little doggie shot as well). sure makes me feel happy to have this lens too, and having had a great day with it on Halloween night (thanksgiving too), I must concur with you, that this one will surely be a prize possession on my next "exotic" trip. especially as light gets wanting, but also in very direct competition with the 24-105L, for scene+people shooting.
I would rank the build quality as slightly better than my 50/1.4 and 85/1.8. Yes, it has FTM and Sigma's version of USM focus so it's quiet and fast, but not quite as fast as the 85/1.8.
Quick question regarding assigning the focus to the * button :
Using AI focus, if you use center focus to focus on the subject, then hit the * button to lock focus, then recompose such that the subject is no longer in the center, the AI focus will still track the subject and keep it in focus even if it is outside the center focus point?
AI Servo only continues to track focus as long as you hold the * button down. Once you let go of the button the lens stops the AF function allowing you to recompose. This is the reason for assigning AF to the * button, it makes the activation of AF and pressing the shutter separate operations.
I ordered this lens for use with my 20D. The first copy was tack sharp, even at f/1.4. Unfortunately, the area in clear focus was consistently in front of the actual desired plane of focus. I exchanged the lens for a second one that front-focused even worse than the first. I sent this lens back to Sigma who found no problem with the lens, so I returned it and haven't bought a third yet. I'm now considering trying yet again, but this time will buy it from a local camera store so that I can actually try it out before I spend the money. It will likely end up costing me $100 more than what I paid for it on Amazon.com, but at least I'll know my copy is good.
Of course, I could just wait and save up for the 35L I've been dreaming about..
On a 1.6x crop camera, do you think this lens is wide enough for indoor group shots? For example, people sitting around a table, or in a living room? I'm really looking for something fast and wide to use indoors, I have the 50mm f1.8 and it's just too long for anything other than portraits indoors.
Would the Sigma 20mm f1.8 be worth considering instead? I've heard mixed reports on it - mostly that it's huge and not very consistent.
If you have a zoom lens set it to 30mm and give it a look. The 30/1.4 is 48mm (equiv.) and works for the group shots that I have taken indoors. I suppose it depends on the size of the room.
okayfine wrote:
Quick question regarding assigning the focus to the * button :
Using AI focus, if you use center focus to focus on the subject, then hit the * button to lock focus, then recompose such that the subject is no longer in the center, the AI focus will still track the subject and keep it in focus even if it is outside the center focus point?
Thanks much.
This will work as long as you have all 9 AF points selected as available to the camera. As far as I'm aware, if you manually choose one AF point - the centre point, for example - then your subject will only be tracked by the focus system if it stays within that AF point. All 9 need to be selected for the AF system to pass off AF to another one of the points.
Thanks to this thread, I now have a 30mm on order myself. Hopefully it'll arrive tomorrow in time for my friend's birthday party this weekend.
Sal: what's the low-light focusing like? Are you using a flash assist to focus? I started this thread the other day to work out how to shoot this party that I'm going to, and have settled on the 30mm for the job - I don't know if I'll get away with AF, or whether I'm going to have to manually focus most of my shots, or if I'll have to buy a flash... tricky, tricky.
I'm not using flash assist as I haven't upgraded my old 430EZ which I use manually on occasion. I 'm using AI Servo with the center AF point only, not to track action, but as a workaround for very low light focusing. It seems to give the AF system a couple of extra chances at bringing the lens into focus in low light. It has really made a difference with my all of my fast primes.
Peter Gregg wrote:
My 30 1.4 came in as I was going to a family get together. To "make or break" my feelings towards this lens I took the camera and this lens only. I wanted to see how frustrated I would get with only 1 lens and see how bad I would miss my 24-70 L.
Not at all.
That's what I have found. I have taken the camera out on some close to home day trips with only the 30/1.4. I wanted to test the minimal combo for some traveling I will do this summer. For my style of shooting it passed the test. The flexibility to go from dark interiors (with no flash) to full sun is more important to me than the variety of different focal lengths my zooms offer. I have definitely turned into a prime kind of guy.
