A Review of a "working" lens; not a "show off" lens.

Some lenses for digital cameras are "show off" lenses. You probably don't need them and you almost certainly paid too much for them but it's so much fun to pull a super-fast 28mm, 50mm or even 135mm out of your camera bag, put it on you camera and marvel at how supersharp it might be while also decimating the detail in a background with the lens's splendid bokeh. It's also fun to see the expressions on fellow photographers' faces when you pull a $10,000 Noctilux out and casually lock it onto the front of your camera. Silly stuff, but most of us do variantions of that (but mostly more subtle). Deep down we tend to believe that some esoteric and frightfully expensive lens has some magic incorporated into its design and if we just try hard enough we'll be able to make wonderful photographs that will once and for all prove that we are worthy, first tier photographers. But after using such lenses, with results that are very rarely any better than our rank and file lenses, we calm down and, if we're excellent at deflection, we blame the camera and start doing research on the newest camera bodies. Ah well. Human nature. 

At some point, especially if you are a "working" photographer (as in: you need to deliver or you'll starve) you come to the conclusion that there are a number of lenses that are in no way prestigious but which are called on time and time again to actually complete assignments with. These are the lenses that are not usually the most expensive but on an income-producing-to-original-cost calculation these are the ones that really deliver most of the profitable images for us. Some are common sense. 

If you are an event photographer you almost certainly have a 24-70mm of some kind and also a 70-200mm lens as well. You might have some fancier, faster lenses in the bag too but if you are honest you'll admit that the hard-working twins, the normal zoom and the tele zoom do most of the heavy lifting for your business. 

I admit that I was absolutely seduced by the alarmingly expensive, 50mm f1.4 Lumix S-Pro lens. It's the "reference lens" for Panasonic's entire L-mount system. It's a lens reviewers rave about and which Panasonic trots out when they want to talk about the quality of their line up. Every rep from Panasonic I've ever talked to about the lens always turns it over to show you the "Leica Certified" engraving on the bottom side before launching into a soliloquy that makes the lens out to be the ultimate achievement of modern optical engineering. 

The only problem is that it's a lens I almost never use. The same was true with my first version Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens. I loved the idea of them but I barely got any use out of the 85mm because it was just too heavy and just too slow to focus for anything other than totally stationary subjects. The 50mm is a focal length I love to walk around with. But the S-Pro is so big that it blows any pretense of discretion right out of the water. Too bad I'm so attached to the idea of it that I just can't part with it....yet.  

These are the show off lenses. They sound so good. And in use the image quality of the two I mention above is, indeed, spectacular. But just like a low slung sports car that you'd love to drive more, if it won't clear the traffic humps in the parking lot it's not really useful...even if the theoretics of it are breathtaking. 

Then, on the other hand, there are the lenses we find we can't really work without. With every camera system I've owned I find that I eventually need to shell out for a macro lens, for one reason or another. It used to be that I got a lot of calls for micro photography of small semiconductor chip dies. At the time I'd shell out something less than $1,000 for a beautifully corrected macro lens and use it to generate many, many multiples of the purchase price. I also had a wonderful collection of copy stands, macro bellows (loved the Nikon PB-4) and extension tubes. Also, quite a collection of lens reversing rings. 

I've stopped doing that kind of work and I'm several systems past my last collection of macro equipment but after being asked to do a digital copy of an old slide I realized that I have a backlog of stuff that needs to be documented and, until the slide request, had never bothered to duplicate the macro capabilities I used to have previous to L-mount system. 

The Panasonic system and the Leica system are both guilty of having zero macro options in native L-mount versions. Sure, you can source older Leica macros and use them with adapters but even the older ones made for the R series are expensive and hard to find. Thankfully, Sigma has several macro lenses available for the L-mount systems and the one I bought is, in context, downright cheap. It's a "working lens." The kind of lens you buy because it does a few things very, very well and when you need what it does there are few workarounds that will fill the bill; you just need that specialty feature set. 

I purchased a Sigma 70mm f2.8 Art series macro lens in the L mount last Friday and have tested it enough to know that it's a keeper. It's a bit big and somewhat heavy but nothing like the other f1.4 and f1.2 lenses in the Art line up. In addition, the front filter ring is a diminutive 49mms. The lens retails everywhere for around $560 and it also available in other, lesser mounts. 

My first task was to get a perfect high resolution copy of the Ann Richards slide I showed last week. You know your macro lens is good enough when it sharply reproduces the actual film grain, complete with sharp edges on the grain. This lens does that at 1:1 (which is the maximum magnification ratio).  The lens was easy enough to use on a Panasonic S1R. I switched the camera to electronic shutter and set the shutter delay at 8 seconds to make sure there was no movement at the time of exposure. I stopped the lens down to f8 partially because I think most macros are sharpest there, but also because the added depth of field helps to compensate for film curvature if you are shooting your slide while it's in its original cardboard mount. With nearly 50 megapixels of raw detail to work with the slides I shot on Friday, and again on Saturday, were as good or much better than any I had previously scanned with dedicated film scanners like the Nikon LS-4000. And being able to do each copy with a single shot was vastly more efficient than the multiple passes of the older technology. 

The extra stand-off distance of the lens from the subject is nicer for me than the typical 55 or 60mm macro lenses but it also more useful for a wider range of subjects than the 100, 105 and 180mm versions. The Sigma's 70mm is a Goldilocks focal length for me. I like it. 

Besides the heavy weight and bigger size of the lens there are one or two things which you might not like. They don't bother me but then I'm not a universal measure of how things should be done, and my taste doesn't always transfer well if you have different imaging needs. The first thing people complain about with this lens is that when shooting in the real macro ranges it is slow to focus. I find that while the lens dawdles a bit it's accurate and eventually gets where I need it to be without many misses. If you need a super speed, AF focusing macro you might have to look elsewhere.

Another stumble is that the lens is not internal focusing. The front of the lens trombones as you can see in one of the photos below. That's actually a feature; at least Sigma and I think so. Since the front lens element and front tube move forward when focusing the lens doesn't change to a shorter and shorter focal length as you get closer to life-size. That focal length change is similar to the idea of focus breathing in video. 

With internal focusing lenses the lens's focal length gets shorter and shorter as you focus. This changes the composition and the overall look of an image when compared to the same lens used closer to infinity. Not so with the Sigma. It doesn't change angle of view throughout its focusing range. 

If you can live with the lens barrel extending as you go for smaller and smaller magnification ratios (closer and closer to lifesize) then this lens makes sense because, optically, it's pretty darn great and it's about one half the price of competitive lenses from Sony, et al. The one other thing to consider is that the lens doesn't have image stabilization built-in. On Leica SL2 cameras and Panasonic S series cameras this isn't an issue since both company's cameras have very, very good IBIS. 

If you take the lens out of the studio and use it as a conventional street shooting lens you'll find that with judicious use of the focusing limiter switch you get fast autofocusing and quick lock-on without many episodes of focus hunting. You'll also be treated to a lens that is critically sharp from side to side by f4.0, which is where I tend to set this lens unless I know I need or want more depth of field.  (more following the pix) >

This is the Sigma DG 70mm Macro f2.8 Art lens in the L-mount

attached to a Panasonic S1 body. The lens is fairly large

but about half the weight of the first generation 85mm

Art lens for the L-mount. It's mostly metal and has a very high

caliber finish. It's a solid choice for everyday work.

The 70mm has some controls on the side of the lens.

The top control is a garden variety AF/MF switch while the bottom

switch allows you to quickly set focusing ranges to speed up shooting 

in known distance ranges. I mostly worked with the camera set 

to the 0.5m to infinity range on the street today.

On Friday and Saturday I use the 0.258-0.5m range.

This speeds up focusing and helps prevent hunting. 

It's a good feature to have.

While the lens lacks a traditional focusing scale wrapping around the lens barrel

the Sigma 70mm features a very useful close up scale on the tromboning 

front barrel. It's a different way of working but more precise for 

macro work and easy to get used to. Plus, it looks science-y.

When you get into the macro ranges the manual focusing takes a lot 

of turns of the focusing ring. That means it's slower to manual focus 

but you can be very precise as the long "throw" gives you 

heightened, exacting focus discrimination. Couple this with 

focus magnifying and you'll get ultra sharp stuff 100% of the time.

While my preliminary tests are more in line with my typical use cases for a macro lens I'm always interested in how it performs as a long, normal lens when shooting on location for clients or out on the streets for myself. Today, since the worst of the cold fronts is yet to strike, I thought it would be wise to get in yet another walk. After I lovingly wrapped the last of the pipes and gently applied mulch to all nature of plants and trees, I took the S1 and the 70mm for a quick two miler around the downtown area. I tried to shoot a mix of magnification ranges. I was very happy with everything I photographed. I sometimes forget that the S1 is the spiritual center of the S system and is perhaps the best overall combination of features, resolution, speed, high ISO performance and price. It matches with the Sigma macro very well. And I am always surprised by how good the image stabilization in this camera is.  (more>)

The succulent on the white table just outside a series of beauty salons was a nice test subject with which to evaluate the out of focus rendering of the lens. I used f4.0 and found the background to be calm and balmy, in the best possible way. If you can handle the sharpness the 70mm would make a very good portrait lens. It's long enough and fast enough to give one good control over depth of field with a good ability to blur background detail in a way that doesn't draw too much attention to the effect. 

I was trying to see how well I could handhold the lens and still get a good, sharp and well magnified image. The image just above is the full frame while the image just below is an approximate, 100% crop of the image above. I love the sharpness of the spider webs....

The beauty of the larger size of both the Panasonic S1 body and the Sigma lens is that they are easy to handle and shoot with while wearing gloves. Both are very straightforward and feel like real photographic gear and not so much like artless constructs wrapped around mini-computers. While I'm coming to grips with my new Leica SL 2 I must say that working with the S1 series Lumix cameras has gotten to the point for me where they have become almost completely transparent in use. And that's exactly what I want in a work camera and a work lens. 

The 70mm is a good, inexpensive addition to the overall system and even though some of its functionality matches the recent 65mm lens I purchased they are different enough to each have their own specific uses. The 65mm is a nicer street and travel shooter, is one stop faster and has a unique and adorable optical character. The 70mm will come out for small, technical table top stuff and also slide and film copying. I should probably take a breather on new lens purchases and actually get out and use some of this stuff. I'm about 35 days away from both having the second dose of the vaccine followed by the 15 day wait for full immunity. After that I can travel with relative impunity. That's just what I've been waiting for...

Home Note: I want to thank everyone here again for the quick tutorials on surviving a giant cold snap. Our neighborhood association got 3 cords of firewood delivered and I get to pick up as much as I can stick in the Subaru tomorrow. We got the plants well mulched and added a work light to the water pipe junction box after which I re-covered it. I was going to put a digital thermometer in so I could check the internal temperature via Bluetooth but decided that was unnecessary. We have extra water, tons of food and have covered just about everything that can be covered. With all this planning I'm convinced that the weather people will have gotten the forecast wrong again and we'll have a few snow flakes, a couple hours of bitter cold followed by a week of mild temps. At least that's my contrarian hope.

 

Taking a break this morning to unwrap my Holiday Gifts from Panasonic. Santa came early with updates!

 

One of the many things I like about buying and using Panasonic cameras is the company's amazing generosity when it comes to firmware updates and the "gifting" to older cameras with the latest features. 

I was pretty impressed a while back when, out of the blue, Panasonic did an upgrade to the G9 that improved focus and, more important to me, added a bunch of higher end video capabilities to the camera even though those new additions would potentially reduce the market for their own GH5 camera when it comes to video use. Impressed again when Panasonic introduced a free firmware update to the GH5 this Summer improving continuous AF in video, along with lots of other tweaks. Not a paltry move when you consider that the G9 is already two years old and the GH5 is a three year old camera. In a couple of free updates Panasonic increased the useful life of two of their most popular cameras by a number of years!

When the newest addition to Panasonic's Lumix S series cameras came out the S5 included the newest and fastest AF software in the line up. Other camera makers might have waited to see how to leverage sales of the new camera but Panasonic announced, almost immediately, that all of their S1x cameras would be getting the same high performance AF algorithms in short order. They even gave us a date; the 24th of November!

Back to the studio. When I got back to the studio and fired up the computing machine I went straight to Panasonic's site to look for firmware updates. There were FOUR camera updates for four of the cameras that I regularly use. Those included the G9 (improved I.S.), the S1, S1H and the S1R. 

All of the S1 cameras got the same AF improvements which should bring them to par with the S5. We'll see it most in continuous AF and then most noticeably in video. I can't wait to see how it affects the S1H as I'm getting more and more video use from that camera. 

I won't go through everything but I will go through some of my favorite updates by model.

The S1R and the S1 both get the red frame line around the edges of the rear monitor when video recording is active. This is a feature that was already on the S1H and also on the Atomos line of external monitors. It's a very quick and obvious way to tell whether you are actively recording or if you didn't push the right button to get things started. It's a great "user" update. 

The S1R now shoots in 5K (4992x3744) video in both 24 and 30 fps. In .Mov you can shoot in 5K internally at 4:2:0 but with 10 bits. You can now shoot 4K in 10 bit, 4:2:2 to an external monitor up to 60 fps. I can't wait to try out the 5K performance and hope that downsampling to 4K makes for a more detailed 4K file, even if I can't shoot in 4:2:2. But speaking of 4K the camera can now be using at up to 60P with 10 bits and 4:2:2  when you output over HDMI to an external monitor/recorder. That's pretty spiffy. 

In the S1R the tracking and recognition of AF have been improved by way of a head recognition feature. My hope for this is that when using face detect AF I won't lose contact with the subject when they turn their face away from camera. We'll be testing that right away.

The S1R can now do high resolution audio recording using the XLR microphone adapter. You gotta use .Mov to get this.

We can now set shutter angle in the video menu. This is great for productions when we want to match cameras and we're working quickly. It's more control and gives more accurate video settings. 

The S1 had a major update earlier in the year which improved the range of video options in the cameras by a great deal. It's also slated to get a big update in the first quarter of 2021 which will add 6K ProRes Raw to the mix. But for right now the big improvements, in addition to the AF improvements which all of the S1x cameras share, are more about usability and minor functions.

The camera adds shutter angle to the video menu and it's AF performance has also been improved in V-Log mode. You can also now using the {AF+MF} when recording video. A few of the improvements are less important to me such as the ability to play back vertical videos vertically or being able to transfer 4K video files to a smartphone via wi-fi. But as soon as I talk down a feature I end up having a use for it so I'm glad they are there. 

The S1H got a huge update in July with Raw video being able to be output over HDMI to the Atomos Ninja V monitor/recorder. That's actual 12 bit Raw video data. That's really cool. So, on this firmware update we got the basic improvements in AF and the lesser upgrades like being able to transfer 4K to smartphones. They also mention some operational improvements in the way of bug fixes. 

All the improvements are most welcome and they go a long way towards solidifying Panasonic's video forward reputation in the hybrid camera market. With the S1H as the flagship video model the rest of the line closes the gap by a quite a bit which means better file matching across "B" and "C" cameras. For users who only occasionally dip into video it means that the S1R and base S1 become more than "good enough" to do 95% of the video work most of us will ever need. While having traditional photography cameras that are among the highest rated for overall image quality at sites like DXOMark. 

It's like an early Christmas present but without having to go out shopping or even spend more money. 

It's one of the less advertised features that makes me appreciate the Panasonic camera line. 

If you are shooting with Lumix/Panasonic cameras go here to see what kinds of updates they've got for your cameras: https://av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/dsc/download/index4.html

A break for swimming. Swim practice left me with mixed feelings today. We've done so well as a group at practicing pandemic safety at the masters swim workouts. We're supposed to be masked any time we're not in the pool swimming. But it seems like "pandemic fatigue" has set in with a number of our swimmers who are starting to act like the rules don't apply to them. That attitude really put me off today since we're in the midst of rising case numbers and hospital beds filling up. 

I talked to our coach and let him know we needed to honor the contract we make each week as we sign up for our choice of swims during the upcoming week. I hope he follows through and gets people back on track. I would hate to have to escalate to the club's B.O.D. (I served as V.P. of the board for 10 years and I'm sure they'd hate to have to deal with this...) and get everyone twisted up. 

Otherwise it was a good swim. Lots of medium distance repeats for a change. I'm still working hard at extending my reach in my freestyle stroke. You always need a target for improvement. 

Keep masking up till we get those vaccines out to the public. It might save someone you know from a world of pain.

A post job analysis of our live concert documentation. Video, video, video. (We'll circle back to photography shortly...).

I'm always hopeful that we'll get an evening where the temperatures drop into the high 50's and we feel as though a nice, light jacket would be welcome. Instead it was a typical Austin October evening with temps touching 80 and lots of humidity in the air. Better though than our recent theater videography sessions in 105 degrees.

I had a really good idea of what the shooting conditions (lighting, sight lines) at the plaza would be like since we photographed the same show there just this past Wednesday. The concert, with two singers and a three person band, started at 7:30 pm so the sun had fully set. The production folks built a stage just outside the front doors of the main theater but after a few rehearsals they decided to have the performers spend parts of the show out on an elevated walkway in front of the audience; just to add some motion and change to the hour long show. It was a good call for the audience but it meant we would need three video cameras to do an acceptable documentation of the show. We needed at least two views on each stage for editing purposes.

I arrived at 6 pm so I could set up the three cameras while it was still light enough to see. My main camera looked like some sort of "Rube Goldberg" science experiment. We had the DMW audio interface in the hot shoe with a big XLR cable running into socket #1 from the sound board that our engineer was overseeing, about 50 feet from my camera location. Just to the right of the audio interface my Atomos Ninja V was attached to the SmallRig cage. On the other side of the camera I had a headphone cable out, a full size HDMI cable from the Ninja running in, and a USB-C cable for quickly attaching a power bank (just in case) plugged in and ready. The power bank hung just below the camera in case our camera battery ran unexpectedly dry.

All of this sat on top of the new Sirui fluid tripod head. It's a nice head and very smooth but I think my rig was too heavy and totally out of balance. Next week I think I'll rig the Atomos to a tripod leg to take the weight off the top of the camera. I'll also do a better job balancing the weight forward and backward. The 70-200mm f4.0 weighs a lot. I can't imagine trying to balance the whole collection with the f2.8 version mounted on the camera.....

I had the camera set up to shoot 4K in the APS-C crop configuration. It's nice and crisp and turns the long end of the lens into a 300mm with no hit to the aperture. But a long lens, used wide open on moving subjects is very dependent on having that Atomos monitor fired up and working. It's impossible to really tell, by looking at the rear screen of the camera, when you have achieved really sharp focus. Maybe it's my old eyes but that last bit of tweak that provides the real "bite" in a well focused image is beyond my abilities without the aid of some screen tech. 

The Atomos screen is bigger and brighter to begin with. That helps. But while you can't use image magnification while recording on the camera you have no such limitation with the external monitor. I could punch in to 1:1 or even 2:1 to see very clearly exactly where the plane of sharp focus should be. And I could fix focusing errors while watching the enlarged screen while the whole time keeping the full frame on the camera's rear screen for composition/framing. The long lens, follow camera footage would be a mess if not for the Ninja V monitor. Truly a lifesaver. I've even started using the monitor routinely in the studio. It's a pleasant way to work with manually focused lenses. 

At this point I should mention that I tested out the autofocus with video at the long end of the lens and it's just too hit-and-miss. At least with manual focus once you are well focused and the actors are in a certain spot for a whole song there's none of the hunting that even the best systems are plagued with from time to time.

I monitored the audio coming off the sound board with headphones. We nailed the levels during rehearsal and the audio is flawless on the main camera.There's just scratch audio on the two stationary wide cameras. 

My biggest issue last night was just the fatigue of having to pay attention for an hour and fifteen minutes to every movement and every nuance of tripod management. How far to lock down the tilt. How much resistance was just right in the pan control. How to smoothly disengage the tilt lock to start a new move. And I made the mistake of wearing a pair of dress shoes I found in my closet. They looked so good but they obviously weren't engineered to be comfortable for hours of standing in one place...

There's not much to say about the second two cameras. I had an S1 set up to cover the front stage from side to side and then a GH5 to cover the secondary "stage." Someone asked earlier about the run time of the S1 camera in 4K thinking that it was 29.9 minutes but with the V-Log upgrade package from Panasonic for that camera you now get unlimited record times. Well, at least until the memory card runs out. You can attach a battery bank and charge while shooting so the battery isn't an issue. 

And these cameras are actually "Pro" cameras. Unlike the Canons and Sonys none of the four models of cameras we've used from Panasonic over the last two months has ever overheated. Never shown an overheat warning. Barely gotten warm to the touch. And we're not out shooting these in a Canadian snow storm, they work well right up to the 105 degree zone, and beyond. I'll gladly trade off small advantages in continuous AF for robust and bulletproof operational performance. Any Day. 

The third camera was the GH5 I purchased a few weeks ago. I put a Meike 25mm cine lens on it and set it up on a small tripod covering the "live" space on the secondary stage. This camera was also shooting 4K and ran for an hour and fifteen minutes, ending up with at least 50% battery power left over. No drama, no acting out. Just a good, solid working camera. Why oh why did I ever sell off the first batch?

All the of the cameras were loaded for bear when it came to memory. I had twin/matched 128 GB, V90 UHS-II cards in the GH5 and the S1H (both have two slots, both of which accept SD cards) while in the S1 I had a 128GB Sony CFexpress card backed up by a 128 GB V90 SD card. All the cameras were set for relay recording to the cards, just in case the show went long. I should not have worried, the show timed out with enough space left over on the cards for another 30 or 40 minutes of run time.

A while back I donated a Panasonic FZ2500 to the theater for day-to-day captures and quick interviews for the web. One of staff (Joshua; who has the task of editing all of this footage together...) used that camera to sweep up a bunch of b-roll while I was shooting the main stages. He got crowd shots, reaction shots, gear shots and wild side angles. Yes. I know. There can never be too much b-roll. 

We have three more weeks of shows. Each week features a new set of performers singing totally different shows. We'll be there to document each one of the shows. So, at least I know what I'll be doing (and how I'll do it) for the next three Saturdays. And unlike recent donations they theatre is actually paying me for these. 

It's fun to problem solve so many different kinds of projects. From small and intimate to big and boisterous. It's also nice to have cameras in my hands for so long and so often. It gives you a feeling of being totally conversant and comfortable with your equipment. That makes every move and every decision a bit more fluid. It's a great way to learn the ins and outs of a camera system. Everyone should try it. Before they review their first camera....

Hope your weekend was fun and comfy. More to come.