Thanksgiving Prosecco. Bring your camera to the table.

Panasonic GH5 and the Sigma 56mm f1.4. 

Bokeh-Masters for m4:3.

 

Heading in for a little facial surgery tomorrow. Part of a witness protection program? Vanity inspired plastic surgery? Naw, just a bit of cancer remediation. Wish me luck!

In the meantime, is anyone out there using the Leica SL2? I'd love to read what you think about it if you are. I've been bouncing back and forth for months about whether or not to "invest" in one. I may be too fickle to make the "one camera forever" thing work. But you never know...

Write me in the comments if you have experience. If you want to write a guest column about your experiences we can certainly entertain that. But you have to be a real, hands on user and not just a Leica hater with an axe to grind. There are other sites for that.

A short review of the Sigma Contemporary 56mm f1.4 lens for m4:3 cameras. And another installment of photos from last evening's walk.

Sigma is currently on a roll and putting out some really great lenses; especially for L-mount and m4:3 mount cameras. I recently bought the 85mm f1.4 DG DN Art lens for full frame L mount and found it just as good, optically, as their original 5 pound 85mm 1.4. You remember that big, hulking lens ---- the one that made Zeiss Otus 85mm owners weep openly at the thought that they could have three copies of a better lens for the price they paid for their manual focusing one... 

The 85mm I replaced the earlier 85mm with is not an outlier when it comes to lens performance from Sigma's art series. I also own the 20mm f1.4, and the 35mm f1.4 and find both of those lenses to be an unusual combination: high optical performance and yet priced low enough to be accessible to most users.

But this year my experiences with their Contemporary 45mm f2.8 led me to look at more lenses than just the Art lens series lenses for full frame. In the early part of the year I picked up the 16mm f1.4 DG DN Contemporary series lens and was quite impressed with its performance, even wide open, when used on various m4:3 cameras. A month ago I was in my favorite camera store when I spied a lens I'd read about but never used. It's the 56mm f1.4 DG DN which is available in either m4:3 mount or e-mount. I only covers up to an APS-C sensor so it's not for full frame camera owners but I guess you could use one on any of the Sony A7 series cameras in the "crop" mode. 

I asked the salesperson if I could see the lens on a camera body and he stuck one on a GH5 and handed it over. After I cleaned the fingerprints off the demo GH5 and set the diopter correctly (for me) I walked around the store focusing on stuff to see how fast the AF is and also shooting frame after frame so I could evaluate the sharpness wide open. 

The view through the finder was impressive. Bright and snappy is a good way to describe the performance. 

The lens is rather small; about the size of a "nifty-fifty" from the days when both Nikon and Canon made reasonably sized normal lenses. That makes sense since the lens is basically the same focal length. It's faster than the economy normals but it doesn't have to cover the full 35mm frame so it doesn't need to be much bigger. 

If you use this lens on an APS-C Sony it will give you a full frame angle of view equal to an 84mm lens. If you use it on a m4:3 camera it will give you a full frame angle of view equal to about 112mm. Unlike the barebones f1.8 normals this lens is an f1.4 and uses both a super low dispersion element and a couple of aspherical elements. The lens design is more complex, with 10 elements in 6 groups. The aperture uses 9 blades for better out of focus rendering and the filter diameter is a nice and calm 55mm. 

Sigma has done a wonderful job with this lens. Many times you'll buy a fast, f1.4 lens and not be able to use it (convincingly) until you stop it down a stop or two. Many fast normal lenses are okay in the center of the image area but fall apart on the edges and in the corners when you use them at f1.4. You kinda wonder why you bothered to pay for the two extra stops if you can't get the shots you want without having to stop down to f2.8. The 56mm repudiates that trend. It's very sharp in the center at the widest aperture and more than sharp enough on the peripheries. And the lens has "bite." 

To evaluate its resistance to flare be sure to look at fourth and sixth images below. Both have direct, hard lights shining directly into the frame and both images were taken with the lens at or near full aperture. You'll see very little flaring and no weird rays or artifacts. In this regard the 56mm performs better than lenses I've owned which cost three or four times as much. 

In terms of size and weight balance (the unit weighs right around one pound) this lens is a perfect match for a camera like the GH5 or G9. It's also a perfect match for those cameras when it comes to focusing. Even in dark areas and weirdly lit scene the S-AF was quick to lock on, didn't hunt and was absolutely accurate. 

If you are mostly in love with wider angle lenses we'll understand if the longer focal length on m4:3 isn't  your cup of tea but if you really like doing portraits and wish you could have more control over depth of field when shooting in m4:3 then this lens is a worthy contender. It's usually priced at $479 but every one in the camera industry has most of their stuff on sale right now so I'm seeing consistent pricing here in the USA of around $429. I wish it was $100 but then I also wish I had a V-12 engine in my Subaru Forester and I also wish that V-12 would get 40-50 miles per gallon driving around town.

It was refreshing to walk around downtown at dusk and into the "dark blue" hour. I let the camera roam around the ISO settings by putting it in Auto ISO and setting the ceiling at 3200. This was a nice opportunity to use the lens at its widest apertures without having to resort to neutral density filters or super high, electronic shutter speeds. 

Why have this lens for the GH5 when I also have the 85mm Art lens and a 90mm Leica lens for the full frame, S1 system? Well, the way I see it, the big stuff is for work and the small stuff is for play and personal work. It's okay to have both. Multiple systems come in handy for lots of stuff. But I have to say that the 110mm focal length is quickly becoming one of my favorites for quick, tight shots and art in available darkness.

Note the lack of flare from the oncoming headlights.

Focuses down to about a foot and a half. Not bad considering the angle of view.

Note the lack of flare from the spotlight over the mannequin's right shoulder.

The Seaholm development, built around the bones of a retired power plant, lights up the evaporator stacks for the holidays. It's a fun look.
 

Taking the Sigma 56mm f1.4 DC DN lens in the M4:3 mount out for a spin. Nice and small.

Ben turned 25 this week. I'm stunned how fast time sprints. The kid is doing great. Looking at a new job as a writer for a cutting edge tech company and generally staying fit and centered. I'm always happy when he drops by the office in running apparel and tells me he's heading off for a long run around the lake. He's so, so much faster than me but I guess that's to be expected, given our 40 year age difference... 

We had dinner with him last night and I took a few photographs of him with the new lens. 

I picked up the new lens on Thursday. I meant to get a used camera but I started psycho-analyzing myself on the drive out and decided that my desire to buy new cameras right now must be a reflexive reaction to not being able to go any place or shoot anything exciting. I thought maybe a lens would be a less Jungian trope.

I'd been thinking about this lens for a couple of weeks. I wasn't paying attention when it was first announced but Sigma's Contemporary lens line has mostly been surprisingly good. The current line up, consisting of the 16mm f1.4, the 30mm f1.4 and the 56mm f1.4, is really superb considering the moderate cost. They offer the lenses in the Sony E mount, the M4:3 mount, the Fuji mount and now the L mount. All three lenses are designed to cover APS-C sized sensors, and smaller. I can't see the logic of me getting an L mount version since I have so many "normal" lens options for the Panasonic S1 cameras and the Sigma fp. So it was a pretty straightforward choice to opt for the M4:3 mount.

The Sigma 56mm f1.4 has an extremely sharp center area; even wide open. It's a great, longer lens for a small sensor system if you routinely want to photograph under low light conditions and you don't need expansive depth of field. The lens body is much smaller than that of the 16mm f1.4 and the front filter diameter is a very useful 55mm. The lens doesn't not include image stabilization and I think that helps keep the size and weight down. 

Just like the new 85mm f1.4 Sigma Art lens (v2) the 56mm was designed with compromises that are largely meant to be fixed by automatic, in-camera correction software. Both the lenses feature exhibit a relatively high degree of pincushion distortion and both have appreciable vignetting when used wide open. Used on a Lumix GH5, G9 or GX8 the system seems to do a good behind the scenes job making everything look great. 

I pulled the lens out of its box yesterday, put it on a G9 body and headed out for a walk through downtown. The focus was quick, precise and accurate. I'm happy with the optical performance and I've put a selection of images down below so you can see for yourself. Be sure to click on them to see them larger. 

My birthday comes up next week and I think I'll use the opportunity to spend more time swimming and less time thinking about what new gear to buy. Seems like more of a New Year's Resolution than a birthday thought but there you have it.

We're having our first "cold" snap here. My Calgary Friend, Eric, will laugh at this but it got all the way down to 52° Fahrenheit last night and I got to wear a light jacket this morning. After swim practice I bought a coffee and an egg sandwich and went to my favorite park to sit at a concrete picnic table to eat, drink coffee and watch the millennials play Frisbee Golf. Nice to just do normal things and watch happy activities in a year so fraught and disturbing. Be sure to turn off the news from time to time and watch people play and laugh and have fun. It's a reminder that we're meant to be good and to have fun. But sometimes we have to work at it.

I had coffee with a friend who is, politically, my polar opposite this last week. We skirted political conversations. We spent a lot of time discussing video. When we left we promised each other that no matter who wins the election we'll take a few days to recover and then, as usual, we'll meet for coffee. That made me feel good. 

I just can't pass up those multi-paned, reflective windows when I've got a camera in my hands.

We started out our day with the usual heat and humidity and then the winds blew in 

from the north, sucked the humidity out and dropped the temperatures quickly. Sweet.

There was never a reason for valet parking to exist in Austin when I came here to go to the University. The city was sparsely populated. You could park anywhere. The parking meters cost a dime for six hours.

Now that our economy is adapting and recovering the valet parking is roaring back.

It all seems so strange to me. It always has.

Fun to watch the wind gusts blow the trees over a bridge. It felt like the first day of Fall. 

An odd business concept. 

An electric boat on Lady Bird Lake. All selfies all the time...

String. Blowing in the cool wind.