Taking a first journey with the Sigma 65mm f2 DG DN, I-series, Contemporary lens. Love at first focus.

I've been waiting impatiently for this lens to arrive in the market. I've always liked shooting with the 50mm focal length but on occasions when I was able to photograph with a 58mm or even a 60 macro I almost always felt like I was getting closer to the sweet spot for my photography. I own a fast 85mm but it feels like a compromise to me. My portrait work feels better at longer focal lengths like 100 to 135mms. But my casual, walking around looking for found objects and casual people photography always felt like it needed to be shorter than the 85. I've been looking for the "Goldilocks" focal length that I was sure lived somewhere between 50mm and 85mm for a long time.

I mentioned 60mm lenses but the ones I found were always macro lenses like the Leica 60 Elmarit-Makro or the Nikon 60mm f2.8 Micro lens. Both of them had very long focusing helicoids and hunted like mad badgers. Both were also optimized for close-up work and were less convincing at longer focus distances. What I've been looking for is a lens that handles like a 50mm in terms of focusing speed, size, weight and speed but has more reach and the ability to isolate objects to a greater degree than a 50mm.

Last Fall Sigma announced three new additions to their line of L-mount lenses which cover full frame sensors. The lenses were: A 24mm f3.5, a 35mm f2.0 and a 65mm f2.0. The specs on the 65mm looked most promising. It's a thoroughly modern optical design that uses three different specialty glass elements. The overall design uses 12 elements in 9 groups, which represents a fairly complex and sophisticated design for a long, normal lens. And the other specs indicate that this lens is constructed completely out of metal; all the way down to the lens hood. 

Knowing how uncertain the product channels are these days I decided that I'd pre-order a copy. I did so at both B&H Photo and at my local dealer, Precision Camera. My sales associate at Precision texted me about four hours ahead of B&H's notice. I cancelled the B&H order and headed up to PC the next morning to grab the lens. That was yesterday. 

I had so many good intentions to get out of the neighborhood with a camera and this lens this morning and really put it through its paces but too many things came up. I'm the family I.T. director and there were network issues today. Still not totally resolved but there are workarounds in place that ensure basic productivity for all three of us here. There was a car issue that needed to be taken care of. Who knew that Toyota would launch a third recall for defective airbags in one model. It's the kid's car but he was engulfed in a work project and didn't have the bandwidth to mess with getting a car to service. That also fell to me. 

By four o'clock I was hellbent on getting out to get more fresh air (got tons this morning at swim practice) and to see if the lens was as good as I thought it might be. It was. 

The lens is solidly made and features a grippy, metal knurled focusing ring and the same for the aperture setting ring. The aperture can be set on a tactilely luxurious, external ring or you can set the ring to the "A" setting and use a camera dial to control the aperture.  The lens hood has the same design aesthetic as the 45mm f2.8 lens's hood. It's solid metal with a knurled finish that matches well with the focusing ring and the aperture ring. While the lens comes with a standard "pinch to remove" lens cap it also comes with a solid metal lens cap that is held on by magnets embedded under a felt ring. It's so lux. 

While the 65mm f2.0. isn't tiny and certainly isn't a pancake lens, neither is it like the newest generations of gargantuan 50mm lenses with enormous front elements and 82mm filter rings. The lens is about 1/2 the volume and weight of the 50mm S-Pro lens for the Lumix L-mount cameras. It feels just the way a long normal lens should feel, if you grew up in the days of film lenses and use those as a referent. 

While f2.0 isn't a super fast f-stop it's more than enough for current, full frame cameras  which seem to handle ISOs like 3200 and 6400 effortlessly. I've been veering away from my tired, old dogma of using the cameras at their base ISOs for highest quality and have started setting my ISO to Auto and letting my cameras head north; toward photon fulfillment. The S1 is happiest at 6400 and below. The S1R likes to settle in at 3200 and below, while the Sigma fp is perfectly happy all the way up to ISO 12,800.  It all seems like magic to me. But I'm happy to take advantage of it. Especially if I'm working in black and white. 

My first tests with the new lens were to see just how well it performed at f2.0 and I'm happy to report that it's nicely sharp wide open. Stopping down to f5.6 improves the performance incrementally but it's already so good wide open that the improvements are modest. This means I can use the widest apertures with impunity instead of dancing around with sloppy edges, and trying to valiantly get to f4.0 or slower. 

I used the lens to shoot about 200 images this afternoon. It was cold, bright and crisp outside in the late afternoon and I was happy to be mobile and moving. I should probably give the long suffering keyboard a rest and just let you browse the final images. 

I used the Sigma 65mm f2.0 DN DG lens on a Lumix/Panasonic S1R and it seemed like a great match when considering the overall look and integrity of the package. It also represented a perfectly balanced mix. The camera felt absolutely neutral and comfortable in my hands. My only issue so far was that the lens and camera had trouble focusing through a couple of dirty, glass windows but I switched to manual and had the focus nailed quickly. The manual ring, while fly by wire is very well damped and has a nice, predictable feel to it. In fact, it didn't just make manual focusing proficient or easy, it made manual focusing fun. 

I shot all the images presented below as fine Jpegs. Knowing I'd only be presenting this work on the web I chose to shoot in the medium size setting of just under 24 megapixels.

I found the lens a delight from two points of view. First, I liked the focal length and framing. Secondly, I loved the whole idea of a reasonably fast, perfectly sized and masterfully built lens on the front of my camera. I can't imagine even a Leica lens exceeding the build quality on display here. 

I am smitten which will probably signal the death knell for this whole blog enterprise since I can imagine that I'll never want to use anything else ever again and you will become bored in a five or six months after I write hundreds and hundreds of paeans to the 65mm lens's magnificence. A wonderful addition to any L-mount kit. And, for those lucky Sony A7x owners--- it's also available in e mount. 

A bargain at $699. (USD)

Click to go big.

An interesting day back at work. And two interesting camera announcements.

Reykjavik, Iceland

I packed up my bags last night and left them in a small pile next to my cart, just inside the door to my studio/office. This morning I loaded the bags and the cart into the back of my little Subaru Forester and pointed the car toward the downtown business district. I haven't accepted many jobs since the lockdowns began but the one I did today and the other that I did a week ago both felt safe. Both were for high-end law firms and in both cases the only people in the sprawling offices were the partners who were there to be photographed, along with a skeleton crew of staffers who answer phones and keep the engines of jurisprudence turning. I won't go into details but both offices were in buildings with tighter security than I would have ever imagined and the safety measures were Herculean. I can't recall a time in my life when I've had my temperature measured more often. Or, when I've had to attest to health questions with such seriousness. 

I'll just say I went into today's shoot double-masked and ready. But what I really wanted to write about today was gear. What gear and why gear.

The portraits I was making this morning were a continuation of a series I started for this company nearly five years ago. The architecture at the firm's office is light and airy, and nestled high up on the 28th floor of a recently constructed high rise. There are walls made of frosted glass, which have color tints to them, and are beautifully lit by morning sun. The long halls with the frosted glass, framed by warm woods, are perfect portrait backgrounds; especially when I drop the hallways mostly out of focus. 

In the past I would have chosen a camera with the highest resolution and the easiest operation to work with on such a location but in the five years I've been delivering these portraits they have never been used for much more than website content. A very nicely designed website but still, just web use. I've photographed with a bunch of different cameras and lenses on successive shoots but I've found that longer than normal lenses work best and also, cameras with low noise at high ISOs are preferable. That opens up each engagement, in my mind, as an opportunity to experiment and to work with cameras that I like just because of their special charms (think: eccentricities). 

Today I was inspired to work with the Sigma fp (with rear LCD loupe attached) paired with an ancient, wonderful, Contax/ Carl Zeiss 135mm f2.8 lens. The whole set-up looked bizarre since there's no pentaprism hump, the camera is small and the loupe sticks out behind almost as much as the lens stick out in front. It's visually as if the camera, lens and loupe are balanced at the centerpoint of the whole construction.

Of course, if you are going to use the Sigma fp for portrait work it's probably a foregone conclusion that you aren't going to be using flash. I think it would be pretty difficult to get the ambient light balance right with a sync speed of something like 1/30th of a second for the flash. You'd waste a lot of time worrying about subject movement as well. 

I've come to grips with the fact that digital cameras have vastly improved as far as high ISO noise is concerned so I have no hesitation at all in using the current 24 megapixel, full frame cameras at ISOs of 800 or 1600 or even 3200 for pristine portraits. At ISO 800, using a couple of Godox SL150 ii LED lights in soft boxes, and matching the ambient light intensity I was able to shoot at f4.0 with shutter speeds around 1/320th of a second; which is just right for me. 

I knew that the lights look best when my white balance is set to 5100 K so I just went there and let the background fall where it was going to fall. Most of the translucent walls are lit by exterior sunlight so I knew I wouldn't be too far off. 

The 135mm lens was as good as any zoom lens I've used in the past ten years. And being MF, once I really punched in and fine focused I was happy to re-remember that people don't move so much when you are doing a classic portrait. With focus peaking engaged one soon learns to interpret the intensity of the peaking colors to know where you are in the focusing range. It's a good re-check methodology and seems just as good as waiting for cameras and lenses to lock on automatically.

The files were just exactly what I had in mind; beautiful and filled with detail. Different than other cameras but only in tonality, not color.

New Stuff. When I got back to the office, with a cup of coffee in hand, I checked into the camera news sphere while I waited for the files I'd shot to upload to Lightroom. I was amazed to see that Fuji has just now released a 100 megapixel, medium format camera in their GFX series for a bit more than half the price of their previous, $10,000 ultra resolution, 100 Megapixel camera. At $6000 for a 100 megapixel, quasi-medium format camera they seem to have just jumped over and check-mated yesterday's Sony Alpha One camera. At least from the perspective of non-sports, non-video production users. A camera like the GFX 100S makes buckets and buckets more sense for corporate shooters, portrait photographers, landscape photographers, still life specialist, lifestyle experts, advertising photographers etc. than a camera whose basic claim to fame is: "We can autofocus and shoot faster." Or "We deliver more nearly identical, huge files per second than anyone else."

Dollar for dollar I'd always choose the larger format GFX 100S over the hummingbird speed Sony any day. But then, I don't shoot field sports, car racing or full contact bungee jumping so I'm not in the target market. 

But that brings me back in a circle to why I picked the camera and lens I did for the portrait shoots today: Because I like the look and quality of the files I can get from that specific camera. If the quality is there I can figure out how to get things in focus by myself.

I mentioned two new cameras and I've already covered the Sony (as much as I think I needed) yesterday. So what other camera did I see today? It's the opposite end of the Fuji interchangeable lens camera line-up. They've "improved" the Fuji Xe-3 and made it into a smaller, lighter Xe-4. The big upgrade is the sensor. It's the same great sensor that sits in the X100V, the XPro-3 and the XT-4. And the new camera comes packed with 16 film simulations to play with. It's small, compact and lightweight. Add a 23mm f2.0 to it and you have, in some ways, an interchangeable lens X100V. It looks cute and minimalist and doesn't cost a fortune. Maybe just right for all those people for whom practicality at any cost is a religion. 

It felt nice to get out and shoot today. I find that I still remember how to make portraits. What a relief. 

Tomorrow, maybe I'll write about a new lens. Yeah. That sounds good. Something unique and special. Nothing else like it. Even down to the magnetic lens cap.......

Red House.

 

Sony shaves, tapers and swings for the fences. A jumbled, mixed sports metaphor when I really just meant to say that Sony has introduced an interesting, new camera.

Fuji X100V. In Johnson City.

If you haven't been over on YouTube today you might have missed the newest blast of information from Sony this morning. They've just introduced a brand new camera called an Alpha One. The body looks similar (maybe a little beefier? I can't tell from the screen images...) to the recently introduced, A7SIII but the specs are actually pretty amazing. The camera uses a new, stacked BSI 50 megapixel sensor and can shoot full res raw, 50 megapixel images at 30 frames per second. To gild the lilly, it's able to do this with NO viewfinder blackout. 

Here's the product announcement video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0lLCqmHSSg&feature=youtu.be

The camera is also capable of shooting 8K video at 10 bit, 4:2:2 for up to 30 full minutes without overheating and shutting down. For video shooters Sony has finally included a full sized HDMI port along with a USB 3.2 port and an Ethernet port. 

The Alpha One has two CF Express card slots which will also allow one to use SD cards instead. 

The camera is, without a doubt, a technical tour de force. From a 9 megapixel EVF to a 1/400th flash sync (1/400 with mechanical shutter but a full 1/200th per second flash sync with the fully electronic shutter) nearly every spec is better than anything else on the market. 

Sony even went into full competition with Leica...on price. While a brand new SL2 from Leica retails for $5999, Sony upped the ante by pricing the new Alpha One at an eye-watering $6500.

The new Sony will offer two amazing performance advantages. One is the state of the art AF for fast moving subjects and the other is pure speed and responsiveness (data throughput) when shooting continuously with Raw files.

So, who is this camera for? I'd say it's aimed squarely at sports shooters and it's almost certainly scheduled to come out, at least in limited supplies, in time for the Tokyo Olympic games scheduled for late Summer this year. I think it will also be a popular camera with movie making professionals who will enjoy using this camera on a gimbal for high impact, fast moving shots with perfect focus lock on. 

Is it a camera for the fine art photographer who shoots found objects at a leisurely pace? Probably not. 

But it's a fun bit of catharsis for a market that's been battered over the last year(s). 

Will I buy one? Who knows. I seem to be working my way through most of the interesting camera models but the time frame is vague. The future is hard to see. I may just buy an 8 x 10 view camera and start doing platinum prints instead. But probably not. 

Anyway, Sony produced a very nice intro video for their new system camera system so head over to YouTube and take a look. Or grab an older Olympus EP-2 and go have a nice, colorful walk instead. 

 Here's the Sony Alpha YouTube Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/c/SonyAlphaUniverse/videos

Lots and lots at which to look...

A quick but happy assessment of an old lens that rivals any of the new zooms covering this focal length. If you want to use one of these you'll have to learn to manually focus.

You'll have to take my word for it but at 100% on a 5K Retina monitor 

you can see, clearly, the rivets on the metal bridge. It's actually stunning. 

Very much equal, at this focal length to the same focal 

length on both Nikon and Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lenses I've shot with. 

There is a classic focal length that I've liked since my early days in photography. It's the 135mm lens. While we've more or less bought into the idea that our 70-200mm f2.8 zoom lenses are worlds better now than the older, prime lenses of the film days my latest foray tells me that we been sold a bill of goods. The single focal length lenses from the 1980's and 1990's can be every bit as good as our $2,000 wonder lenses it's just that you'll have to put a bit of initiative into their use. You'll have to become proficient and quick with your manual focusing skills. 

In a moment of weakness I watched a video from DPR, hosted by Chris Nichols and featuring Canadian YouTube star, Irene Rudnyck. Irene is a portrait/glamor/fashion photographer whose images of young, attractive women have earned her a huge following. She was helping prop up Digital Photo Review by working with Mr. Nichols to provide a review on an older (but still auto focusing) 200mm f1.8 Canon lens. 

After working with the Canon lens and plumbing the depths of zero depth of field she made the comment that after a long spell of using mostly 50 and 85mm lenses she is now motivated to try working more often with longer focal length lenses. She mentioned that she thought the 135mm focal length might just be the optimum type of lens for her portrait work. See more here: Irene shoots long and fast

Her suggestion reminded me that the second lens I ever owned for an SLR was, in fact, a 135mm lens. It was a Vivitar Series One f2.8 lens and I used it for anything I couldn't cover with my first lens; a 50mm. I took the 135 on backpacking trips to Europe and also took it up to the summit of Long's Peak in Southern Colorado. It never failed me and it was so addictive to isolate subjects and see the background fall away like magic. 

So when Irene mentioned the 135mm in an appreciative way it jogged my memory and reminded me that one of my friends mentioned an older Carl Zeiss lens, made for the Contax Y/C systems was sitting on the used shelf at Precision Camera. It's the same model of lens I took with me to the Paris fashion shows back in 1994, along with a Contax camera. 

I drove up, haggled on prices, and returned home with both a 28mm and the 135mm Carl Zeiss Y/C lenses. My previous blog post was a pictorial review of the 28mm. Today, with a bit of late afternoon time on my hands I thought I'd give the 135mm Sonnar a spin around the downtown area and see if my memories of its performance match current reality. 

I used it on the front of a Lumix S1H camera, facilitated by a Fotasy lens adapter. I shot everything today at either f2.8 or f4.0. Might as well push the lens a bit since those are the f-stops I'd want to use in real life practice. 

I'll let the images speak for themselves but I am blown away by the performance of a lens one can buy for under $200 in 2021. It's very sharp and very even across the frame; even wide open. 

Flowers on the pedestrian bridge.

A crop into the center of the image just above. 

At 100% you can see the individual pollen granules on the flower's stamens.

combine this lens with the highly accurate focus peaking of the Lumix S1H

and toss in the IBIS and you have a killer walking around lens that can 

be focused quickly. 

This is a full frame shot at the closest focusing distance. 

this is a crop on the needle the lens was focused on in the images just above. 

No problems with flare. And this is wide open.

This is my "Alfred Hitchcock" frame at ISO 12800. 

this shot, and all that follow were done handheld at f2.8 with the camera 

at ISO 12800. Jpegs from the Lumix S1H. 

I'll happily settle for this kind of performance any day.

end of day. Too dark to see the buttons on the camera. 

an hour and a half spent looking and shooting.

3.5 miles of shoe leather left behind. 

Heading home for dinner with my family.

A nice end to the day.