Sigma 180mm Macro EX DG - Sample Images

A couple of images shot today. ISO 800 was a mistake, I forgot to check the settings before shooting.

A woodland flower


Pentax *istD, 1/500 @ f8 & ISO 800 - PP'd in Lightroom

Wild Boar - I wanted to see its telephoto performance.


Pentax *istD, 1/250 @ f5.6 & ISO 800 - PP'd in Lightroom

A few more here.

I'm going to like this lens . . . a lot. When I've taken some 'proper' macro images, I'll post them.

It looked a very bright sunny day, or is that as a result of the 800iso :

So what are your intitial thoughts :

A couple of the telephoto shots looked a little soft :

I look forward to a few macro shots though to get my interest bubbling

It was a bright sunny day. The flower was in partial shade, but the boar pics are in the sun, back lit.

The soft ones, of the babes, are heavily cropped as I'm not brave enough to get close to these guys. They are truly wild and very dangerous when they've got young ones, but the restaurant owner throws maize out for them at the end of the day and they come down to feed. There's also a lot of dust around, kicked up by the adults.

These were quick 'n dirty shots, no finesse at all. Any softness is probably down to me rather than the lens and I had a bit of a problem with the shutter release, sometimes it didn't fire so some camera shake may have occured too. I should have checked all of the settings before shooting but the boar's are very timid and are easily frightened away, so I just turned the camera on and fired away.

I'll take some more next week with the K10D and mono/tripod.

My initial thoughts: Build quality is good, optics are free of flaws (that I can see), at nearly 1Kg I thought it was going to be difficult to hand hold but it seems OK.

I like it, but I need to take a few more pics to cement my affection for it. I can't afford either of the available SMCP-A* 200mm macro lenses either

Whilst I don't use AF for macro work, it's useful as a telephoto lens so AF is a bonus, which the A* 200mm doesn't have of course.

My thoughts also
I would like to be able too use it as a tele also, so AF is handy in that respect.

Clarky,

Having seen some of your recent pics I was determined to find at least one decent subject. Nothing, until I found this little chap . . .
but he's all I can find at the moment. Head is a little off focus, I'll try harder next time. Lighting was difficult as it was buried in a bush and quite a few of the reject shots had bad vertical pattern noise in the shadows behind.



Hand held Pentax K10D, Sigma 180mm EX DG Macro, 1/180 @ f16, ISO 100, AF540FGZ with Sto-Fen Omnibounce.

Pete
I like the capture Is that its nest it is sitting on or is it raiding someone elses :
Is this a crop : and how close too it were you when you snapped it.
Just trying to get some perspective on the lens

The nest is a very small one, probably its own, probably new this year. I've seen them up to about 4 - 6 inches in diameter, open cells, always facing south and at about 45 degrees to the ground (minimises the profile of the nest against the sun I guess, to keep it from cooking the larvae). These nests are quite different to the ones we had in UK which were round paper (chewed wood pulp) nests.
It's only been cropped from landscape to portrait and a bit taken from the bottom.

The front element of the lens was about 8 - 12 inches away from it.

The nest is only about 8 inches from the ground, inside a bush, and close to a wall. It was quite a windy day, I had to sit down, lean back against the wall, lean to my left at about 30 degrees from vertical. I could only hold the camera in landscape to get enough light from the flash on to it.
I really needed the ring flash for this one (stepping ring on its way).

This is the whole frame as it came from the camera, no PP whatsover.

8-12 inches is about as close as I'd want to get to one of them; in fact, I don't think anyone makes a macro lens long enough that will get me taking 1:1's of wasps! Nice shot though

Chicken!

Dan

Sure am!