Hi everyone

I came across this problem just by chance while trying to focus on the edge of a tree trunk.

What I suddenly realised was that it wasn't locking on unless I aimed slightly lower to the edge with the red focusing dot on my viewfinder, then it would lock and snap. And suddenly I found that the part of the tree trunk I was aiming to focus at in the beginning came out pretty sharper although that wasn't where I aimed at.

Then I decided to carry out some tests and this is what I found out.
So I am hoping someone could give me some idea of what is happening and what I need to do. I suspect this might require me digging in further into the manual but it would be great help and steping stone if someone could just briefly explain me what is going on.

All the images that are out of focus were aimed at the flower. Spot on in the middle of the flower and the images came out all out of focus.

The images that came sharper were all aimed at the bottom of the flower, right where the left leaf has grown. And I notice that these came out with the flowers sharpened.

I think this is an issue only with my 55-300 as the 100mm macro is the other one that I tend to use but I haven't noticed anything wrong with it. Having said that, I wasn't looking for any faults so I will go and check for the AF with that too.

Any help and advice is greatly appreciated

All images are 100% crop. To be sure that it wasn't just hand shake or breeze moving the flower I took 3 snaps at each focusing spot using the tripod

Oh I saw the EXIF on your gallery . nice shot, worth keeping it there as part of your portfolio.

About handheld or tripod , I fully agree with you, tripod is always such a hassle , but you definitely have done pretty well. These shots seem to be spot on on sharpness, am not sure if a tripod would have enhanced it further.

Great shots Mike

Did you take these ones handheld or on a tripod?

I wonder why they dont show any EXIF on the photo when I right click on it. Usually I am able to see as I am using firefox.

Thanks

Amin

Thanks everyone for all the input .

Helps with the motivation knowing I have been improving and taking my tiny steps towards better images

Jackie, these are all cracking shots, . The moment I look at them they immediately capture my full attention and I keep going up and down viewing it times and times again. Love the way the lighting reflects from some of the petals and the shiny bits from the inner part of the petals and outer ones, on the 2 and 3. Difficult even to select the most favourite one , I like them all.

Why aren't they in your gallery? , You should put them up , they look great to me.

Amin

John,
Let's see a couple of images which you had some "negative" comments. May be we all could learn from it too

I have seen your gallery and your portfolio website. Definitely impressed. So would be nice to see the road that lead to those fantastic images. Are we talking decades ago here?

Great advice Richard. Bound to follow that, will keep me off the shed with cold sandwiches for a good while .

Regarding the F stops on the 100 mm. With the grey skyes yesterday, it was so dark and I just couldn't manage to close the stop and not have the blinking flash light request from my K20 everytime, and the shutter speed going down. So it was a compromise.

Unless I am missing something here or a trick that if there is you all could give me some tips. Basically whenever I tried to stop the lens down consequently it affected the shutter speed and I did increase the ISO to what I thought it should be the limits.

The couple of the peacocks one I did manage to use the stop at f5 but I was lucky that the angles of the subjects were higher and getting more light. The ducks were really on an enclosed space.

Let's hope the sun stays on for a little longer as I am right in the middle of paperwork (grrr hate it ) and soon I finish I would love to go out wiht my 55-300 to a nearby nature reserve and see if I can make more use of my lens

Thanks again for all the help, its really useful

Amin

Mike

If this lens was around that price then it would certainly be a contender for the DA*300 in my view for my personal needs. Only thing that would make me hesitate is the weight addition. Having handled the DA*300 I feel that I could easily manage to shoot handheld on many situations if push come to shove, but I am not sure this would be still ok with that added weight of the sigma.

Oh, and it doesnt seem to have HSM. Testing the 150-500 I was truly marvelled by it

Gosh what a jump in price wow

Mike

Is this the one you mean? link

Gosh, the price, hehehe.

Know anyone around here who have it or used it?

Any links with images I could have a quick look? The spec look great, apart of being a bit on the heavy side compared to the DA*300, but again the zoom is a huge plus

Mike,

That's interesting to know, because I definitely could do with the zoom, if it doesn't come at a cost of image quality.

Let me check the prices and do a quick research. In the meantime anything else you all could add to help in my decision is really greatly appreciated.

Mike, thank you so much for this, off to look at it now