Comparison: Sigma 400mm f/5.6 HSM vs Sigma 600mm f/8 Mirror

I sold my Sigma 600mm this week, but before I shipped it out I did a head to head comparison between the Sigma 600mm f/8 Mirror (Reflex) and the Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO Tele-Macro HSM. The result was interesting, but not very surprising.

I tested three lens combinations:

1. Sigma 400mm alone
2. Sigma 400mm with 1.4x Tamron-F teleconverter
3. Sigma 600mm alone (well, using FD-EF adapter without the optical element)

In terms of setup, I shot across my living room and kitchen to a (mostly) flat Costco ad posted on a cupboard door. A single Sunpak 383 at 1/16 power illuminated it to add more light and to avoid any camera shake (the flash effectively makes the shutter speed 1/1000th second or faster). All shots were taken at 1/200 sec, wide open (f/5.6 for the 400mm alone, f/8 for 400mm w/ tele and 600mm), and ISO 100 for f/5.6, ISO 200 for f/8. All shots were manual focus and I took at least five for each, choosing the best to display below to avoid focus issues.

Here are the full frame shots (downsampled, click to see larger... but not full-res):

Overview: Sigma 400mm f/5.6 Telemacro HSM

Overview: Sigma 400mm f/5.6 with 1.4x teleconverter

Overview: Sigma 600mm f/8 Mirror

These shots don't really show anything notable for full frame. Yes, the 600mm has less contrast, but we expect that from a mirror lens. The 600mm seems to have more vignetting too, but again, that's expected.

One thing I noticed was that both lenses performed about the same in terms of focusing -- as in, it was a pain in the a**, but in this static situation I had over 50% accuracy on nailing focus. Obviously, the f/5.6 of the 400mm wide open makes the viewfinder brighter, but in this case I didn't find that a brighter viewfinder made focusing any easier.

Next up, a comparison of 100% crops. All were from the center of the shot. These were converted from RAW with 100% sharpening in Bibble and all other settings off.

100% Crop: Sigma 400mm f/5.6 Telemacro HSM

100% Crop: Sigma 400mm f/5.6 with 1.4x teleconverter

100% Crop: Sigma 600mm f/8 Mirror

As expected, the 400mm alone is the sharpest, followed by the 400mm with TC, and the 600mm decently behind. I'd also say the 400mm alone has the best contrast and color; again, this was expected. So, if you don't need 600mm of reach, the 400mm will definitely be your best option.

But what if you do need 600mm of reach? For instance, if you shoot birds, you pretty much need whatever reach you can get. Which lens combination will give you the best reach if you want to see something really tiny or really far away?

I tested this by taking larger portions of each of the images above and upsampling them to all be at the same resolution as the 600mm image. The image below is the composite of these three images (click to see it at 100% crop):

Comparison: All upsampled to resolution of 600mm
Top: 400mm, Middle: 400mm w/ TC, Bottom: 600mm

This is where things get interesting.

In terms of best reach, the 400mm with 1.4x teleconverter gives the sharpest image. Not by a lot, but you can definitely tell in areas of fine text (like the "invent" in the HP logo). But, on the other hand, the 600mm does slightly outperform the upsampled 400mm. Again, not by a lot, and the 400mm has much better contrast, but I can definitely see more detail on the 600mm image.

Of course, these results are the lower end of 400mm image quality. Although Tamron-Fs aren't that bad, they are a lower-end teleconverter, and a Pro TC should be at least marginally better on a super telephoto. Also, these were shot wide-open; if I could have stopped down the 400mm, it would have sharpened up even more. I'm not exactly sure how much more it would have sharpened up, but I suspect it would be noticeable.

So, in the end, yes, you are much better off with the 400mm lens than the 600mm mirror lens. This was my original hypothesis back when I got the 600mm. Plus, the 400mm lens gives better contrast, bokeh that isn't donut shaped, and autofocus. It seems like the 400mm would be a no-brainer compared to the Sigma 600mm.

Until you look at cost.

The 400mm (without TC) goes for $250+. The 600mm goes for right around $100 if you have to purchase the adapter with it. In fact, mine just sold for $70 including shipping without the adapter. Ultimately, it comes down to how much money you can spend and if you are willing to tolerate the quirks of the 600mm.

Personally, I'm happy to have the 400mm, but the 600mm was a great stepping stone until I could afford it.

Review: La Crosse BC-900 Battery Charger

A month ago I posted about three of the best high end NiMH battery chargers out there and mentioned that I decided to purchase and review the La Cross Technology BC-900 AlphaPower Battery Charger. (Note: the BC-900 has been replaced by the La Crosse Technology BC-9009 AlphaPower Battery Charger, which appears to be the same package, just a different color, and for the same price). While the charger has its user interface quirks, steady use over the past few weeks has proven to me that it is the best battery charger deal out there, period. The link above takes you to Amazon, the cheapest place I've found for the charger (currently $40 shipped).

Before I get into the details about how well the BC-900 works, let me explain why it is a good deal. Actually, the picture above will save me some time -- the $40 package at Amazon contains everything shown above, plus a few things I couldn't fit in!

Specifically, you get:

• BC-900 charger and power supply
• Carrying case
• 4 AA batteries (2600 mAh)
• 4 AAA batteries (1000 mAh)
• 4 C adapters (letting you put AA batteries into something that takes Cs)
• 4 D adapters (requires C adapters to adapt As to Ds)
• Instruction booklets

What makes this such a good deal is the extra batteries (worth $5-8) and the C/D adapters (which I haven't seen anywhere else).


Charger Functionality:

A top of the line battery charger should do three things: charge, discharge, and let you know what is happening. The BC-900 does all these things very well.

Sure, in the instructions and sales literature it talks about four different modes (Charge, Discharge, Test, Refresh) but really, all the modes just boil down to combinations of charging and discharging:

• Charge: Just charge the battery until it is full.
• Discharge: Discharge the battery completely, then charge it until it is full.
• Test: Charge the battery, discharge the battery, then recharge the battery to full.
• Refresh: Discharge the battery fully, then recharge, then discharge, then recharge, etc. Stops when the capacity (measured during discharge) stops increasing. This can take DAYS, but is a good way to rejuvenate really old batteries.

Another really great thing about the charger is the ability to charge (and control the mode) of each battery separately. This is awesome for me, because I no longer have to worry about matching batteries during charging, or discharge batteries to get them to match. 95% of the time I just need to charge batteries at the slowest rate (200 mA) which is the default. So I just pop them in the charger and remove them when they say full, even if the other ones aren't done yet.

I can also control charging rate (200 mA, 500 mA, 1000 mA, 1800 mA (two batteries max)) with a few pushes of a button. Discharge rate will always be half of charging rate. If you do the math, this means that the test and refresh modes take a long, long time to complete at the lowest charging rate. Since most newer batteries don't suffer from memory effect (inability to take full charge if you don't discharge them before charging) most of the time I don't bother with the discharge cycle. As my batteries age, I'll probably start doing full discharges before every fifth charge or something like that, but for now, I'm not too worried.


Display and User Interface:

One of the great things about the BC-900 is the display. In addition to displaying the mode, it also displays the instantaneous voltage (good for estimating how much charge the battery has or how soon it will finish), time spent (dis)charging, capacity in mAh, and (dis)charging current.

Specially notable is the capacity display shown in mAh. For instance, in charging mode, it will display how much charge the battery has taken. This lets you know how much the battery was used or if the battery is starting to suffer from memory effect. Similarly, the discharge mode displays the capacity discharged or charged depending on the current state. Finally, the test and refresh capacity shows the status of the most recent discharge (for the most accurate estimate of capacity). Not too many chargers let you know exactly how much capacity an old battery has left; the BC-900 does. That alone is worth a lot.

Also, there are buttons which let you set each battery mode and charging rate individually, but I have yet to master them. The first few times I tried to set battery rates/modes individually I reset the modes of the other batteries (not a big deal, but I need to spend more time figuring it out). Again, though, most of the time I just need to charge at 200 mA, which is as simple as putting the batteries in the charger and walking away.

I did use the 1000 mA charging rate once when I left an SB-20 on all night and rendered a set of batteries (that I needed) stone dead. So, I popped them in at 1000 mA for a half-hour while I was setting up other things and had enough charge to get what I wanted done.

One thing that really bugs me is the lack of a backlight or LEDs. Just a single red/green LED for each battery would let me see at a glance when the batteries were finished charging without crossing the room. Minor, but on my other chargers, I find it very handy to be able to see if they are full at a glance.


Batteries and Adapters:

While batteries are pretty cheap commodities (good NiMH batteries cost between $1.50 to $2.00 each) it is always handy getting extras. In this case, the batteries alone are worth maybe $10, easily boosting the value of the BC-900 package over the BC-700 charger (which is near identical). And what can I say, the included batteries are... functional batteries. The first few charges didn't get me to full capacity, but now I'm getting 2400-2500 mAh out of them.

A big plus for me is the adapters included in the package. Yes, they are pretty cheap and no, I haven't needed them yet. But, since similar adapters cost about $2 each new, that's another $8 added to the value of this package. Again, this is an EXCELLENT deal.

Add the carrying case in, which while not necessary, is useful, and it's an even better deal. The carrying case, by the way, has slots for the adapters and would be useful for carrying around a store of batteries with the charger. Why I'd need to do that... well, maybe if I was shooting with three-four speedlights on a regular basis, it'd be handy. I have no problem taking it for free though!


Verdict:

I'm a numbers guy -- I love numbers and stats. And more than anything, this charger gives me numbers. I can tell exactly how much charge a battery has taken, check the status of my batteries, or just pop batteries in whenever I need to and know that they'll be charged safely.

And that is the real key -- convenience. The La Crosse BC-900 makes battery charging very convenient for me and gives me all the information I need to maintain the large stock of batteries I need around my house. If you use a lot of batteries (which is pretty much any family) you WILL save money with this charger.

Speaking of money, honestly, I would have bought this charger for $40 without the extras. Add the extras in, and I think this is one of the best purchases I've made. I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but there's a reason I keep repeating this stuff.

I love this little charger!

Note: On Nov 2nd 2009, I started this post and the charger was $38. On Nov 4th, the price bumped up $2 to $40. On November 7th, the price dropped $3 to $37 (with the tag 'Friday Sale'). Not sure why these fluctuations occur, but I'd recommend monitoring the price for a few days if you have the time. Don't wait too long though, with the newer model out (La Crosse Technology BC700 Alpha Power Battery Charger) at only a few dollars less but no extras, I suspect they may phase out the BC900 soon. Current price is below: (link removed)

Note: Almost a year later, it appears that the BC-900 was replaced by the BC-1000. Consensus is that it is the same charger, maybe with a few bugs out of the firmware, and a different color to the case. I highly recommend the BC-1000, especially with the package (batteries and such). My charger (and batteries) is still working perfectly! The updated link to the Amazon page is below:


Lighting Setup:
For those who enjoy lighting setups, here is the setup for the battery shoot. White seamless in my garage, charger/subject sitting on a cake pan (don't tell my wife!). Key light was an SB-20 shooting through an umbrella quite close to the subject at camera left (to keep spill off the background. To further reduce spill on the background, I put the umbrella cover over the back side of the umbrella.


Background light (SB-20) through a red gel. In the image it is positioned in front camera right with a clothes gift box lid as a gobo to keep the red off the subject. Blue hair light which cross lights with the key at minimum power (1/16th). Looking at this image I think I should have restricted it a little bit to keep it off the background, but that caused only minimal problems in post.

The trickiest part of the shoot was getting the key at the right angle to illuminate the display. I'm still disappointed that I couldn't keep the display numbers from shadowing on the back of the display.

Review: Sonia Optical Slave

As I mentioned last week, I love my Nikon SB-20s but I could not get them to reliably sync with my cheap Chinese optical trigger from eBay. So I went ahead and bought an alternate optical slave trigger from an Indian company named Sonia and put it through its paces this week.

My one-sentence review:

The Sonia slave syncs great with the SB-20, but it's still an inexpensive optical trigger and has limitations.

Hardware and Build Quality:

Most eBay Sonia slaves have a female PC-sync and are packaged as a pair with a hot shoe -- at least, that was what I purchased. Sonia slaves are available individually with other connection mechanisms (FlashZebra has a range with male PC, female PC, microphone jacks). While I'd love if they'd packaged the male PC-sync slave (so I could slap it directly on an SB-20 if I desired) I expect it was probably a safety-type issue to make sure the multiple-sync capability worked.

Yes, I said multiple sync. But more on that later.

I went with the hot shoe option because the price was about the same as the peanut alone and I need a 1/4" screw mount to fit my flashes to my tripod/light stand/monopod. For the record, I paid $12.95 + $2.01 shipping, which is relatively cheap for a slave + hot-shoe mount, but still the cost of half an SB20.

Actually, maybe I should refer to everything in terms of SB-20s now... I get paid about one SB-20 an hour at my job and my rent is a little under 100 SB-20s a month! Yes, I know my hourly rate is too low compared to my rent -- I live in the bay area after all! Anyway, back on topic...

First, the slave itself.

There really isn't much to it -- a few components soldered together and epoxied into one solid little package about the size of my thumbprint. By inspection, it looks like a few resisters, a cap, a transistor, and a phototransistor at the business end. My phototransistor isn't centered very well which may be influencing my sensitivity (or maybe that's by design). The female PC connection is solid and unlikely to break (good thing too -- I could never fix it if it did). I'd have no qualms about letting these little guys float around in a gear bag -- they'd never break. FYI, all pictures are clickable if you want to see the units larger.

The hot shoe is definitely a big step up from the Chinese optical triggers. Instead of plastic, the entire unit is made from metal. I suspect it is machined because I see no obvious mold marks, which is remarkable for such an inexpensive unit. It really is a tank and you'll break your hot shoe before you break the foot of this thing. The back is marked with "Sonia, multi-terminal slavettach solid state" in retro RCA fonts. Somebody in India likes their antique radios. And you gotta love the solid state to let us know they didn't cram any vacuum tubes inside!

The most important part of any hot shoe is the connections, and there's no disappointment here. The peanut attaches to the shoe very securely. All three PC connections (two female, one male) are a step above what you usually get in a cheap unit. I don't foresee anything breaking in the future. And the hotshoe on the top is simply a tank. Overall, the whole thing is the most solid accessory I've seen. As you'd expect, it has some mass to it, but it's small enough that it doesn't really matter.

Funny thing actually -- the other day I found that the back of my Chinese optical slave had fallen off. Apparently it had gotten hot enough in the garage to make the adhesive fail and the back just popped off on its own -- luckily it wasn't structural and I snapped it back on easily.


Functionality:

Of course, what really counts is how an optical slave trigger works. And in that respect, I can't tell it apart from my Chinese optical slave other than the fact it works with a Nikon SB20. That's not necessarily a good thing.

Indoors, it works pretty well as long as there is a direct line of sight from another flash to the eye, or at least a line of sight from a bright reflection (like white paper) to the eye. The only time I've had trouble getting sync was when the trigger was in shadow, as you'd expect. Once you get things set up, the triggers work as their supposed to near 100% of the time.

Outside, though, it is a whole different story. In deep shade with the source flash on high, close, and directly illuminating the trigger you may have a chance. In the sun, or near sunlight, the Sonia unit will just not trigger. When I was shooting the bees I tried a lot of different approaches (including shading the sensor) and nothing worked. So with cheap triggers, the verdict is still OUTDOORS = BAD, INDOORS = GOOD.

I should also mention that there are reports of the Sonia slaves not working with the Canon 580 EX II. I believe I read something somewhere about a mod to the Chinese slaves to make them work on the 580 EX, but it isn't really possible on a Sonia since everything is encased in epoxy. Anyway, you've been warned.


Multiple Sync:

If the solid build of the hot shoe unit wasn't enough to motivate you to pay the extra few bucks for it, they've also added a multiple-sync capability with 'built-in diodes'. What this means is, if you attach the peanut slave to the male sync socket, you can attach a flash to a hot shoe and two other flashes to the female PC sockets on the sides with PC cables. And yes, everything will trigger at the same time!

It turns out I have PC cables for my Sunpak 383 and another hot shoe around the house (I had totally forgotten about them), so I verified multi-sync capability with all three flashes. Of course, I couldn't get a picture because my 20D refused to omit the preflash.

So, the image at left only shows two flashes going off. But I was seeing all three go when I fired my 20D.

I love the idea of using this little baby to triple the power of the flash (or cut the recovery time). Sadly, the best place to use that feature would be outdoors, where the trigger refuses to even go. But, I may try adapting a radio trigger to female PC-sync to make a super-powerful three-flash rig.

While multi-flash capability isn't really a killer app inside, I'd rather have the capability than not. And if I had a longer PC-sync cable, it'd let me add even more to a studio rig.



Conclusions:

If you use SB-20s or might buys some in the future, you need to buy this optical trigger, period. Chinese triggers just don't cut it with those units.

If you don't use SB-20s, I still might recommend the Sonia triggers because of their superior build quality and multi-sync capability. I'm not sure I'd pay double for Sonia triggers, but a few bucks is definitely worth it.

If I get another flash, I'll likely pick up another Sonia trigger and/or another wireless trigger. Either way, I'm definitely not buying any more of the cheap Chinese triggers.

If you're curious, here are the current Sonia trigger listings on eBay. eBay seems to have the best prices for the triggers, but that could change -- make sure you look around!






Note: I recently posted an update about some problems I've been having with the trigger.

Auto Mode Review: Sunpak 383 vs Nikon SB-20

If you are poor like me and can't afford the newest (newer) flashes ($200+ for a 430EX) you have to make due with less expensive or older flashes. In my case, I went with the Sunpak Auto 383 Super (review) and multiple Nikon SB-20s (review). While I was able to save 50-70% of the price of a 430EX on each, I had to give up some features.

These older flashes do not support the newest flash balancing algorithms like E-TTL II (for Canon -- Nikon has an equivalent). E-TTL II is pretty neat because it meters the flash through the lens, exposing based on what the camera sees, and also takes into consideration the focal distance of the lens (full description here at Bob Atkins' site). Of course, neither my SB-20 nor my 383 supports TTL (through the lens metering) of any sort with my 20D. Instead, I must either balance the flashes using manual controls (awfully slow and fiddly) or use the auto mode.

The auto mode is an automatic metering mode based entirely on the flash. First, the user sets the flash to auto and the camera aperture to the value specified for the given auto mode (often, flashes have a few options for auto mode for different apertures). As the flash fires a photocell on the flash records how much light is reflected back from the subject, and when a predetermined amount of light is recorded, the flash is quenched (shut off). Essentially, this lets the user get automatic exposure without any communication between the flash and the camera.

Both the 383 and SB20 support auto mode. The 383 has a photocell just above the hot shoe (the green circle on the left of the image):
And the SB-20 has a photocell in the lower right of the large red window on the front of the flash:
Auto mode is very easy to implement because it is directly on the flash but has a few limitations because there is no camera-flash communication during the exposure. First, since the photocell can't see exactly what the camera sees through the lens, the results will be inaccurate for very wide or very telephoto lenses. Also, since the photocell is at a different level than the lens, it could be occluded by objects or not aimed at the same place when in close. Finally, since the photocell measures all the light coming in, you'll get a bad exposure if something bright is closer to the camera than your subject.

That said, if you just want to get some snapshots and don't want to worry about balancing the flash in manual mode, auto mode is very useful. Put another way, auto mode lets the flash automatically adjust for distance -- in manual mode, every time you move closer or farther away from the subject, you'd need to adjust the exposure. For kids, that kind of constant adjustment isn't possible!

When I got my Sunpak 383, I quickly realized the auto mode wasn't very good. I just couldn't seem to get a good exposure! After that, I kind of abandoned auto mode until the other day when I thought I'd try an SB-20 in auto mode and did a little comparison. Turns out my 383 just has a crappy auto mode (not sure if I can generalize it to all 383s though -- does anyone else have a 383 that works well?).

To start out, I tried my SB-20 in auto mode by switching the main switch to A, set the ISO 100 with the slider at left, and set the desired f-stop using the slider at right (F/8 in this case -- note the yellow indicator). This means I should be able to set my camera to F/8 and get good exposure no matter what my distance to the subject is. The back of the SB-20 looked like this:

So, I fired off the following shot of the stuff sitting on top of my television (all of these shots are pretty much straight from the camera):

SB-20 (auto f/8) @ 17mm, f/8

Chimping the result, I thought it looked a little hot, so I dialed it down one stop, and got:

SB-20 (auto f/8) @ 17mm, f/11

Then, stepping back and zooming in to test if the auto mode was working, I got:

SB-20 (auto f/8) @ 50mm, f/11

So, by the looks of it, the auto mode on the SB-20 works very well. And, in hindsight, I really didn't need to stop down below the SB-20's settings -- it was very close to good exposure and the stopped down version is a little too dark. Since I usually underexpose flash shots a little bit (you can always increase exposure from the RAW file, but if you blow whites out, you can't get that detail back), I'll probably stop down 1/3 of a stop compared to the flash setting, but it really seems like the SB-20's auto mode is right on.

Now, on to the Sunpak Auto 383 Super. Auto settings on the Sunpak are a bit more confusing. First, I set the left-hand slider switch to the red A setting and the top slider to ISO 100. In the F/stop window, f/5.6 shows up (actually, more like f/6.3) which is what I should set my camera to. Also, I set the bottom slider to full (A) -- my understanding is that the auto only works when the slider is set to full (disclosure: I faked the f/stop value because it was in shadow, but that's how it looks!).

Note that the 383 has three auto settings, but as far as I can tell, it is only a mechanical calculator. Going from red to yellow doubles the distance and opens up two stops (consistent with the inverse square law: doubling the distance should require four times as much light).

So, given these settings, I set my camera to f/6.3 and took a shot under the same conditions as above, and got:

SB-20 (auto f/6.3) @ 17mm, f/6.3

Obviously, way too bright and I completely lost all the highlights on the fan. So, after some playing, I settled on f/11 as a similar exposure to the SB-20 (yes, that's 1 2/3 stops down!):

SB-20 (auto f/6.3) @ 17mm, f/11

SB-20 (auto f/6.3) @ 50mm, f/11

So, obviously, the SB-383 works, but it needs to be stopped way down. Consistency (in this tiny test) seems to be good across images, but it disturbs me that the Sunpak runs about 2 stops too hot.

Another thing that worries me about the Sunpak's auto mode is the photocell is very, very narrow (less than a millimeter in diameter, about three millimeters deep). I wonder if it gets very good coverage of a wide angle lens. Even more problematic is the height of the photocell on the 383 -- with a hood on a lens (or even a relatively large lens) the cell will be occluded for at least part of the range. I feel like the SB-20 has a much better design.

My conclusions? I like the SB-20 auto mode a lot better, and it just reinforces that if you are on a really tight budget and need a flash, start with an SB-20! For just $30 you get a flash with zoom, bounce, manual mode, and auto modes. The only thing the Sunpak has that SB-20 doesn't is a rectangular head (useful for putting modifiers on it), a little more power (GN120 vs GN100), and a swivel head (so you can bounce of the ceiling in a portrait orientation. While each of those is significant, paying three times as much tempers the advantages. There's a reason I have three SB-20s and may buy up one or two more...

Anyway, if you'd like to get an SB-20, check eBay. Prices seem to be pretty stable at $30 (including shipping) but there are often even better deals if you look hard enough. Here's the current listings if you are curious:

Tamron-F 1.4x Teleconverter Review

I forgot to do a review of the Tamron-F 1.4x Teleconverter so I figured I'd remedy that now. Not a very detailed review, but honestly you don't really need one for a teleconverter. It either does its job, or it doesn't, and in this case, the Tamron-F 1.4x does its job well for the price.


I originally bought the Tamron-F to help me out with baseball photography because I needed a little more reach on my Canon EF 70-200mm F/4 USM. I won't go into details now because my brief overview of teleconverters covers a lot of that. I ended up purchasing a used teleconverter from KEH Camera for about $66 shipped.

Other purchase options are on Amazon ($115) (sorry, I only found a Canon version) and eBay (see widget below):



Generally, used Tamron-F teleconverters have been going for $70-$80 on eBay. With no moving parts, I see no reason to not buy used.

My teleconverter came with two end caps and a leather (well, probably synthetic) carrying bag. The glass was pristine and it looked completely new and unused.

Oh, and as usual, all images in this posting can be clicked to see them larger.


In terms of functionality, the TC does what it's supposed to. It firmly snaps on between the camera and lens, provides all autofocus function on my 70-200 f/4, and feels very secure and natural. Obviously, a stop of light is lost (which isn't indicated on my 20D, meaning it'll still say f/4 when in fact I'm shooting at f/5.6). On the other hand, it magnifies the image by 1.4x, which is the whole point.

I briefly tried it on my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 (and it worked) but I recommend checking before you mount it on wide angle lenses because sometimes the tolerances aren't correct and you could damage internal lens elements.


Of course, for me, the real question was image quality. Will a low-end 1.4x teleconverter really improve magnification without damaging image quality too much? Will my Canon 70-200mm with the 1.4x TC out perform my Sigma 600mm? I've done a few quick experiments to determine the answer to both of these questions.

For both tests, I shot a portion of a magazine page outside in the sun on a clear day. Honestly, I probably should have picked a subject with more fine detail, but these images allowed me to answer the questions I was concerned with.


For the first question, I've compared the Canon 70-200mm @ 200 mm both with and without the teleconverter, upsampling the pure version to allow a side by side comparison:

Canon 70-200mm f/4: Upsampled 200mm vs 200mm w/ TC @ 100% crop (wide open)

Definitely, the teleconvert provides an image with better resolution and definition. Both images would benefit from sharpening and post processing, but these are pretty much straight JPEG conversions from RAW. This put my mind at ease, because I was quite concerned that the glass in the teleconverter would hurt image quality more than the benefit from increased magnification, but that isn't the case. Both these images were shot wide open and I found sharpness improves slightly if you stop down.

My general feeling after shooting over a thousand baseball images is that you don't get quite as much sharpness with the TC, but the added magnification is worth it. Also, I've found the larger viewfinder image is a huge benefit when shooting action!

Finally, note that there isn't a huge amount of chromatic aberration added by the teleconverter, a frequent problem with adding extra glass, especially discount glass. Definitely, a little is added, but not enough to cause problems (and easily removed in post-processing).


My next concern was whether the teleconverter added to my 70-200mm f/4 renders my Sigma 600mm f/8 unneeded. On one hand, I'd love to replace the big, bulky 600mm, but on the other hand, I have a special place in my heart for the all-manual Sigma, and it'd be pretty lame if my $100+ 600mm lens was beat by a simple teleconverter. To simplify comparison, I shot with the TC at f/8 (it read f/5.6 on the camera).

Canon 70-200mm f/4 @ 200mm + TC (upsampled) vs Sigma 600mm Reflex

This one definitely goes to the Sigma.

Sure, the Sigma's contrast isn't as good and it's a heck of a lot harder to use, but it has the potential for a lot better image quality. In particular, look at the detail on the '$' on the middle-right edge. The 280mm equiv TC pretty much makes the vertical line disappear, while the Sigma catches it nicely.


So, overall, I'd say the TC is well-worth the $70 price for a used model. If you are going to buy new, I would probably recommend a Pro version, although I'm not completely sure how much of an improvement you can expect. But, since you can get a Kenko 1.4x Pro 300 DG new on eBay for about $130 (see widget below) -- if you are willing to buy from Hong Kong -- you'd probably be better off with that.



Personally, I think the Tamron-F 1.4x is one of the best deals out there since there's so many floating around on the used market. It's a very cheap way to get a little extra reach and there's only a slight difference in image quality (which is not what I hear about other cheap teleconverters).

Note this assessment DOES NOT apply to the 2x model; general consensus is that the Tamron-F 2x model has poor optical performance. If you need a 2x teleconverter, you should probably go after a Pro model.

Review: Lightroom 1.4 (a.k.a. Bibble vs Lightroom)

Today I got an e-mail with the subject, "Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom trial is about to end."

I guess it's time to do my Lightroom review now, huh.

Actually, I'm already under some pressure because I've got 100+ baseball photos I need to get edited and on CD in the next week. And before I can do that, I need to decide which software (Lightroom or Bibble) I'll go with.

So this is less of a Lightroom review and more of a Lightroom v1.4 and Bibble 4.9 Pro comparison. For your reference, there are some other comparisons out there. I've also completed a Bibble 4.9 Pro review.


Really, I think I'd be happy with either piece of software. Both are very usable, both have very similar editing capability (head and shoulders above Picasa 2 and RawShooter Pro), and both do what I need: RAW conversion.

Ultimately, it comes down to a subjective assessment. The 10,000 ft view is that Lightroom focuses on the library and keywording aspects while Bibble focuses on streamlining the workflow. Also, related to above, Lightroom is library based (NOT based on file location on the disk) while Bibble is disk-based.

So, some pros and cons for each:

Where Lightroom is better:

• Much better keywording and tagging. While, admittedly, I haven't used Bibble in this way, Lightroom is designed to make tagging easy. Both include IPTC support, but I think the Lightroom UI is much better.
  
• Cheaper for me ($100 w/ academic discount (normally $300) to $130 for Bibble Pro).
• Beautiful to look at. Let's face it... Bibble has a relatively ugly interface.
  
• The crop/rotate interface is awesome to use. The Bibble interface is just annoying, especially rotation.
• Multi-level undo. I didn't realize how much I used it until I didn't have it in Bibble.
  
• Much better highlight recovery. In Bibble I didn't notice much a difference, but in Lightroom, I used highlight recovery all the time.
• Library-based organization. Having multiple libraries independent of the location of things on the disk opens up some options for organization.
  
• Better slideshow/web page generation options.
  

Where Bibble is better:

• Better grouping interface (called Work Queues in Bibble). Lightroom seems a bit awkward to me.
• Faster. I haven't used Bibble in a while, but I don't remember being annoyed by the speed. In Lightroom, it seems to swap a lot to the disk even with 3GB of memory, so there's some lag flipping between images, and a lot of lag getting the high-res rendering on the screen. Conversion and importing is also much faster in Bibble.
  
• Highly customizable. Seems like everything has a hotkey or you can assign one.
  
• Disk-based organization. While separate libraries are nice, I usually organize based on the disk, so disk-based organization appeals to me.
• Very streamlined conversion options. I love the batch processing options in Bibble, while in Lightroom, batch processing images for output is almost an afterthought. Seriously. It took me a while to figure out how to do it and it doesn't have nearly as many options.
• Powerful filenaming mechanism. You can pretty much name things however you like, including file/image specific fields right in the filename, automatically. Lightroom has some options, but most don't suit my style so I have to edit the output directory manually.
• Better noise reduction. While I'm not unhappy with Lightroom, I have to assume Noise Ninja produces better results than whatever Lightroom uses.
• Lens distortion corrections and the ability to apply a vignette around the crop (letting me save a post-processing step with vignettes on all images at the same time).
  

Ok, so I've been pondering over this decision for a week, and I've 95% decided to go with... Bibble. While I love the Lightroom interface and the cheap price, usability and speed in converting images is still way more important than a pretty interface and better keywording capabilities.

But, I may not have to decide right now. I just realized that Bibble 4.10 Pro has been released. If I can install it and get a new trial period (or request an extension on my evaluation period) I'll process the baseball shots this week and think a little more before I commit my cash.

Update 6/3/08: The kind folks at Bibble Labs extended my evaluation another two weeks. All I had to do was ask!

I've started to get used to Bibble again, but let me tell you, the interface is pretty rough to get used to, even after I've used it before. Lightroom is so much more intuitive to use. But, the Bibble interface is substantially faster, especially any time you view a 100% crop. I'm going to work on getting Bibble customized so it works just like I like it.

The biggest things I miss in Bibble are the undo options (Bibble only does large-scale undos to revert to original settings) and the crop/rotation interface. It especially bugs me that cropped images always show the crop on the full image -- I'd rather it cleaned up the view by displaying only the cropped/rotated part.

I'm still leaning toward Bibble for speed alone. The preview of v5.0 (v5.0 will be a free upgrade with purchase of 4.10+) looks very much like Lightroom, although there are a few things (notably layers) which are completely new.

Review: Bibble 4.9 Pro

I've been evaluating Bibble 4.9 Pro for a little over a week (ever since I found a trojan in RawShooter) and I'm ready to provide a mini-review for those of you considering the switch. Honestly, I like it a lot, although it has a pretty nasty learning curve and I found it necessary to watch the Advanced Workflow video to figure out how things work. Now that I've gotten used to it, I find it more powerful than RawShooter Premium but slower and less intuitive.

In particular, it isn't nearly as easy to figure out as RawShooter. Even now, after I feel like I know how to use it (and I've run a few image sets through it), I still don't fully understand how it switches between the various layout modes using F6-F9. I almost feel like the interface has some bugs in it, but it may be I just don't understand the modality of the UI. On the bright side, the user interface is highly customizable with tons of hot keys so once you learn it, it can be quite efficient.

The other major annoyance is the speed. RawShooter is optimized to let you zoom through images near-instantly no matter what you are doing in the background. When I first switched to Bibble, I noticed a huge difference in speed. Getting the extra 2GB of RAM helped a ton by eliminating the thrashing I was experiencing with 1GB. After all, Bibble was using half of the available memory! I wouldn't recommend running Bibble with 1GB of RAM unless you are able to close all other programs while you work. With the extra RAM, I find Bibble only marginally slower than RawShooter.

There's a bunch of little things in Bibble that really make the upgrade worth it to me. The lens correction tab (pictured above) includes chromatic aberration support and a vignette tool, letting you apply a vignette without leaving Bibble! It also has better noise reduction, highlight recovery (which I haven't spent a lot of time with, but like the idea in theory), spot healing (which I've had very little need for but it should be great for getting rid of sensor spots), and a ton of special effect plug-ins which I haven't even touched yet.

In particular, the features I like the most are Work Queues and Batch Queues.

Work Queues are image grouping constructs that let you create arbitrary lists of images from anywhere on your disk. This is the same idea as albums in Picasa, but with a more powerful image editing backbone. I can create a queue (for instance: the images for my son's baseball team), add to it as I get more images, then easily find the whole group later on if I need to convert them. Work queues also give me a method of binning and organizing my processing stream, which is great because I often get interrupted/distracted while post-processing.

Sadly, work queues are only available in the Bibble Pro version ($130). But the extra $60 would be well worth it to me. The pro version also includes tethered shooting (not very useful), advanced Noise Ninja support (if you purchase Noise Ninja for $35+), IPTC editing (could be useful), and multi-core processor support (useful to me).

Batch Queues are the second, really great thing about Bibble. Batch queues are like streams in C++ -- you throw data in (images) and the batch queue takes care of all the output processing automatically based on your configuration. For instance, there are batch processes for full size images, proofs, downloading images from your memory card, and even automatic creation of a web gallery. So, say I'm working with the pictures for my son's baseball team: once I've created the work queue and applied quick edits and crops to all images, I can drag all the images to the web gallery batch queue to automatically generate a web page gallery! A week later, if the coach asks me for a CD with the full size images on them, I just drag the images to the JPEG full size queue and burn the resulting images to disk.

Batch queues are highly customizable and I've already created a queue for blog images. Let me tell you, it is so much easier to let Bibble resize, saturate, reduce noise, etc. all in one step instead of my previous workflow. It makes blogging images almost painless!

Finally, I should mention the improved noise reduction. By it's nature, noise reduction should be applied before any curves/exposure adjustment to allow the software to analyze the true sensor noise. Normally, this would take an export to the noise software then an import back into the image manipulation software, but with Noise Ninja built in, Bibble can do it all at once. Although I haven't done a side-by-side comparison, the default noise algorithm in Bibble does a better job than that in RawShooter or PSP XI. And registered Noise Ninja support allows me to take noise processing a step farther if I want to.


My one major complaint about Bibble is that there is no support for a final sharpening pass after images are resized. Maybe I just haven't found it yet though.

When I post an image on my blog, I like another hit of USM independent of RAW conversion sharpening. For now, I have Bibble automatically push the images to PSP XI where I can apply that sharpening. It doesn't take very long, and with the new memory, running PSP isn't that bad. But it'd still be nice if one of these programs gave an option for a second pass of sharpening at the output resolution.

Aside from that, I'm really leaning toward purchasing Bibble Pro. And, if I buy it now, I'll get a free upgrade to 5.0! But before I buy, I need to evaluate Lightroom, so I'll probably wait until Bibble's trial runs out and then give Lightroom a solid try before I purchase.

Review: RawShooter Premium (a.k.a. Professional)

I'll admit it, I'm starting to outgrow RawShooter Essentials. The biggest problem is it convolutes my workflow. If you don't know the term, photographic workflow is the process you use to get images from the camera to whatever final published state you desire. In a perfect world, your workflow will be efficient and yield high quality results every time. In reality, establishing an efficient workflow is difficult and a huge hassle.

Here is my current workflow which I've been using for the last six months:

1. Take the memory card out of my camera and plug it into the reader on my computer. I can plug the camera into the USB port, but RAW files can't be imported with Picasa over USB.
2. Use Picasa 2 to import the files. I've got it set up so all I need to do is type in a name and it automatically creates a folder based on the date in my Negatives folder along with a corresponding subfolder in my Processed folder. Picasa has great file organization and browsing abilities, but it hides a lot of functionality from you. For instance, if you import RAW files, it automatically runs an automatic exposure adjustment on it. The tools for RAW conversion, adjusting saturation, sharpening, etc leave a lot to be desired. And you can't apply a sharpening pass after you downsize. So I only use Picasa for managing my image folders now. It also uses a lot of memory so I hate having it open if I can avoid it.
   
3. Fire up RawShooter Essentials (RSE) to make a first pass on the images. I delete the ones that didn't come out, mark the ones I like, experiment with RAW conversion adjustments to see if I can get the quality I want, etc. RSE is great for browsing images because it is super fast and responsive. You can also easily check the image sharpness at 100% pixels.
4. Finish first pass of adjustments in RSE and convert. RSE has pretty good control over RAW conversion and it exports to 16 bit TIFFs if needed. I'll usually set exposure, white balance, add fill light, etc and apply a little saturation enhancement and noise reduction. Then I'll export the image into my processed folder at full resolution.
   
5. Fire up Paint Show Pro XI to finish the adjustments. Usually rotation (if needed), cropping, noise reduction, clone/heal out dust spots, curves, saturation, resize, and sharpen, in that order. The really annoying thing is I can't crop or resize in RSE, so even for the quick snapshots which don't need much processing, I have to start up PSP XI (a pretty big program) to finish them.
6. Save the finished images to my processed folder.

As you can see, this isn't the most streamlined process, and I've gotten to the point where I usually view the images in RSE then put off the rest of the workflow because it's so annoying. A side issue (which I'm not addressing right now) is I need a slightly better method of storing high-res edited images without cluttering my hard disk.

In a perfect world, I could combine steps 2-5 in the same piece of software. RSE is pretty efficient, but Picasa and PSP XI are pretty large and unwieldy. So, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to check out the alternatives.

The obvious one (and the successor to RawShooter since Pixmantec was acquired by Adobe) is Lightroom, but it's really expensive ($300). Canon is providing Digital Photo Professional for free now (you'll need your old software to upgrade though) and I tried out v3.2 but the interface was very difficult and annoying to use, plus it is much slower than RSE. Another one that is really well regarded is Bibble. Bibble seems really good to me, but I'm going to wait a little bit and then give it a full 30 day trial to see if I want to pay the $70 for it.

And then there's RawShooter Premium (RSP). RSP is the pay version of RSE which adds a number of notable features (I'll get to those in a second) and is generally seen as one of the best RAW converters out there because of its interface (which is nearly identical to RSE). The problem is, Adobe bought Pixmantec and RSP went *poof* -- you can't get it any more, even though it used to be available for under $100. It has had some great reviews in the short time it was available though. There's also an optional Color Engine for RSP, but as far as I can tell, the CE is just some color presets and good luck getting it anyway! Note: the cracked version of RawShooter Premium had a trojan horse in it -- I don't recommend downloading it!

Oh, and did I mention, I managed to acquire a copy of RSP quasi-legally?

Before I get to that, let me mention a little tidbit about RSE. A lot of people get frustrated with the splash screen/"register me" dialogs that pop up when you run it. Well, turns out there's a solution to that, found in this thread, downloadable here. Just fire up that little program, and you'll never see that annoying thing again.

Back to RSP. I love RSE, so I hard to find a way to get RSP. Adobe has pretty much abandoned RawShooter in general, so you can't find any downloads or demos around. Since it is a dead piece of software, I didn't feel too bad about finding a "crack" for it. I'd never do that for a live piece of software like Photoshop, but I felt like I couldn't get RSP functionality anywhere else. I'm not going to give a link, but if you want to find it, Google "rawshooter premium crack" and look around. I found a version by ICU but the link appears to be gone now with others replacing it. Whatever you do, use an up-to-date virus scanner on the file before you open it! You don't really need much beyond the program, since the executable will create the necessary support directories and files (except the documentation).


And, I gotta say, damn it's good!


RSP adds the following functionality to RSE:

• Importing files from memory cards. It includes support for automatic directory and file naming too.
• Rotation and cropping. Finally. This is what I wanted most of all. A lot of times when I'm in the keep/not keep phase, I like to look at some possible crops of the image before I decide. Plus, I'll often forget how I want to crop the image between when I first look through the images and when I get to process them.
  
• Levels and curves. Another huge one, because I like me a little bit of curves on most images.
• Vibrance slider. This thing is really cool -- it immediately boosts the saturation appropriately, like a good slide film.
• Compare images. Can't tell which shot is slightly better? Now you can put them side to side and compare them!
• Resizing. Now I can set it to save JPEGs at the right resolution to immediately post on the blog!
  

I can now simplify my workflow in a huge way. The only downsides of RSP are that I can't do any cloning and the output isn't quite sharp enough for my web aesthetics (I think it applies the sharpen before the resize?). So most of my photos will still get a quick pass in PSP XI, but there's a big difference between what I was doing before and the simple sharpen and save process now.

Granted, for heavy editing, I still can't get away from PSP XI. Like isolating colors for saturation adjustment, spot editing, or high quality noise reduction. But I'm really happy with RSP because I'm already used to RSE and it adds a bunch of features that make my life easier.


There's other big problem though: RSP doesn't support any newer cameras like the 40D or 450D. So if I get a new camera, I'm completely out of luck. I think of RSP as a temporary measure, and soon I'm going to do a trial of Bibble to see if it will work for me. One thing about Bibble I'm really excited about is the built-in heal/clone tool. Bibble might allow me to avoid PSP XI for most images, which would be a great time-saver.

Review: Sigma 600mm f/8 Reflex (Part 2 of 2)

The first half of this review is here with a follow-up here. I recommend reading those first.

This is the second half of my Sigma 600mm f/8 Mirror lens review. In the first, I focused on the physical characteristics and the ideal performance of the lens. In this part, I'll focus on how the lens performs in the field. And, as before, I'll start with my:

Conclusions:

• The Sigma 600mm f/8 does have substantially better image quality than an up -sampled Canon 70-200mm f/4, but only if conditions are perfect.
• The lens has high build quality but it is still a mirror lens with mirror lens limitations.
• It is VERY hard to get decent pictures out of the lens since it has narrow depth of field, is very sensitive to camera shake with an equivalent focal length of 1000mm (even on a tripod), and is relatively slow (f/8). Expect to do a lot of shooting at ISO 400+ and expect to toss a lot of soft images.
  
• If you are strapped for cash but need the reach and you can get a Sigma 600mm for $150 or less (in a mount that fits your camera or can be adapted to your camera), do it.

This lens is really a b**** to use. If you have your shutter speed a little too low, you'll get a crappy image. If you are wobbling a little, you'll get a crappy image. If you miss the focus, you'll get a crappy image.

Yet, oddly enough, I've had a lot of fun using it.

The primary reason for my enjoyment is that I can actually see details through the camera way better than with my naked eye (that may be partially due to my declining vision, but that's another post altogether). With a 1000mm effective focal length, my 20D and Sigma act as a 20x spotting scope. And, yeah, the manual focus takes some getting used to, but once I had more practice with it, I got pretty good at rapidly snapping things into decent focus. The focus wheel has great feel to it making focusing relatively easy.

So, that all said, let me go into some more details. I'll start with mirror lens limitations, which apply to any mirror lens, not just the Sigma 600mm f/8 (arguably one of the better mirror lenses out there). Then, I'll talk about the handling issues and my personal guidelines when I want to get a shot, and sprinkle in a lot of example shots all through the post. As always, click the images to see them larger.


Mirror Lens Limitations:

Mirror lenses are generally shorter, lighter, and less expensive than the equivalent refractive lens. Yet, mirror (or reflex, or catadioptric) lenses suffer from most (if not all) of the following limitations:

• Fixed Aperture: Catadioptric lenses, by their very construction, cannot provide aperture control (to my knowledge; correct me if I'm wrong). The lens works by reflecting light from the outer donut mirror, off the front mirror, and then through a few refractive elements. I've heard of fixed apertures as large as f/4 and as small as f/13, but most fall in the f/5.6-f/8 range for 500mm lenses. Either way, a fixed aperture restricts your photographic options. The standard compromise of f/8 results in a pretty slow lens (using ISO 100 is difficult even in bright sunlight without a excellent tripod) yet a narrow depth of field for longer focal lengths (i.e. 300mm+). And, you have no way of adjusting to changing conditions.
• Donut-shaped Bokeh: Bokeh is the appearance of bright (or dark) artifacts due to out of focus highlights. If a point light source is out of focus, it will appear on the image as a bright circle (or polygon). The bokeh on a catadioptric lens is not circular; it is donut-shaped. Turns out, donuts are very distracting to the eye because they have a lot of edges involved with them. Of all the mirror lens problems, this one annoys me the most.
  
• Low Contrast: Catadioptric lenses tend to have lower contrast because of the path the light takes. In the modern digital age though, this is less of an issue because you can easily clean up the problem in Photoshop later.
  
• No Auto Focus: There are a few reflex lenses that do autofocus, but most don't. In this modern world of auto-everything, lack of auto focus can really make it much harder to shoot images in fast situations. Likewise, newer cameras no longer come with focusing screens suited to manual focus, making the task that much harder.

Now that I've introduced the main problems, I'll give you illustrated examples of how that impacts me when I use my Sigma 600mm f/8.


Fixed Aperture: Keep Your Shutter Speed Up

As mentioned in the previous review, the Sigma 600mm has an effective focal length around 1000mm. By the usual shutter speed = 1/focal length rule, that'd mean I should get a substantial number of keepers at 1/1000sec. I've found in practice that I actually need to go a bit beyond that to get reliable shake-free images (around 1/2000s works pretty well). Even when I look through the viewfinder, it looks like one of those across the field shots in an NFL playoff when one of the team scores: shaking all over the place.



Fixed Aperture and No Auto-focus: Focusing is hard!

Depth of field narrows as your aperture widens, your focal length gets longer, and/or your subject gets closer. On a 600mm lens, an aperture of f/8 turns out to be really, really narrow. For example, in the shot of the bird above, look at the focus on the fence. The reasonable depth of field is only a few centimeters, barely enough room to get the bird's face in focus. Obviously, your focus needs to be right on to get a shot.

If focus is a little off, you get an image like this:

A great shot, except focus is a few centimeters too close. Darn.

This wouldn't be too bad, except you don't even have auto-focus to help you. I've found with my 20D's viewscreen I can nail the focus if I take my time (a few seconds) and take a few shots. The problem is, for fast-moving subjects, you rarely have more than a second to get the focus.



Donut-shaped Bokeh:

Mirror lens bokeh is the number one reason I'll be planning on upgrading as soon as I can.

A great (or really bad) example is the shot of the Great Blue Heron above. He (she?) was backlit and you can see how distracting the ring highlights are. To get any sort of decent image, you need to keep your foreground and background clean and uniform; this is typical for any photography, but a catadioptric lens makes any background clutter super distracting, even if it is just fine textures (like the image below).


Even lines like the branches below get hollowed out and distracting!


In comparison, here is a shot from the Canon 70-200 f/4. Note how the bokeh is there, but not distracting.




Also: Keep Your ISOs Up!

I don't think I've ever taken a shot with the Sigma at ISO 100 except for the testing images where I used a flash. And, while I'm looking into a Better Beamer or the equivalent, even flash isn't very useful when your subject is very far away. Most of my shots are at ISO 400 or ISO 800. Beyond that, noise gets really bad.

The good news is that the noise (which usually decreases the effective resolution of the camera once you've run noise reduction) has less of an effect when the lens already is already on the soft side. The end result is I feel like I can get 2-4MP images out of the 20D + Sigma instead of 8MP, but that's an ok compromise considering the cost.



Handling: Not Bad

During most of my shooting with the Sigma 600mm f/8 Reflex, my camera looked like the image above. I pretty much always keep the hood on it (for protection more than anything else, but also to avoid any image flare). While it looks massive, the lens itself ends where the hood starts, and the overall assembly is easy to carry around and aim.

I've had a lot better luck with the lens on a tripod, mostly because it lets me lower the ISO a stop along with lowering the shutter speed to around 1/500s (about a 2-3 stop difference). I tend to screw the tripod into the camera since the camera is a little too heavy to properly balance when I screw it into the lens. Also, I can't seem to get my tripod plate to attach firmly to the Sigma, but I expect that is probably just my cheap tripod!

When I shoot, I try to snug the camera as firmly as against my face (using the eyecup) as possible and drape my hand over the lens to steady it. That's a little more complicated when I need one hand to operate the camera and a second to focus the lens. But it works out pretty well. I've used the tripod as a monopod with some success; a monopod is on my short list of things to acquire in the near future.

Attaching and detaching it from the camera isn't hard, but it isn't as easy as the EF mount (it is an older FD mount with breech-lock action. For some reason I always try to turn it the wrong way which is probably why the base of the lens got loose.

Also, I should mention I always shoot with the FD/EOS converter without the optical element. It turns out, since the Sigma 600mm f/8 focuses well-past infinity, I can get it to focus almost to infinity without the glass installed. By my estimation, this gives me maximum focus around a kilometer! I've been able to focus on planes traveling overhead with no problem... And why add another element to the optical path?

Once you get to know the lens and it's quirks, it really is a lot of fun to use!


A Few (Good) Images

I'll leave you with some of my better images from the past few weeks that haven't been posted on the blog yet.






If you'd like to see more images, check out Jacob's shots (including a nice shot of a sparrowhawk).