2/17/10
We’ve had some cloudy and rainy weather here in Tucson this past week or so, now I’m finally getting caught up on my jobs, (real paying jobs that is), and soon I’ll have time to finish up and post either the comparison between the Sony 35mm F/1.4 and Minolta 35mm F/2, or the complete Minolta 35mm F/2 review, I’m not sure what I’ll be putting up first.
I’d like to share a few random thoughts concerning the ghosting and veiling glare of a few lenses, all reviewed here. For Real Estate jobs, I’ve been using the Sony A700 and Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6, and they’ve been working out pretty good. My only complaint is the mustache distortion at the wide end on that lens, it’s really hard to fix in post processing. When I’m comfortable with something, I usually don’t change things, but I have a couple of super-wide zoom lenses around the house, and thought I’d try them out and see if I could find one that has a better distortion curve and ghosting control.
Since I have the Sigma 12-24mm full frame lens, (which has normal barrel distortion on the A700 at wide angle) I thought I’d do something crazy and actually use it on a job! After examining the photos on the computer screen, the Sigma 12-24mm lens seems to be a little soft on the far left side at certain distances. Additionally, ghosting artifacts are slightly more noticeable than on the Sigma 10-20mm, so there is no real gain in switching to the 12-24mm in my opinion. I then decided to use the A900 and CZ 16-35mm and see what happens. I don’t normally use the A900 for Real Estate shots, because you don’t need 24 megapixels for an 8.5×11″ flyer. So off I go to the job and start shooting. Like a fool, I didn’t bring along another lens “just in case” things went bad, (Ive never had anything go bad, but I doesn’t hurt to be prepared). I noticed very quickly that ghosting and veiling glare was much worse than the Sigma 10-20mm, and when shooting with very bright light, such as furniture in the foreground and large windows in the background, or bright accent lighting, the image is almost unusable. Ironically, when I finally decided to use some real “pro” equipment, like a $1900 lens, (CZ 16-35mm), and a $2700 camera, (A900) I came close to blowing the job. Luckily, I had enough alternate shots to be able to offer a decent set. Lesson learned; use what works best for each situation.
I’ll provide more detail on this subject later, but for indoor shots with bright lights, the Sigma 10-20mm F/4-5.6 produces a very clean image, and easily beats the much more expensive lenses (mentioned above) when used in this way.