Forth Road Bridge

Spent all morning out at the Queensferries ( North and South ) getting used to the new lens from yesterday. Really starting to get a feel for it and understand it's quirks.

Once you know what you're dealing with it's phenomenally sharp, but it has some issues. I'll probably write a proper blog piece about it because I've seen people with the same issue on various forums but not seen them solve it.

Essentially I've found that my copy of this lens will focus past infinity in certain circumstances, most commonly at the 8mm end. At 16mm it focusses perfectly.

There is a very simple way around this though. The DoF is unbelievable on this lens. At the 10mm setting I can focus on infinity at f4.5 and have everything from infinity back to just under 4 feet away be in focus.

So manual focus all the way. :)

There is another issue at the 8mm end which is, I think, Sigma's trademark QA fubar. Basically at 8mm the right hand side ( I'm talking way over the right side ) is a lot softer than the same area on the left. Take it up to 10 and it's okay, up to 16 and it's non-existent.

It's a trade off for the inherent madness of the 8mm angle I guess. And it's one I'm prepared to accept. At "sensible" angles, then the lens is without doubt the best one in my collection and I already have some decent glass in there now.

You can see a few other shots from today's shoot with the new lens plus one b/w one from previous shoots in my Bridges set on 500 px.