So! Shooting ultra
wide angle with my Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5.
If you didn’t catch
my post last Monday, I was talking about challenges I was facing when shooting
with this ultra wide glass. Take a look at the shot to the left to see what I
mean. Somehow I managed to get a shot where, as you can see, only the centre third
of the centre third is really sharp.
I could not for the life of me figure out why that was when I first looked at
the image. I hadn’t done anything different from any other time I’d taken this
sort of shot, except use the new lens.
If you didn’t catch
my post last Monday, I was talking about challenges I was facing when shooting
with this ultra wide glass. Take a look at the shot to the left to see what I
mean. Somehow I managed to get a shot where, as you can see, only the centre third
of the centre third is really sharp.
I could not for the life of me figure out why that was when I first looked at
the image. I hadn’t done anything different from any other time I’d taken this
sort of shot, except use the new lens.
But then I thought
about it for a bit. In all my good
(i.e. not blurred to all hell) shots with the 10-20mm I had put focus either in
the middle or far distance. Like in the waterfall shot to the right; the red
dot shows where I was focused and you can see how clean the image looks. With
the forest picture I had placed focus, once again, on the red dot. In this
case, the red dot was only about 300mm away. I started to suspect that focusing
on my foreground element was somehow compressing my depth of field. I know -
that doesn’t make sense, right? But I was at f/8 for both of these shots and
look at the difference.
Reinforcement for
this conclusion came from examination of this shot:
I shot this on the
same day as the forest photo, and I again went for close focus (red dot). Can
you see the ugly corners, particularly the top right? It’s the same effect as
the first image. Less pronounced, perhaps, but still there.
So, to test my
theory, I took my new lens out in the wrong kind of light again to see what
sort of results I got if I stuck to longer focussing distances. Here are some
examples of what I got:
What do you think? From what you’ve seen above,
does my first theory hold water? Does close focus harsh the background? Let me know
your thoughts.
If you have this lens, I’d love to know your experiences, and if
you know where I’m going wrong please
tell me!
Another short one,
gang. I think this might be the norm moving forward, especially with uni going
back soon. As always, I hope you enjoyed the read and I hope you’re checking me
out at:
And:
And I am @BobCartPhoto on Twitter.
Comment
anywhere and everywhere! I am insecure and need external validation!😉👋
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