Saturday, February 02, 2008

The Macro Lens came, saw, it kicked grass!

I absolutely knew a thing or two when I purchased my new Sigma 70-300 mm Macro Telephoto Zoom Lens.  This first thing I knew was that the lens was going to need a lot of light to take the shots.  I was right on all counts, as I took the lens out today into a wide-open space outside, and it performed in a stellar fashion across the board.  I actually brought 2 other lenses with me, but it was clear within 10 shots that the Macro was staying locked on the camera for the entire day of shooting. 

When I read this lens could zoom up on objects that were over 50, 60 feet away, they weren’t kidding.  It was like I was in the water with the geese.  It was like I was in the mud with the cows and horses.  I could see the texture of the willows springing up out of the pond (and have some great shots to prove it).
Things seem a little soft at the widest angle of the zoom, but certainly not unacceptable for a lens that’s in this price class.  The lens is selfish, and absolutely demands the light of day to do its best work.  I hung the lens out there at 300 mm with the F stop as wide open as I could get it.  With the telephoto fully extended, I found that with no Image Stabilization I had to pump the ISO up to about 400 to give me the shutter speeds I needed to compose the shot with no blur.

I composed a number of shots in the Macro mode, and had to switch to manual focus to get the objects fully sharp within the viewfinder.  The lens is easy to use, a bit noisy, but tons of fun when you get the “rhythm” of its proper use.  It’s not the fastest lens, and when the landscape gets tricky it hunts a bit, but actually, in those cases I found it liberating to go into manual focus, and really separate the foreground and background in exactly the way I wanted.

The lens stops up very nicely when the light is sufficient.  Today was cloudy and I set the white balance accordingly.  The lens is a little heavy when fully extended, but is sturdy and easy to grip.  It was really cool to zoom up on animals that would have otherwise run for cover.  The level of detail contained in many of my shots was, in my perception, better than that of the human eye.

This is my first attempt with a Macro Zoom lens.  As I’ve read, it’s the kind of lens that makes you want to go out and take certain kinds of pictures in certain kinds of places.  I can easily see me bringing this as a primary lens to an outdoor zoo, the mountains, anyplace where the camera can get all the light it craves to frame up beautiful shots like the ones I got today.  With it’s flexible range, sizable glass and fantastic capabilities in well-lit condtions, I’m sure I’ll be hanging out at the macro end of the lens as much as possible.

Check out my Flickr set of outdoor shots to see the ever-growing pile of photos I’m amassing using my new Macro lens.  More next week for sure!