Quote:
Originally Posted by samarak
if there are 300-500mm lenses that you like for the Canon DSLRs that are both reasonably priced and not subject to the distortion I see in the low-end ones, I'd love to hear about them.
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(good) Longer telephoto lenses are inherently more expensive to produce; I have a sigma 170-500 f5.6 and I don't like it very much at all; it was pretty affordable though I guess. Putting a 2x teleconverter on that is a recipe for horrid, horrid photographs. It also tended to "hunt" focus on my old 50e; this seems to be less of a problem on the 5D, but to be honest I'm used to manually focusing it now anyway.
I think it needs to go and have a talk with a Sigma technician, as it will only work on my 5D if I set it to AP f5.6; any other setting and the camera locks up. So forget about stopping the lens down to improve quality or DOF! Even then, it occasionally locks up.
That said, it still gets its place in my camera bag (or at least it comes in the car when I go to game parks) as my next longest lens is a Canon 100mm f2.8 macro (the version before Canon brought out an L series with IS!), or the 105mm setting on my 24-105 (which is a handy, handy thing for all day shooting); I rarely use my other lenses unless I'm either shooting in extremely low light (50mm f1.4) or need extremely wide angle (16-35mm) or am shooting macro.
I also have a sigma 105mm macro (also f2.8), which I really loved, but it also disagrees with the 5D. I don't think I've used the cheap 28-80 that came with my 50e in years; it lives in a filing cupboard at my office.
I seem to recall canon making a 180mm macro, which would give you a bit more working distance, which could be useful. I also like the idea of the 1-5x macro MP-E(?) lens.
I've recently come across the idea of
focus stacking, which looks like it would have very interesting applications for small orchids.
Cognisys - Products look to have some very interesting toys.
Hope this isn't too much off-topic
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