Bristol Balloon Fiesta 2013

I never got round to posting photos I took at this years balloon fiesta so here are a few! The weather wasn't kind to me the first day I went so things were a bit dull and overcast and then the second day while the light was beautiful it was too windy for the balloons to launch! Typical!

I'm going to make a few more posts consisting of mainly just photos and then hopefully some more reviews soon. I'm feeling a lot better recently and finding myself able to concentrate on photography related things without negative thoughts creeping into my head as often as they were so with a bit of luck normal service will be restored eventually!

All the fisheye shots were taken with my trusty NEX-5N and Samyang and the others were taken with my 60D and a combination of the Canon 70-300mm L and Sigma 18-50mm EX (the one that front focuses but at least it isn't soft on one side like the countless Canon 17-55s and 15-85s I've tried plus the Sigma 17-50!! STILL haven't found a decent standard zoom!)

a quickr pickr post

Bristol Balloon Fiesta 2012

So did I mention I tried two copies of the canon 15-85mm in my seemingly never ending quest for a standard zoom lens that doesn't suck? Well I did and they both sucked, they were both decentered and on different edges of the picture too, maybe I should have tried a third?

I then tried a Sigma 17-50mm OS and guess what? The left side of the image is soft! I GIVE UP!!!!!! it was too short notice to send it back so I had to take it to this years Bristol Balloon fiesta and make do, SOME of the shots were relatively sharp across the frame at f/7.1 but even then it was hit and miss, I really wanted to stick to F/5.6 or ideally F/4 so I could use a CPL and stay to ISO 100 and still get decent shutter speeds because of my ridiculously shaky hands!

What a shame, the lens was good otherwise, it's very similar to my Sigma 18-50mm (which ISN'T decentered but DOES front focus by a huge margin) The build is great, the OS appears to work well, the usual warm Sigma colours are there and the bokeh is great for a zoom lens. Some reviews claim the lens has poor edge sharpness but on the side my lens was working properly I found the edge was very sharp by f/5.6 at the wide end and was pretty sharp wide open at the long end, if only the story was the same at the other side of the picture!

I will have to try getting a replacement or a warranty repair at least once so I will report back with my findings, I'm not holding my breath!

Anyway, here are some photos from the balloon fiesta, taken with a combination of Canon 60D and aforementioned Sigma lens as well as they Sony nex-5n and the Samyang 8mm and Fujian 35mm lenses:

a quickr pickr post

Bristol went well, 17-55mm No5 is FAIRLY good and oh something else happend too!

 

 

Well it's been a wild ride since my last update! I apologise for the delay in updating but I will explain all later in this post!

As I mentioned before all my gear turned up in time for the Bristol balloon fiesta and the Canon 17-55mm IS, my FITH copy works better than the previous four although it still doesn't get the focus right every time! I have to be honest here and say that although it is a good lens it is no better optically than similar non IS offerings from Sigma and Tamron, naively I was expecting the poor quality control I have experienced with Sigma to be absent with the Canon but it's just as bad if not worse! I went through a few copies of the Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 and they all produced better colours than the Canon and the newer macro version was sharper at the wide angle end and had better bokeh as well! The only issue I had with the Sigma versions was unreliable autofocus but after spending twice as much on the Canon I found the same problems so at the moment I'm considering using the Canon for the time being whilst either hunting for a macro copy of the Sigma 18-50mm that focuses well or even the new Sigma 17-50mm OS which is still cheaper than the Canon whilst being better built. I really thought that I wouldn't have to repeat the continual process of going through different copies of the same lens by sticking to Canon but that has turned out to be the case so why pay more when I could do the same with Sigma lenses for less money?

Another lens that arrived in time was the Samyang 8mm which performed very well, such a cheap lens and yet such consistent image quality over such a wide angle of view, obviously the lack of autofocus simplifies things but even so I was very impressed by this lens compared to the offerings from some companies I have used recently costing up to four times as much!

I got quite a lot of good photos at Bristol both for personal and business use and had a great time overall!

Now this is where the wild ride I mentioned comes into play! Just four days after returning from Bristol my wife suddenly went into labour some 5 weeks early and within 9 hours our baby daughter Seren had arrived! Although she came early she is in good health and both mother and child are now home safe and sound, to say it came as a shock is an understatement! It was also a relief that it didn't happen while we were at Bristol! Needless to say the past 2 weeks have been chaotic and my head has been a mush of various emotions, worries, joys and white noise! The pessimist in me tends to worry I will no longer have time for photos but the realist tells me that I will learn to be much more resourceful with my time plus of course there will be more family outings!

I will try my best to keep on updating this blog at the slightly more prolific rate that I have adopted recently even though I find myself often tired and with a brain often functioning at half it's normal speed!

My next update will be some photos from the balloon fiesta!

 

 

That's more like it!

 

 

It seems I have had a change of luck! Today in the mail I got the following items:

1x replacement Canon EF-S 17-55mm IS

1x replacement Hoya Pro1D CPL

1x Samyang 8mm Fisheye

1x Transcend 16gb SDHC

I also received an email from ebay informing me I have been refunded in full for the Canon 70-300mm L that I was having trouble with!

Even more amazingly the Canon lens is the best copy out of the 5 I have had so far, focus still isn't perfect but it's the best I've tried, it gets it right a lot of the time and when it doesn't, recomposing the shot normally does the trick. At the very least it's better than no lens at all! Hopefully at least one day at Bristol balloon fiesta will result in some sunshine so I can really put the lens through it's paces!

The Samyang 8mm is quite remarkable, it's very sharp at f/5.6 and has excellent edge to edge consistency despite the incredible 180 degree angle of view! It's such a cheap lens in the scheme of things especially considering the ambitious optical design so I am very impressed that the quality control appears to be so good! It's not going to be a lens I can use every day and the novelty would quickly wear off but I get the feeling it will be well suited to taking photos of hot air balloons.

The Transcend is a great memory card and I already have one which has worked flawlessly for the past 8 months, they may be affordable but in my experience they are rock solid unlike Patriot and several other cheaper brands!

I'm still waiting for a spare battery but I will have access to mains electricity so I could probably cope in a worst case scenario, on the whole I am much better equipped for the trip to Bristol.

 

Now it just remains for either the weather or riots to ruin everything!

Losing the will to live!

 

 

It really starting to look like I won't have a decent lens to put on my 60D for the Bristol balloon fiesta at this rate! In my previous post I explained that I was having trouble with trying to buy a few high quality lenses.

My fourth copy of the Canon EF-S 17-55mm got sent back last week as it had a front focusing issue, I have just been informed the lens is out of stock and I will have to wait for a replacement to arrive which means only a 50/50 chance of it arriving on time and even then there's no guarantee it will be a good copy but anything at all would be better than nothing, I could use contrast detect AF in liveview if necessary I just need the lens to turn up in the first place!

The second lens is an even worse story, I purchased the new 70-300mm L lens from a supposedly UK based ebay seller who appeared to have a good track record but it turned out the lens was in HONG KONG! But that turned out to be the least of my worries, the lens arrived and was faulty, the zoom ring was almost seized solid and the image noticeably soft. I informed the seller who provided me with a UK return address. I paid a high price for express delivery with insurance however the next day the tracking informed me the delivery had failed as the recipient was not at the address! I messaged the seller again and they replied saying their UK agent was "in the process of relocating" !!!! What a complete joke! They seller than asked me to WAIT until the lens was returned back to me and then pay to send the lens back to HONG KONG!!!! I just cannot believe the absolute incompetence! It's also worth noting that the seller paid for the original import duty themselves but deliberately under-declared the value of the lens by some £700 to reduce the costs! I also discovered that the sellers ebay name is just a facade and that the supplier is actually one of ebays largest Hong Kong based sellers! They have no actual presence in the UK apart from someone to accept returned items but they are in the process of moving house! The worst part is that they charged what would have been a competitive price for a UK product but I ended up with a Hong Kong sourced item at a price that was much greater than any of the legitimate sellers in Hong Kong who are up front about where the item is!

Needless to say I had run out of patience so I escalated the ebay case I had already opened, it was obvious trying to settle the matter directly with the seller was completely futile. I now have to wait 48 hours for ebay to make a decision, fortunately if the seller provides the UK return address I can already prove I have tried to send it back, if the seller provides a Hong Kong address I am under no obligation to return the item because the seller misrepresented it's location in the first place! I get the feeling the seller was fully aware of this and that they were trying to stall for time until they had a genuine UK address for me to send the lens to so they could avoid a situation where I was not obligated to return the item.

It has been nearly three weeks since I first purchased the lens and there is no way on earth I will have a replacement in time for Bristol next week and even if I get refunded I would probably not have sufficient time to buy a lens from a different seller and receive it in time! I will have to use the trusty 55-250mm which has great image quality but the focus isn't quite perfect especially with fast moving targets, this was less of an issue with the 350D where a slight misfocus was not as noticeable but with the 60D and all it's pixels hungry for high MTF levels it's a lot more noticeable, I took the lens to an airshow last month and the shots that were in focus were fantastic, the lens delivers simply amazing sharpness for it's price but more often than not the images were just slightly misfocused, this was the main reason for purchasing the 70-300mm L!

Those two were just the main hair pulling frustrations of the month! In addition I bought the excellent Samyang 8mm fisheye, I thought it would be a great lens to use with hot air balloons and the price is very reasonable so I went for it only to be told "we apologise but this lens is currently out of stock and will be dispatched direct from the supplier in Poland" and guess what? That's right it's now due to arrive AFTER I leave for Bristol!

I was also optimistic enough to buy a CPL filter for the as of yet non existent 17-55mm, a relatively expensive Hoya Pro1D to be exact, that arrived the day after I paid and you can't go wrong with filters can you? Well you can if they arrive sealed but once opened have dust, smudges and a scratch on them! I can't even image how that happened unless the filter was a retuned item they tried to palm off as a new one! Needless to say it was another return case with the replacement due to arrive the day BEFORE I leave for Bristol, I wonder if it will arrive? I wonder if I will even have a lens to put it on?

I'm starting to get the feeling I might just take my NEX-5 and kit lens at this rate, it's not a prefect lens but it always focuses accurately so I would at least be able to concentrate on taking photos and not worrying about technical problems!

I will update you on my situation as soon as I have anything new to add!