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

Review: Samyang 8mm F/3.5 Aspherical IF MC Fish Eye

For several years now Samyang have been making some very decent manual focus lenses that boast image quality to rival OEM brands at a fraction of the cost. The lenses obviously lack autofocusing but otherwise have proven to be impressive in terms of image and build quality.
The lenses have been sold under numerous brand names such as Rokinon/Vivitar/Polar/Bower/Opteka/Falcon as well as Samyang.
This review will concentrate on is the Samyang 8mm f/3.5 Aspherical IF MC Fish-eye, I purchased this lens after hearing almost unanimous praise being heaped upon it so the question is does it live up to the hype?


Build quality and finish:

The lens is very well made overall, there's a lot of metal and all surfaces have that nice textured effect which feels more tactile and looks better than plain smooth plastic and paint. The lens has a nice damped focus ring and the aperture ring clicks satisfyingly just like the old days, the lens is very much from the old school when it comes to build quality and that is definitely a plus point. The only niggle I had was that the finish on the edge of the built in lens hood was slightly rough which was at odds with the rest of the lens but overall it looks and feels solid, reliable and dependable.


Image quality:

The image quality is fantastic overall, centre resolution is great from wide open and at f/5.6-f/11 the edges are very sharp too especially for a fisheye lens. The lens gives nice punchy contrasty images with good colour saturation which I have come to expect from Samyang as even their less glamorous 80's lenses always give nice colour as does the 18-28mm zoom from the 90's. Flare resistance is pretty good even with the sun in the frame sometimes and is noticeably better than some of this lenses rivals.
The elements inside the lens appear to be perfectly centred with images showing consistent sharpness across the frame.
The only true weakness of this lens for me is chromatic aberration which can become very noticeable towards the edges of the image however I must say it seems to be very easy to correct with software, Capture One for example does a pretty much perfect job of removing it with just one click which was a great relief as it is the only real law with this lens.
Overall the image quality is impressive and the lens definitely punches above it's weight and even exceeds the quality of some of it's rivals in terms of edge sharpness and flare resistance.

Conclusion?

I think the lens is fantastic, the image quality is superb, especially for a lens of it's type. The build quality and handling are also impressive especially for the price! The only two real drawbacks can be overcome almost completely, firstly the chromatic aberration can be combated very successfully in software and secondly the lack of autofocus is almost a non issue! When the lens is set to f/5.6 or smaller the extremely wide focal length means that hyperfocal focusing will ensure everything from a few feet to infinity is in focus, just set the focus ring to 2m and for most scenes you'll never have to touch it again!
I fully recommend this lens!


This lens was tested on a Canon EOS 60D

Review: Samyang 18-28mm F/4-4.5

 

So, I'm sure some of you have seen this lens before, it was manufactured by Samyang and released under many different names, off the top of my head I can think of Phoenix, Vivitar, Sirius, Falcon, Cambron and in the case of the lens in this review, Centon!

This lens sparked some interest at the time of it's release because it was uncommon to find such a wide lens at an affordable price, and almost unheard of to find a zoom this wide at an affordable price. The lens has what I would consider a mixed reputation but I will be open minded because this lens was and still is an affordable option among manual focus lenses.
 

 

Build quality and finish:

This lens is pretty well put together, it's all metal and the finish isn't too bad although the inner lens tube suffers from a very slight wobble which brings the perception of quality down slightly. I would say for the money it's a pretty well made lens, in summary perhaps quality parts loosely assembled would be the best way to describe it. The lens has a72mm filter thread even though the front element is relatively small, this sudden trumpet like extension at the end of the lens basically form a built in hood which is a wise move on the lens designers part as you will discover in the next section!

Image Quality:

I only really tested this lens stopped down because even wide open the aperture is useless for any kind of shallow DOF effect and for landscape work there's no reason not to stop a lens down for optimum sharpness so my findings are based on using the lens between f/5.6 and f/8.

The good news is that the lens really delivers in the colour department, it's not often that the standard set of adjustments I apply to every image have to be tamed back but it was certainly the case with this lens, the colours are very vivid and appealing.

The sharpness of this lens is also respectable, both on micro 4/3 and APS-C sensors there is decent sharpness quite far into the edges as long is the lens is stepped down, I had heard this lens suffers from very poor edge performance but it honestly wasn't bad in my experience, this suggests that the lens only really shows it's flaws in this regard when used on a full frame camera.

Contrast was generally pretty good although it was effected by the flare resistance which can be pretty poor, if the sun or other light source is close to the frame but still outside then the resulting loss of contrast can be bought back with processing but if a strong light source is inside the frame you sometimes get an unsightly flare that can be time consuming if not impossible to remove. It doesn't always happen but when it does it's a real pain and can make attempting some shots pretty much impossible. It doesn't help matters that the flare itself is unattractive, it's not bold or even interesting to look at but rather indistinct and blotchy so it can't even be used as a creative effect, at least not in my experience.

The biggest problem with this lens which has an effect at all times is the distortion, it is severe especially at the widest setting and can be quite tricky to correct fully, this is the biggest weakness of the lens and can make landscape work quite difficult, especially when man made structures are involved.

Conclusion?:

Overall I think the lens puts in a decent performance when cost is factored in, the distortion is bad and flare can be a problem but the sharpness is decent and the colours are absolutely fantastic. It's by no means a high quality lens but for the price it costs there's little to compete with it in the manual focus arena. If you have a digital camera and already own a kit lens then I would probably avoid this lens as it would probably be a downgrade in some areas but if you're a manual focus nut or don't already own a kit lens then it's a cheap way to get wide!

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!