Monday, September 01, 2008

currently I'm bored and frustrated and just got paid. Which is a very very dangerous combination for me...

So I went online, look around and found a nice deal on a sigma 400mm F/5.6 prime and promptly bought it,after goggling it and get some information about it. The reason is, I wanted a 300mm F/4 prime since two years, but could never convince myself to actually pull the trigger on it, since it's 1200$. The 10 year old sigma in excellent condition and quite good reviews on the other hand sold for 400$ and 12$ shipping. So I decided to give it a little try and if it wont work out, well I send it back and pay another 12$ shipping.

What's to know about it?

  • quite an old design (10-15 years old)
  • heavy, 3 - 4 lbs
  • slow, F/5.6 basically means auto focus is slow or wont auto focus with a TC
  • low contrast, which is not that big of a deal
  • around 400$ used and not optically perfect, but still better than all the 1xx - 5xx zooms these days
  • optically better than my Tamron 70-200 + TC
  • slow autofocus, so no bif's with my D80, maybe in future with the D300, if I ever get one
Basically it's the only affordable way to reach 400mm for an amateur, since the closest Nikon lens cost around 4500$.

I serious have to say what is nikon thinking latley, every new released nikon lens in an interresting range is 1400$+ and the third party producers like tamron and sigma are only producing these stupid megazooms, which never hold what they promise.

The picture of the bird is taken with the 70-200mm F/2.8 Tamron and sadly unsharp. I have no idea why this keeps happening, the Tamron is able to provide extremely sharp pictures, but I guess it's really the camera.

I just wished I would had waited 1 month and bought the D300, than I could use all these cheap old manual focus lenses. Like a Nikon 85mm F/1.4 MF for 400$ instead of 1050$ as AF version.

Well, I guess I put everymonth 150$ aways and can buy the D300 july next year...