entropic-remnants auf eBay

07. Mär 2011

Surprising Sharpness Considering Its Reputation

I bought this as an additional secret weapon for weddings and industrial hand held, low-light shooting. This is the latest version of this lens (there is an older version that is not "DG"). This lens is either loved or hated apparently due to the Sigma curse of poor quality control. I've been lucky with Sigma's so far, but I've had friends that had to send their lenses back. To Sigma's credit, they always seem to return a well adjusted and properly operating lens. This copy is pretty soft in the center at F/1.8 which is about what you'd expect. However -- and to me inexplicably -- just a 1/3 stop closure to F/2 clears things up immensely. I've shot it on my D200 and my D7000 and it works well on each, though I had to dial in correction for a bit of back focusing which is only really apparent on very shallow depth of field shots. Shooting it on DX (1.5x crop, the edges are soft until you start to hit F/2.8 or so and not really getting sharp until F/4 -- but by F/5.6 the lens is extraordinarily sharp. There's little out there at this wide an angle that is as affordable as this lens. For many shots, that gauzy softness -- particularly for weddings -- might be actually usable. Some carefully applied masked sharpening can work wonders to make a nice looking shot. Soft focus and noise clean up better than motion blur. One of the wonders is how close this thing focuses. This is one of the lens strengths/weaknesses. Some said the lens just wasn't as sharp when wide open at close focus as it was nearer infinity. My copy seems to be the opposite of that. Wide open shots at f/1.8 a few inches from the lens appear sharper than the shots further away. Could be an anomaly and it's not dramatic but that's what I think I'm seeing. Overall, a surprisingly useful lens at F/2 where I will choose to shoot it for very low light performance. This lens, paired with the good high-iso noise of my D7000, can make some shots possible that I normally would not bother with knowing that there would be no usable quality. Although it seems these lenses can be a "crap shoot", I recommend getting one if you need something very fast and fairly wide. For this price you can certainly find something you can use it for when you have no other options. If, like me, you have old Nikon film cameras then you will like that this lens has a real aperture ring. Since the lens is full-frame compatible it can be used as an ultra wide lens on full frame and film cameras -- through frankly with it's edge sharpness issues on DX I would think using it on film/FX would require careful framing and limit your applications at large aperture. My version is for Nikon AF and I presume the other versions are similar in this respect: there's no motor in the lens. It is entirely dependent on the focus drive motor in the camera which means slightly slower focus performance and a bit more noise. Still, I don't consider this lens excessively noisy or slow but if you're used to a professional AF-S or USM style lens this is a step back. Not bad for a motor driven AF lens from Sigma though. A word on build quality: this is a Sigma EX (top-of-the-line) lens and it feels solid. Certainly it's huge for a prime with its nearly 4" length and 82mm filter. It has the hokey focus clutch like a Tokina which I'm not fond of, but I don't focus this one manually anyway so who cares. Just make sure the focus ring is pushed forward towards the objective when you use it.

Diamond HV7A All Mode Multi Band 10m/6m/2m/70cm Mobile Amateur Ham Radio Antenna

26. Jun 2019

Surprisingly good HF/VHF/UHF combination antenna

Frankly shocked at how good this is. It's mounted about 3/4 of the way up the rear hatch of my 2017 Ford Escape on a Diamond K400 mount NMO mount with an NMO to SO-239 adapter. I grounded the mount back to the vehicle body using just some 18 gauge stranded wire. I made a "guy" out of paracord that attaches to my roof rack to minimize forward/back movement. It's replaced my Diamond NR73BNMO that was on prior to installing a Yaesu FT-857D I picked up used to get HF as well as VHF/UHF. Here's my impressions band-by-band: VHF (6 meters) basically untested. VHF (2 meters) -- it's okay. About like a 1/4 wave with good SWR and was fine out-of-the-box. UHF (70 cm) -- pretty good and seems better than a 1/4 wave but not measured. I can get easily into all the repeaters I did with my VHF/UHF dual band antenna mounted prior to this one. Again, fine match out of the box. HF: 10 meters -- untested. Bands not good at this time. 20 meters (with optional coil) -- surprising! Worked several Florida stations in the 3 days since it was mounted and I'm in southeastern Pennsylvania. Today while driving home I worked IK4GRO in northern Italy getting a miserable 43 signal report -- but I worked him! In the current band conditions that bodes well for when the bands come up in a few years. Seems well made to me but time will tell. I think it's a good idea to tie it off somehow and I've seen posts by folks that used monofilament for this which would likely be less obvious but I'm fine with the 1/8" paracord. It has a fold over feature which is good for parking garages. I fold it forward and tie it off to the side of the roof rack with some velcro strips. Based on the performance so far I've now ordered the 40m coil for it. We'll see how that does. Overall, I'm very pleased with it for the price as it gives me a single antenna to work all bands. BUT -- if you have a Yaesu FT-857D like I do you'll need a duplexer to combine the two outputs into one and that will run you another $30 or so -- be advised. I found an affordable Comet unit and it's working well. If I can get back into this review to edit (not sure how this works) I'll add some installation pics this coming weekend.

07. Mär 2011

Surprising Sharpness Considering Its Reputation

I bought this as an additional secret weapon for weddings and industrial hand held, low-light shooting. This is the latest version of this lens (there is an older version that is not "DG"). This lens is either loved or hated apparently due to the Sigma curse of poor quality control. I've been lucky with Sigma's so far, but I've had friends that had to send their lenses back. To Sigma's credit, they always seem to return a well adjusted and properly operating lens. This copy is pretty soft in the center at F/1.8 which is about what you'd expect. However -- and to me inexplicably -- just a 1/3 stop closure to F/2 clears things up immensely. I've shot it on my D200 and my D7000 and it works well on each, though I had to dial in correction for a bit of back focusing which is only really apparent on very shallow depth of field shots. Shooting it on DX (1.5x crop, the edges are soft until you start to hit F/2.8 or so and not really getting sharp until F/4 -- but by F/5.6 the lens is extraordinarily sharp. There's little out there at this wide an angle that is as affordable as this lens. For many shots, that gauzy softness -- particularly for weddings -- might be actually usable. Some carefully applied masked sharpening can work wonders to make a nice looking shot. Soft focus and noise clean up better than motion blur. One of the wonders is how close this thing focuses. This is one of the lens strengths/weaknesses. Some said the lens just wasn't as sharp when wide open at close focus as it was nearer infinity. My copy seems to be the opposite of that. Wide open shots at f/1.8 a few inches from the lens appear sharper than the shots further away. Could be an anomaly and it's not dramatic but that's what I think I'm seeing. Overall, a surprisingly useful lens at F/2 where I will choose to shoot it for very low light performance. This lens, paired with the good high-iso noise of my D7000, can make some shots possible that I normally would not bother with knowing that there would be no usable quality. Although it seems these lenses can be a "crap shoot", I recommend getting one if you need something very fast and fairly wide. For this price you can certainly find something you can use it for when you have no other options. If, like me, you have old Nikon film cameras then you will like that this lens has a real aperture ring. Since the lens is full-frame compatible it can be used as an ultra wide lens on full frame and film cameras -- through frankly with it's edge sharpness issues on DX I would think using it on film/FX would require careful framing and limit your applications at large aperture. My version is for Nikon AF and I presume the other versions are similar in this respect: there's no motor in the lens. It is entirely dependent on the focus drive motor in the camera which means slightly slower focus performance and a bit more noise. Still, I don't consider this lens excessively noisy or slow but if you're used to a professional AF-S or USM style lens this is a step back. Not bad for a motor driven AF lens from Sigma though. A word on build quality: this is a Sigma EX (top-of-the-line) lens and it feels solid. Certainly it's huge for a prime with its nearly 4" length and 82mm filter. It has the hokey focus clutch like a Tokina which I'm not fond of, but I don't focus this one manually anyway so who cares. Just make sure the focus ring is pushed forward towards the objective when you use it.

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