Here’s a quick part three of my ongoing review of the new Sigma 8-16mm F4.5-5.6 DC HSM Ultra-Wide Zoom Lens for Nikon. This is about two things, distortions and flares.
As you see, both of today’s images have the sun inside of the frame. Both images have been post-processed, but in both I have left the flares and ghosts in. That’s pretty much as bad as it gets - and it is not bad at all.
I have tried to clone out the reflection of the aperture blades in the Image of the Day, but in the end I decided, that with all that symmetry, I actually liked the slightly surreal effect.
This is a lens that you can use to photograph even tall buildings without having to tip the lens upward, thus without converging vertical lines. This is something I frequently don’t care about, to the contrary, I use those lines, but in classic architectural photography, people use expensive shift lenses to get the effect.
PTLens already supports this lens, and although the barrel distortions are pretty much nil above 10 mm, at 8 mm they are pronounced enough to make an image like the Image of the Day look bad. I strongly suppose that the latest version of Adobe Camera RAW also supports it or will support it soon.
Sharpness of this lens is excellent, and chromatic aberrations are extremely well controlled. All that makes it a fantastic choice for architectural photography.
The Song of the Day is “I Want To Be Straight” by Ian Dury and The Blockheads. I have it on a collection that’s not available any more, thus I suggest you get “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll - The Essential Collection”. Hear the song on YouTube. I have already used this song in “159 – The Prospect”, thus the numeral in the title 🙂