It’s now officially Autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere. The days are getting shorter and hillside stands of trees are bursting into colorful displays of crimsons and golds. Obviously, it is a great time for ultrawide landscapes to capture those sweeping vistas. But it is also prime season for packing a telephoto macro lens like the Sigma 150mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM APO Macroto capture the grandeur and spirit of the season in its tiny details.
Fiery-colored maple seed pods after a fall rain. Canon EOS 5D and Sigma 150mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM APO Macro 1/60 f/4.0 ISO 400, Sigma EF-610 DG Super E-TTL, angled downward for macro capture. OS activated.
There are a number of great reasons to pack this great tele macro (or add it quickly to your kit!) for fall foliage season.
There are times when packing light really is what matters most for photo adventures. And on those occasions when hauling a big camera bag with a bunch of specialty lenses isn’t an option for one reason or another, a multi-purpose superzoom lens such as the Sigma 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM is a great choice.
This lens is an impressive combination of reach, range and versatility in a single multi-tasking piece of glass that can do just about everything from wide landscapes, to telephoto wildlife, close-ups (1:3.4 max magnification), short tele portraiture, and help make a strong shot of most situations you’ll want to shoot on your adventures, without ever having to swap lenses. And it does all this at a very attractive street price, I might add!
Watch this short video for a hands-on demonstration of the features and functions of this lens.
18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM
The Sigma 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM is available in Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Sony/Minolta mounts for APS-C cameras.
This APS-C specific lens is a 13.8x optically stabilized zoomer that weighs in at just over a pound and a half with a field of view range comparable to about a 28-400mm on a full-frame camera. That’s a whole lot of lens in a compact four-inch long package! You can check out the full product specs, including SLD and Aspherical lens element construction that help keep shots sharp and crisp through the full focal range here.
Rectilinear ultrawide zooms like the Sigma 8-16mm f4.5-5.6 DC HSM can bring a whole new dimension of creative expression to photographers working with APS-C chipped DSLRs.
Here’s a fun arm’s length self-portrait I made at 8mm showing the rapid magnification falloff typical of ultrawides. Notice how pronounced my arms in the foreground are! People and ultrawides can be a fun combo with the right subject.
Unlike fisheye lenses, rectilinear ultrawide lenses keep straight lines straight from frame edge to frame edge but still take in sweeping angles of coverage.
Sigma’s 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM APO AF Lens: Reader Q+As
We’ve gotten a number of great reader questions since we’ve opened up the Photoworld@sigmaphoto.com hotline, and many of these relate to the very popular Sigma 50-500mm f4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM APO AF Lens. Here’s a sampling of questions from our readers about this great 10x superzoom!
Tips & Tricks for top quality HDR shots from Sigma’s serious compact cameras
Jack Howard
There are number of key things in the feature set of Sigma’s Foveon-chipped compact cameras, theDP1s, DP1x, DP2andDP2sthatadd up to a class of cameras that is, in so many ways, perfect for serious High Dynamic Range Imaging in a very small package.
A three-shot auto bracket burst at +/-3 EVs around the metered exposure at ISO 100 f/7.1 with the Sigma DP1x gives this tone mapped high dynamic range image great detail and color information through an amazingly wide dynamic range. I used the popular HDR program Photomatix Pro to merge and tone map this file, and applied a little perspective adjustment in Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended to fix keystoning. This is College Hall on Douglass Campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and is probably my favorite building at RU.
That self-portrait in my first post, (and the variation on the Sigma Home page right now,) was shot just last week at Rutgers Gardens, in New Brunswick, NJ. I first visited this amazing geometric stand of trees back in the early ‘90s when I was studying History, English and American Studies at RU, and from my first visit, I’ve wanted to make cool photos in this spot, and I’ve revisited it many times through the years as a photo subject. There is just something about this stand of trees that draws me in. Continue reading Introducing the new technical editor of Sigma’s Photo World, Jack Howard! (Part II)
Hi, I’m Jack Howard, and I’m working for Sigma as a Web Editor now. My mission here is simple and concise: create and curate web content for Sigma’s Photo World that is informative and inspiring to the Sigma community of photographers.
Of course, this means I’ll be writing and editing How-to, Tips & Tricks, and Tutorials for making the most of your Sigma lenses, cameras, and small strobes. And it also means finding, sharing and celebrating fantastic photos and videos created with Sigma’s tools. Are you (or someone you know) doing something amazing with Sigma gear? We want to know! Have a question about field technique, or which lens is right for you? We’ll do our best to tackle these, too!
Jack Howard, self-portrait February 2011. Rutgers Gardens, New Brunswick NJ. Captured with the Sigma 8-16mm f4/5-5.6 HSM DC lens on a Canon EOS20D with a 580EX II strobe for foreground fill. I’m holding the Sigma 70-200 f2.8 EX APO DG HSM OS mounted on a Canon EOS Rebel XTi. Rutgers Gardens, New Brunswick NJ.Continue reading Hi, I’m Jack Howard, and I’m working for Sigma now. It’s nice to meet you all!
