At the Japanese Summer Festival (3)

Posted by Andrew Gould (Sydney, Australia) on 4 February 2008 in People & Portrait and Portfolio.

Another one from this festival at Sydney's Darling Harbour on the 2nd of February 2008.

Sigma 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 DC OS

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Comments (11)

Eleftheria, 9 years old, from Athens, Greece

Nice portrait and work.

4 Feb 2008 12:19pm

Viewfinder from Bradenton, United States

A lot of personality shows here.

4 Feb 2008 12:22pm

badala from Leiria, Portugal

Excellent portrait.

4 Feb 2008 12:39pm

givethemhell from Germany

Another pretty kimono, and a beautiful girl.

4 Feb 2008 12:46pm

Babul Bhatt from Bombay, India

Lovely street photography...

I always wanted to buy an 18-200 mm; but cannot decide between Nikon vs. Sigma lens. Guess the price would be an contributing factor towards the same soon. Am gonna do my research on this soon. And probably buy end of month. Might help me in not changing lenses on my Nikon D50.

4 Feb 2008 1:11pm

@Babul Bhatt: Thanks, Babul. You mention the lens, and I can tell you that I'm delighted with my Sigma. You'll see that many of my earlier photos were taken with the original version of this lens, with no stabilizer. I had been plannning to buy either a short zoom with a stabilizer or a fast, fairly wide prime lens to use when there was not enough light for the Sigma zoom. Then they came out with the OS (optical stabilizer) version, which is actually a totally redesigned model. In my case, there is no option from Canon to compete with this. In any case, I couldn't be happier. I haven't taken it off the camera at all since I bought it last November. It suits my style of photography, hate of carrying too much and having to juggle lenses and camera body in the street. It may not have the ultimate sharpness throughout the entire range at all apertures but, as far as I'm concerned, the results speak for themselves.

The bottom line is that I can zoom from the equivalent of 28 to 300mm in a split second, never miss anything, use 300mm in quite bad light and easily use the wide angle end in low light at 1600 ISO down to 1/8 or 1/4 of a second with care, if I need to.These are my priorities, you see.

I'll take out my 50mm f1.8 Canon (= 80mm in 35 mm format) if I'm ever going to do a portrait session, and I may buy a very wide angle prime lens in the future for architectural work, as I suppose this could give me a little extra sharpness in certain photos, although I'm certainly not disappointed with the results I'm getting at the moment with the Sigma.

MaryB from Staffordshire, United Kingdom

A beautiful portrait, the colours in her outfit are really lovely too.

4 Feb 2008 4:48pm

Graham Russon from Cape Town, South Africa

Again you've captured the right moment. The vivid colours and detail are terrific.

4 Feb 2008 8:02pm

Craiger from Vacaville, California, United States

Excellent!

4 Feb 2008 10:11pm

Emilio Garcia from Pleasanton, United States

Great portrait shot. I like the candid expression in her face and the nice cropping of this picture. If the background was a bit more out of focus, it would have been perfect

5 Feb 2008 2:56am

@Emilio Garcia: Thanks, Emilio. I did think about the background on seeing the photo on screen. Perhaps I should have tried it wide open, although at that focal length, the maximum is only f6.3. I habitually use f8, though, because it seems to give about the sharpest result.