the following is an email i sent a model of mine after getting sick of problems i'd been having with an expensive canon image stabilised lens 20-88 mm macro, and went back to a hundred dollar new sigma non-image stabilized 17-80 mm macro i'd gotten for fun...it really suggest canon should get out of the lens business:
after our talk about lenses, i put the sigma
on and took these real low lite pix of the cats...i
photoshopped them, but what i found was what i'd said,
the shape quality is really quite impeccable, which as
an 'artist' is what i personally go by, shooting
according to shape, composition, and the integrity of
the shapes and angles which give the look of beauty or
properness to a headshot, to you, to a cat...this lens
beats hands down the canon on shape retention and lack
of smearing and distortion...
however, the sigma is a smaller lens, and thus does
not have the glass of a larger lens...i think it
suffers in depth of colour and saturation, as i'd said
at dinner...but i'd much rather lose a bit there, and
have to try and pump it up in photoshop, and coming
close but not all the way...i'd much rather that than
have my main virtue (my abilities in shape alignment
in creating an artistic shot) be lost to a lens that
cannot hold shape, or produces shape that's a dice
roll as to whether it turns out like what i'm seeing
through the lens...i don't want to fight the lens, and
i'll give up some saturation for that...also, i can
only shoot down to about 1/25th of a second and hold
clarity of the image, whereas it is true the canon's
antishake lets me go down to 1/5th of a second...so i
am forced to shoot at 3200 iso (speed) vs. 1600, which
adds film noise...
so film noise and saturation are worsened and lost
somewhat, respectively, but my main ability and virtue
as a photographer is maintained, veracity of
shape...that which i see maintains the beauty i align
the shot up with when viewed on computer...this i must
have...
and as an aside, this is a better macro lens for
watches too...stronger macro magnification so my watch
fills the screen twice as much, and with something as
critical as a watch, the angles on the watch are more
important...i won't bore you with the watch pic i
took, but it has a beauty that i saw through the lens
that the canon does not maintain...
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