Sigma 30/1.4: lovely

I have been further experimenting with the D80. Now that I have the Sigma 30/1.4 lens at my disposal, I am quickly warming to digital technology. ;-) It has been a delight to swap the Nikkor 18-135 kit lens for this fixed focal length. The zoom feels plasticky and simply doesn’t inspire confidence. And I generally don’t like zoom lenses. They are making me nervous. With a fixed lens, you know what mental frame to carry around. With a zoom the visual imagination loses focus and ends up nowhere.

The 30mm is just about right in terms of size and weight for the D80. The camera fits very well in my hand. And with the hood of the Sigma 70mm f2.8 Macro lens it looks like a very sturdy combo. At full opening the Sigma works wonders. The bokeh is very smooth and liquid (look at how the letters in Witold’s book – see picture in the previous posting - just about flow into each other). I am also impressed with the natural, lifelike (I’d almost say “analogue”) rendering of the sharp areas.

With shutter speeds handheld down to 1/8s and ISO values up to at least 800, one can obviously work in very low light. The minimum focusing distance is 40cm, which is great compared to almost any rangefinder normal lens, but 10 or 15cm less would increase the scope for this lens even further.

Anyway, the 30/1.4 will remain glued to the D80 for quite a while. I look forward to further exploring its potential.

I took the picture shown above at Brussels-Midi station when I was heading home from London yesterday. Sigma 30/1.4 full open at 1/30s with a -1.0 exposure compensation, 100 iso.