manuel_zamora_morschhaeuse

I am using the Minolta X700 for exactly the same type of photography. You can get some quality lenses for a comparatively low price, it all depends on what focal lengths you prefer and your type of shooting. I am happily using the MC 28mm/f2, MD 35mm/f1.8, MD 50mm/f1.4 and the MD 85mm/f2, where specially the 28/35/50mm are classic street photography lenses.

 

But, as always, equipment is not everything. Street photography takes many many many hours of walking, shooting and developing, looking and finally doing it all over again.

 

If you are new to photography or at least new to the street photography thing, take a 35mm or a 50mm lens, some ISO 400 B&W film, and go shooting. After you have done that for quite a time, sit down and think about new or different equipment or what you could change to improve your style and/or results.

 

Everytime I catch myself thinking about new equipment I have to remind me: Photography is *not* about equipment!

While I cannot comment on the autofocus capabilities of the 400D, my copy performed flawlessly on the 30D. Most of these problems can be related to a poor autofocus implementation in the body, for example like in the 350D/Rebel XT, where many focus errors occur in low light situations. These errors are more visible with fast primes used wide open because of the very small depth of field...

 

But Ronald is right, when you find problems, send the lens to the manufacturer (Sigma, but this is true for Canon, Nikon, Tamron, you name them) for calibration and do not exchange it in the shop.

<p>There is not much more to add. I used this lens on a 30D and liked it very much. As others have said, wide open the corners are soft, but this poses no problems most of the time. I sold the lens for nearly its full price after my move to the 5D, so there should be no big loss for you if you do the same one day. </p>

 

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<a href='http://zamora.de/pb/index.php?showimage=184'><img src='http://zamora.de/pb/images/20070604222820__mg_0795-bearbeiten-900.jpg' border=0></a><br />

Canon EOS 30D + Sigma 30mm/f1.4 at f2.0, ISO 3200<br />

Tamron has a slightly better QC as Sigma, but still, the chance of getting a bad sample is higher than with genuine manufacturers' lenses. And still you can have bad luck with original Canon or Nikon glass.

 

Nevertheless, if you check the review sites, the Tamron 28-75/f2.8, while being very good in terms of sharpness compared to its price and its aperture, /is/ soft wide open. Probably not much softer than the Canon 24-70/f2.8 or the corresponding Sigma is. Color and contrast is also influenced by the lens coating, which gives the same look from all Canon L lenses.

 

Check photozone.de or the-digital-picture.com for reviews and pixel peeping samples.

Thank you, Trevor. The girl is just a friend, nevertheless it was a fun and rewarding (and quite low tech) shooting.

 

And yes, sometimes we gearheads on photo.net forget about the one thing that matters the most about our dearest hobby and/or profession: the photograph itself.

I had an outdoor shooting two weeks ago and tried (the main camera was digital) the new Portra 160NC. After I got the developed rolls back and fed them into my scanner I was very positively surprised - this new emulsion is tack sharp, scans beautifully and gave the portraits a unique and very nice tonality, in my opinion better than the old NC.

 

Have fun shooting,

Manuel

Oh, and for other legendary Minolta manual focus lenses: The 28mm/f2, 35mm f1.8, 85mm/f2 and the 135mm/f2 (next to the mentioned 50mm lenses) all have a stellar reputation and feature excellent IQ.

All of the 50s are very sharp. I own both the MD 1.7 and 1.4 and the latter is just a tack sharper at medium apertures, at least in my experience. Bokeh-wise the rule is, the faster the better. So, either buy the MD 50mm/f1.4 or the f1.2 (if you can find it). The most creamy ist surely the 58mm/f1.2, from all of the 50s this is the best looking, but definetively not the sharpest. As suggested, check rokkorfiles.com for the "battle of the 50s".<br />

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<img src='http://zamora.de/pb/images/20060311153220_sabine-poster-900.jpg'><br />

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Taken with a X-700 and the late MD50mm/f1.4 at f4.<br />

Well, someone already mentioned it, but I like to refer to Klaus' photozone.de. He has tested a pletora of lenses in a very unbiased and scientic way. He had to test four different samples of that lens to get a "good" one, not a great one (to quote him). Also, he tested the lens on a crop factor slr and its results were quite good, but not that stellar everbody tells. (http://photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/canon_2470_28/index.htm)

 

To make a point: Canon definetively has its QC problems with every lens they make, probably not as bad as Sigma/Tamron, but it definetively does exist. And as good a lens the Canon 24-70 is, it's not a miracle lens.

I do own the Sigma 30mm/f1.4. As many others have said, it's very sharp in the center even wide open but the corners are soft (stopped down, everything is fine btw). Still, when I shoot at ~f1.4-f2 I do not care about corner sharpenss, but about the photograph itself. Most of the time it's a portrait or candid shot or any other darker scene where I just do not need razor sharp corners. If and when I should need that, there's the thing called tripod and f8.

Well, I can tell you how I learned about photography and also about portraits:

 

I started with an EOS 300V and some crappy 28-135mm Sigma zoom. I did learn exactly nothing. For about a year or more I took a sh!tload of very very very bad pictures. Then someday I was given the advice to stick to one focal length, the 50mm and try to get the stuff like composing, the effects of light etc. right. Luckily I followed that advice and some few weeks later I was able to produce some very nice portraits. If you take some time and read the various guides here on photo.net, Philip recommends the same thing, and it has worked for decades of new photographers.

 

So, get the Canon 35mm/f2 or the Sigma 30mm/f1.4 (equivalent to the 50mm focal length on APS-C camera, like your rebel) and start learning about photography. The 50mm equiv. will allow you to take photos of everything, including people. It is certainly not the optimal focal length for portraits, but it works *very* well.

 

And don't forget the most important thing: Shoot shoot shoot! :)

 

Have fun,

Manuel

Thank you very much for posting! I am still using my X-700 for low light work, and currently on the search for this 58mm lens. Now I am even more eager to get one ;)

 

Manuel

I love shooting with primes, especially the fifty is my favourite focal length. I knew all the issues before I bought a 30D for myself, but when I had to face them and finally bought the Sigma 30mm, I still was annoyed by it.

 

My old Minolta MD50mm/f1.4 has better corner performance than the Sigma 30mm/Canon 28mm, let alone the newer EF Canon I own. Does it matter for the stuff I do? Luckily no. Does it still annoy me? YES! (to quote you: "But producing a 28/30mm prime lens that is sharp across the frame shouldn't be rocket science for a company that otherwise makes so many superb lenses")

 

The sweet spot thing is surely true (we have the pixel pitch thing, but this does only affect resolution as far as I know, I am by far no expert on lens design), but with the crop factor there comes the whole wide angle thing, especially when it comes to primes, so don't get me started on this one. Why can't there be a manual focus, 100% viewfinder digital SLR System with a good selection of primes? The best available option is the Canon 5D, which is unfortunately way out of my price range...

 

But on the otherhand I do tell me, that all that matters are the final pictures, so I try not to bother too much ;)

If you're keen about actual resolution tests, check photozone.de:

 

- Canon 28mm/f1.8: http://photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/canon_28_18/index.htm

 

- Sigma 30mm/f1.4: http://photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/sigma_30_14/index.htm

 

To quickly summarize: They are optically roughly equivalent; very good center, ok-ish border performance. If you're into low-light/portrait/street shooting, there is nothing to worry about. If you're searching for a 50mm on Fullframe performance lens... buy a Fullframe body. I gave up searching and am now quite happy with the Sigma. I had to accept the fact that you have to make compromises when shooting with primes on a crop factor body.

 

Manuel

Hey Joel,

 

your pictures are just wonderful! If you don't mind, could you post some of the X700/58mm shots? I am curious about your results with this quite famous lens.

 

Thanks,

Manuel

Your photos from China are stunning, This is really great work. I am curious though, what type of film did you use?

Check Klaus Schroiff's (from photozone.de) overview and quality comparison between raw converters; some of the converters are free, too:

 

http://www.photozone.de/7Digital/rawindex.htm

To add a quick note: I do experience essentially the same color shift using a Macbook (non-pro), calibrated with a Spyder2 colorimeter and its default software.

If you want consistent output it is very important to establish a consistent workflow, with whatever software you choose. Silverfast is a nice product, but expensive - Silverfast Ai Studio with a calibration target is about 300 Euros. Do you only have negatives or also positives? For negative scans you do not need expensive calibration features, so I'd recommend Vuescan which costs only 80$ in its professional version with calibration and raw file support.

 

And be advised: Scanning is not easy, so be prepared to invest a considerable amount of time in your scanning skills. If you do not have that much free time available, really do consider using a scan service.

 

Manuel

I do now know what the problem on my system is:

 

Today I "calibrated" the display with the System Preferences Utility, adjusting apple logos to match the interlaced background and set the gamma value to 2.2. And look - Photoshop/Lightroom behave now *exactly* as they should! Either my colorimeter is not working correctly (but it does when running windows) or my Spyder2 does not like the MacBook display (perhaps it is an older hardware revision?) or the Spyder2 software does not like the Macbook. Either way - I will try the ColorEyes Software trial, if that does not solve my problem it's trying another piece of hardware or keep using the Apple-"calibration" tool...

 

Thanks for all your help!

 

Manuel

Have a look at rokkorfiles.com: http://rokkorfiles.com/24mm.html

 

This guy has reviewed a lot of the old manual focus minolta lenses. To cite the linked article:

 

"This was one lens to be changed significantly by Minolta for the the 3rd generation version. The lens switched from a 55mm to a 49mm filter thread, and from 9 elements in 7 groups to 8 elements in 8 groups. While I am not familiar with the performance of the new optical formula, I have been advised by other users that the performance of the later lens is similarly good, which would be expected given it retained the ?floating? element construction."

 

So have fun with your new baby and don't forget to post your results here!

I just attached an external display and calibrated that - on both displays, laptop lcd and external lcd, the effect is the same, respectively with different color casts of course. Conclusion: Not a hardware but a software issue, whatever that could be...

At work I will attach an external display and see how that works out...

I recalibrated using a current Spyder2 version - no effect, the profile looks better though.

 

What can we try now? To be honest, I am clueless. Is there anybody here with a Core Duo 2 Macbook (pro), who is using a calibrated screen *without* the problems outlined here? Godfrey's Macbook works as expected, anybody else? An Adobe, Apple developer probably? ;)

The glossy screen could explain why the resulting profile *looks* awful, but my real problem is the appearant misbehaviour of all color managed applications on Mac OS X. Even an awful looking profile should work like a normal profile. *If* the calibration software produced a profile that is broken, it should *also* not work with the ColorSync Utility. I tried the repair function of that tool, no effect. I will no recalibrate my display using a new version of the Spyder2 software...