My Photo Gallery (1 Viewer)

[Brett DiMichele]

Hi all,

I was messing around this morning and picked some of my
somewhat better photos taken with my new Sigma SD10 Digital
SLR and made a quick little gallery.

Check it out if you want to and I appreciate any advice or
comments you may have.

http://www.westol.com/~brettd/sd10/gallery/

 

[Seth_L]

Just out of curiousity, why did you buy a Sigma over a Nikon or Canon DSLR?

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Easy... The images..

The Foveon X3 sensor in the Sigma is the only sensor out
there besides the Canon 1D that has this much pixel level
sharpness (lack of AntiAlias ala BLUR filter).

I spent months looking at SLR's I had my mind set on an
Olympus E1 but thier prices were ridiculous and then I
went and looked at the D100 and the 10D and was not happy
with thier control layouts at all and I started surfing
images taken with all the cameras and when I saw the Sigma
photos on PBASE it was over....

 

[Scott L]

That's some good stuff, grab some more!

I like the dog the best. So many emotions coming from that face! What's the blur in the backgrouund and how do you get it like that?

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Scott,

Thanks!

The blur is from shallow Depth Of Field. I used a 100/300mm
Telephoto at 300mm from about 5' away at F10 or so apature
and that's what you get lots of blur due to shallow DOF

 

[MarkHastings]

Good stuff. Don't take this in a bad way, but they look just like stock photos. Ever think of selling pictures to stock houses?

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Mark,

Nope not taking it the wrong way and nope I have no
intention on selling any images.. It's a hobby and that is
it!

 

[Brett DiMichele]

I updated the gallery cleaned up the HTML a little and
added 10 or so more images.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Nice pics. I plan to get the new Nikon D70 myself -- it's about to hit stores really soon. Already ordered an 85mm f/1.8 prime for it.

_Man_

 

[Sam Posten]

Nice pics! I'd looked at the Foveon based cameras but I dont want to get locked into Sigma at this point...

I've been 'just about to' get a D-Rebel for a long time and think I've jumped ship to the D-70. I have a few Nikon lenses (with an 8008s) and the nice DOF preview and faster speed of the D-70 seem to be worth the extra 100 to me.

Seeing great pics makes me all the more ready to get a DSLR, soon!

Sam

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

With D70 vs D-Rebel, it's not just about DOF preview and faster speed although those are certainly appealing. In general, the D70 is simply a more complete all-around camera than the D-Rebel. For me, the D-Rebel just seemed to be missing too many features -- even my Canon G3 as some important features missing from the D-Rebel. If I'm a wildlife shooter, then Canon's larger, better tele lens choices might sway me, but I'm not a wildlife shooter.

Yeah, Sigma is fighting a serious uphill battle, so it's really tough to spend the $$$ on them. To each his own I guess. But definitely nice pics though. Even though the files are technically just ~3.4MP, they yield roughly the same actual resolution as the 6MP competition -- a tad more than some and a tad less than others depending on how you look at it. If you just run a good resize interpolation to 6MP, the results should be about the same as the 6MP competition.

_Man_

 

[Brett DiMichele]

The D70 looks like a far better choice than the Drebel at
this point. The Drebel is very shottily built and lacks
many serious features MLU being one of them.. When I am
shooting my 100/300 F4 (which is a 3.5LB Hunk of glass) I
couldn't do it without MLU hand held in those less than
stellar conditions.

Don't judge the Sigma as a 3.45MP Camera though.. Because
it carries the resolution of any 6MP Chip and that has been
proven and beaten and debated to death! You can doublesize
Interpolate straight out of SPP 2.0 and then scale down to
6MP and the image is sharper than anything I have seen
come out of anything Nikon or Canon has to offer with
exception to the 1D and 1DS which are the only 2 Canon's I
would personally own.

Was going with Sigma SA mount lenses a leap of faith?
Perhaps... I didn't have a cache of Nikkor or L lenses to
sway my decision and I made the right choice. Not the same
choice everyone would make but thousands of us have

 

[Christ Reynolds]

the pics look great. damn, now i want a digital SLR!

CJ

 

[Mark Sherman]

Bret what kind of photo strobs did you use for the Engine the glass and the lenses, they look great.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Mark,

No strobes for the lens pictures just 400w Halogen celing
bounced.

400W Halogen + Sigma EF500 Super SA-N Flash celing bounced
for the engine

400W Halogen + Sigma EF500 Super SA-N Flash celing bounced + 25 Watt Blue Incandescent spot light right over top of
the glass (but you can't see the blue color cast since I
converted that one to B&W).

Thanks by the way!

CJ,

Thanks!

The greatest thing about the Digital SLR's that I have yet
to see from any consumer or "prosumer" digicam is that the
photos look the same at 100% scale on a monitor they are
100% crystal clear and very sharp (especially when they
come from a Foveon sensor).

With D-SLR's it's about the image quality and they have it!

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

CJ,

DSLRs are certainly great, BUT most do require more postprocessing work as well as good shooting technique and understanding of photography principles to get the optimum results. If you use them as point-and-shoot snapshooters, they won't give you better results than a good consumer level digicam, except when comparing noise level (and useable high ISO's).

Of course, for many, the drastically better AF performance combined w/ excellent noise performance will be enough to warrant the jump, especially when the makers are now coming out w/ prosumer digicams that cost the same as the entry level DSLR bodies.

OTOH, you do have to buy good glass (and lug it around) to get the most out of DSLRs. Most DSLR owners easily spend more on glass than the body itself. Some lenses are indeed more expensive than entry level bodies.

In the end, it's still very much the person behind the camera (and at the computer postprocessing) who matters most for the final results. Check out these excellent galleries to see what a consumer level digicam like my Canon G3 can do -- they are not mine though:

http://www.pbase.com/sdommin/root

_Man_

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Consumer Level Digicams are fine for 99.999% of the
population. I bought and sold an Olympus C750 UltraZoom
which is an advanced prosumer with full manual operation if
you so choose.

But just like Man said the AutoFocus (Lack There Of...) in
Consumer Cameras is poor, slow and almost impossible.. Try
manually focusing a lens when you can't do it by "feel" and
you can't see squat in the Electronic View Finder (Boo!).

Then on top of that you are stuck with the optics love them
or hate them.. Shutter Lag and Start Up Lag and usually
slow frame rates and small buffers.

On the other hand like Man said, with an SLR be it Film or
Digital you have to understand how to set the camera and
know Apature, Shutter, ISO values and what they do. And you
WILL spend more money on glass than you did on the Camera
body that is a given.

I currently have 3 lenses and the total of the three lenses
was more than the price of my SD10 body which was $1350.00
and I plan on adding more lenses and all of the lenses I am
looking at start at $400.00 and go WAY up from there.

Then there is the whole issue of dust... With Digital SLR's
the Sensors are prone to getting dust particles on them
which when shooting with the lens stopped down to smaller
Apatures (F18, F20, F22 Etc..) will cause spots in images.
Cleaning these sensors can be a chore... So you have to go
into it knowing what all is involved.

Post Processing isn't that big of a deal IMHO.. My Sigma
SD10 White Balance works fairly decent and if I am being
super critical I will set a custom WB by shooting my 18%
Neutral Gray card. Afterwards I have to batch convert my
images from Camera RAW (SD10 shoots RAW only) into Jpegs or
Tiff's. And if I am lazy I can select "Auto" and the results
are very good.. Of course bumping the saturation or messing
with the Fill Light (Foveon specific) can yeild better than
auto results.. Just depends on how critical the "perfect"
image is.. Lots of times I oversaturate.. I guess I am one
of those guys who likes the look of Velvia film

 

[Brett DiMichele]

This was shot with my Oly C750UZ and it's not bad at all..
The problem with consumer cam's is thier tiny imagers and
high noise ratios.. This image looks fantastic downsized but
when viewed 100% falls on it's face as do all of the images
that come from the tiny 1/8" CCD's..

But I also have to say that what you see on screen isn't
what you see in print.. A 100% crop from a consumer digicam
might not look that fantastic on a monitor but in print up
to 8.5x11 or even larger sometimes they look fantastic.

 

[Max Leung]

FYI: The DRebel has DOF preview. I have one, I should know.

The build of the Canon Digital Rebel is actually quite good. Of course, I am merely speaking from experience.

The polycarbonate housing is actually superior to the standard all-metal housing used in other SLRs...it won't dent, and if you drop the camera, it will merely bounce and act as a shock absorber. A few people posted on www.dpreview.com saying they dropped their DRebels on concrete (from a meter or more of height) and the cameras still worked!

Oh, here is a shot I took a few days after I got my DRebel. No postprocessing was done on this shot, so it will seem a little soft:

http://mistermax.smugmug.com/gallery...26779/Original

I used a "cheap" Canon F1.8 50mm mk2 lens ($70 US). I took the shot just before sunset. Note the specks in the sky - those are birds.

Here is a closeup shot of a budgie:

http://mistermax.smugmug.com/gallery...96206/Original

I think I used a Canon 24-135IS lens. Shot at 50mm. Hmm. But, at F10 it may have been the 50mm prime I used. Oh well. Note the details!

Yeah, my pics aren't spectacular, but it is fun playing with all the features on a DSLR.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I'm not sure about superior, but there's certainly no reason to think polycarbon must be inferior. Even some pistols use polycarbon as do race cars, etc. And certainly, there are at least some advantages like the ones you mentioned.

BTW, it looks like those sample pics are a bit underexposed. The 1st one could be intentional, but I would've expected the 2nd one w/ the parrot to be brighter w/ more contrast.

As for the 2 lenses, yes, those are indeed very popular because they are quite affordable AND quite good AND cover most of the range that people typically want. On Nikon's side, it would be 24-120VR, which I think is a bit more useful than 28-135 range (considering crop factor), and the 50mm f/1.8. Of course, the 24-120VR is ~$150 more than the Canon 28-135IS, so the bit more useful range (and much longer warranty) is also quite a bit more expensive.

Brett,

Many DSLRs do require a bit of postprocessing OR fine-tuning of the settings. If left at default, they often yield somewhat flat (ie. low contrast, saturation), unsharp images by design for max postprocessing latitude. Some do come w/ defaults that yield better straight-from-camera results like your Sigma. I believe Fuji is like that while Canon and Nikon tend to do what I mentioned -- the D-Rebel is maybe in between by default.

_Man_