Photography, Sigma Art Series Lens Review, Uncategorized

Sigma 12-24mm F4 DG HSM Art Lens First Impressions

June 17, 2017 Paul

I’ve never owned such a wide lens before but when I upgraded my Canon gear from the 5dmk3 to the 5dmk4 and 5ds my trusty L series17-40 f4 was suddenly no longer sharp enough for the results I needed for myself and my customers.

I have not bought anything other the canon L series lenses for many years now. Sometimes I’ve opted for the slower lenses due to weight as I travel extensively on Film and Photography assignments. Weight is a major factor for me and heavy fast lenses in my experience are back breakers.

So I weighed up the Sigma 12-24 f4 Art Lens (1151g ) against the Canon L series 11-24 f4 (1180g .) Both are very heavy!

There weren’t many informative comparisons online and I couldn’t gauge the performance of the Sigma especially on the 50mp 5ds but I’ve been hearing rave reviews of Sigma’s art series lenses. Many of my peers have been raving about them for a while. Mainly Dean Tirkot, Marco Bok and Derek Henderson.

I havn’t read a single bad review of the Canon L series 11-24 f4 but it’s really heavy, really big and really expensive. The front element is a very impressive piece of glass that reminds me of a Zeiss 40mm distagon front element from the Hasselblad days. Also $4000 is a bit pricey in the current economic climate for 1 piece of equipment in a world where you need many and varied pieces of equipment.

Yesterday, at half the price of the Canon I took delivery of my first Sigma Art series lens and today I took a few pics with it. I took my 5dmk4 which I prefer using to the 5ds. Lets have a look at the pics and see how the lens performed under different conditions and on different settings.

I won’t do any profile corrections in Lightroom. So here we go!

Photo paulegreen 8914.jpg

is of Australian artist Ken Unsworth’s sculpture “Stones against the Sky’ located between Darlinghurst and Kings Cross in Sydney. The picture was slightly backlit but there is plenty of detail in the shadows and highlights. The photo appears very sharp.

Settings were ISO 100 12mm f7.1 1/800 sec

Photo: paulegreen8918.jpg

is The wall of the Darlinghurst Fire Station. It’s a good subject to test a wide angle lens. There is a very slight loss of sharpness but it was shot at f4.

Settings were ISO 250 12mm f4 1/80 sec

Photo paulegreen8927.jpg is on the escalator at Kings Cross Station. Again I shot wide open to test distortions on the edges of the lens. I’m happy with the way this image resolved even though there is a bit of blur due to slow shutter speed.

Settings were ISO 400 12mm f4 1/25 sec

Photo: paulegreen8930.jpg

This is another test like that of the fire station wall. Again I’m very happy with the corner sharpness and the barrel distortion is acceptable for such a wide lens. I have Canon L series lenses with significantly more barrel distortion than this. It is easily corrected. Also the shutter speed is very slow for a handheld photo.

Settings were ISO 500 12mm f4 1/13 sec

Photo:paulegreen 9836

is of a row of Victorian Houses in Darlighurst at night. It’s a seriously wide angle view that I would never have previously been able to achieve.

Settings ISO 5000 12mm f4 1/30 sec

Photo:paulegreen 8941.jpg

is a shadow of a tree against a painted wall illuminated by street lights. I can’t fault the lens sharpness in the corners.or the even coverage of light on the 5dmk4 sensor.

Settings were ISO 5000 17mm f4 1/30 sec

I did find a pretty good technical review after I finished writing this blog at https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigma-12-24mm-f4-dg-hsm-art-lens-review/2

On first impressions the Sigma 12-24mm f4 Art lens is astounding. I’m really excited with the possibilities the this lens will add to my photography and film making.

Happy image making!

Maroubra Beach, Photography

The Bra, Maroubra, January 2016

February 4, 2016 Paul

Mahon Pool at the Northern end of Maroubra on Australia Day 2016I like to multitask! Dog walking and photography are a great fit so when a dog/house sitting gig came up in the Bra, a quirky beachside suburb in the South/East of Sydney in Summer I was very excited.

(Paul Evan Green) — Morning Walk on Marine Pde, Maroubra

The natural environment is absolutely stunning. The long days of a Sydney summer offers time and space for socializing, walking, swimming, surfing, cafe hopping and one of my very favorite activities as a photographer, storm chasing.

Maroubra in the local Aboriginal language means “Place of Thunder.” During my stay here I have seen many storms and have had the opportunity to photograph, film and record the sound of these impressive natural displays of awe.

Maroubra is a vibrant and harmonious multicultural community in a coastal setting. There are a large number of families with young children in the area with many sporting clubs and facilities available.

The surf culture at Maroubra feels like it hasn’t changed much since the 1970’s. There have been many great surfers from Maroubra. The greatest in my opinion is Larry Blair who won the Pipeline Masters contest in 1978 and 1979. Mark Matthews is currently one of the most fearless and excellent big wave riders in the world.

Different ethnic groups have contributed a dazzling array of architectural styles. Whether this strange fusion has any architectural merit will be for history to judge.

heldenplatz vienna, photography vienna

Heldenplatz (Heros’ Square) Vienna

June 19, 2015 Paul

“Heldenplatz.” What can you say about this place?

Thomas Bernhard who was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet probably illustrated it best with his play “Heldenplatz (Heros’ Square). This play was commissioned by the then director of the Vienna Burgtheater, Claus Peymann for the 100th anniversary of the theater and it sparked a huge scandal when it was performed.

Certainly it started a very uncomfortable internal debate in Austria on the 50th anniversary of Hitler’s triumphal arrival in Vienna.

Many important actions and events took place here, most notably Adolf Hitler’s ceremonial announcement of the Austrian Anschluss to Nazi Germany on 15 March 1938 to the rapturous applause of 250,000 wildly cheering Viennese.

Please see my very personal view of Vienna in my small photo book

http://au.blurb.com/b/6709100-vienna

leonard cohen poland, photography poland, poland

Leonard Cohen in Poland May 2014

May 10, 2014 Paul

I'm your Man the Life of Leonard Cohen — I’m your Man the Life of Leonard Cohen

I’ve just returned from a trip to Poland where I was working on a documentary film about a young couple getting married. He is a Fijian Indian Hindu and she a Polish Catholic.

It was a relief for me to be working in Poland about a theme unrelated to the decimated Polish Jewish community and its culture that had been my focus on previous trips.

In Sydney over the summer, I had bumped into my friend Rita who worked in Martin Smith’s bookshop in Bondi years ago. Rita is also from a Polish, Jewish background and had recently visited her hometown. She was working in Oscar and Friends bookshop in Double Bay when I went in to pick up the book I had ordered.

I had ordered Murray Bails’ book “The Voyage”. Bail’s is a book about an Australian who goes to Vienna to sell his revolutionary new concert grand piano. The story is loosely based on the Stuart Concert Grand Piano from Australia. It was a good read and I empathised a lot with the central character who like me didn’t speak German and had problems being taken seriously in the old establishment of Vienna, a major centre of music, art and culture.

During our long conversation, interrupted many times by people buying books I kept going back to the shelves and picked out a biography of Leonard Cohen, by Sylvie Simmons. I wasn’t sure about the choice but Rita said she’d heard it was a good one and I took her word.

Last year in the late summer I had been in Poland and had wanted to see Leonard Cohen perform in Lodz but it never materialized.

Lodz is the town of my paternal grandmother’s family and once had a very large Jewish community.

I had seen his Sydney concert a few years ago and I knew his music and a bit of trivia about him but I took this biography with me on the long train journey from Vienna to Katowice and then to Lubliniec and was making very good progress and enjoying finding out more about the life and career of this great artist and poet.

The sister in law of the bride turned out to be a big Leonard Cohen fan and had been to the concert I hadn’t been to but it surprised me that Leonard Cohen could be so popular in Poland.

It turns out that there is a Polish comedian, writer and radio personality called Maciej Zembaty who had translated and performed over 60 Leonard Cohen songs since the 1970’s. Zembaty had been imprisoned by the regime in 1981 for organising a festival of songs on the regime’s banned list.

Zembaty’s Polish version of Cohen’s Partisan Song had become the unofficial anthem of the Solidarity movement.

I’ve included some links to Leonard Cohen documentaries online.

Paul Green +43 676 942 2558
paul@paulgreenphotovideoart.com
www.paulgreenphotovideoart.com

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lubliniec, Photography, poland

A Week, Tuesday to Tuesday in Lubliniec Poland.

May 1, 2014 Paul

It’s springtime. I’m in a rural area of Silesia about 60km from Katowice. This is one place where English doesn’t work but people do try to speak to me in German once they realise I can’t speak Polish. You can see more of my work at www.paulgreenphotovideoart.com

I’m here making a documentary about a young couple who met and now live together in Sydney. Karina and Sachin are getting married on Saturday in Karina’s nearby home town called Kalety. The doco is about the joining of a Fijian, Indian, Hindu family and a Polish Catholic family.

The project was dreamed up and is being produced and directed by my friend Chris Cole who has an architecture practice in Fiji and who knows Sachin’s family.

Chris worked as a cameraman back in the pre digital days of film. It has been a great experience working with him and learning a different approach from someone who has ducked the digital revolution and hasn’t worked in the industry for many years.

This week has been very important for Polish people. Their beloved Pope, Karol Józef Wojtyła, or Pope John Paul II was canonized by the Vatican as a saint by Pope Francis.

Pope John Paul II is recognised as helping to end Communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe. John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church’s relations with Judaism, Islam, the Anglican community and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Another Polish saint who is celebrated in Lubliniec and who was canonized by Pope John Paul II is Edyta Stein. Also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edyta Stein was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to the Roman Catholic Church and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She is a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church and one of the six patron saints of Europe.

In 1938 she and her sister Rosa, were sent to a Carmelite monastery in the Netherlands for their safety. They were arrested by the Nazis on 2 August 1942 and sent to Auschwitz where they were gassed on 9 August 1942.

Although Edyta was born in Breslau (now Wroclaw) in 1891 she spent much of her childhood in Lubliniec as it was the hometown of her grandparents.

I visited the Lubliniec Jewish cemetery yesterday. Originally the cemetery was divided into three plots: for men, women, and children. In all, 1,117 people were buried there.

The Nazis devastated the cemetery during World War II and used the gravestones to pave the road from Lubliniec to Żuków. In 1958 the Polish national authorities took over the cemetery and opened a driver training centre on the site. Fragments of gravestones were piled up in a few heaps.

Among those buried in the cemetery are the grandparents of Edyta Stein: Adelajda Courant and Salomon Courant as well as Edyta’s elder brothers: Emst and Richard.

Paul Green Photo Video Art Blog

Sigma 12-24mm F4 DG HSM Art Lens First Impressions

The Bra, Maroubra, January 2016

Heldenplatz (Heros’ Square) Vienna

Leonard Cohen in Poland May 2014

A Week, Tuesday to Tuesday in Lubliniec Poland.

Photographic Adventures