University of Tartu Anniversary Ball, December 2007
The annual festive highlight of Tartu University
Comments:
Event - University of Tartu Anniversary Ball, the annual festive highlight of Tartu University. I got called in on short notice and although I had promised to attend another somewhat more downscale ball I had promised to attend (sorry T.), decided to go ahead and do it anyway. I didn't have a proper attire but I guess since I wasn't officially a guest, that could have been excused. The whole photo-shoot can temporarily be accessed here: TEMPORARY GALLERY. NB! But be quick, that temporary gallery will be removed within a week or two, so if you want any photos from there, be sure the save them on your computer as soon as possible (using Internet Explorer, Firefox doesn't work).
Photography - So this is my first outing with the 40D, Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm F2.8. What can I say. After two years of 350D, the 40D feels bulky and heavy, and unlike many others I will continue to prefer the smaller weight and size of the 350D. Supposedly the 40D has a larger and brighter viewfinder and I guess objectively that's true, but in practice I don't really notice much of a difference. With some time, the menus and functions of 40D will probably be easier and faster to access, at the time though I still spend a considerable amount of time trying to find a function which would have been second nature to me on the 350D.
One thing made using the 40D considerably faster though - the three instantly accessible custom settings. Since I tend to change lenses often and move from one lighting condition to another, I had to start from scratch with the 350D each and every time - change lens, change ISO, change white balance, change priority mode, change aperture, change shutter speed, change flash firing mode. Needless to say this was a major pain if I was in a hurry (for example if I wanted to go from ambient to flash photography in an instant). On the 40D it's an absolute breeze - just change to C1, C2 or C3 and I instantly get the settings I saved there previously, including flash firing mode (on or off)! Amazing. Changing flash firing mode alone used to tke me anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds (since I needed to put the flash into TTL mode for no flash via the flash's custom functions), not to mention all the other changes I had to make on the camera.
The high-speed 6.5 FPS firing mode is less useful than it sounds. With 3 FPS firing mode it is easy to take single shots or keep the button pressed to take a sequence, with 6.5 FPS it is much harder though to take just a single shot. Additionally, at 6.5 FPS the flash will have a much harder time trying to keep up with the camera or if I use a slower shutter speed (like 0.3s), then all I can use is 3 FPS anyway.
As for the better and more accurate low light focusing abilities of the 40D, the couple of times I tried it with the 30mm F1.4 lens, it seemed to be true - I got a lot more in-focus shots than I used to with the 350D and I'm happy with that.
On to the lenses. I didn't really utilize the Tamron 17-50mm's F2.8 aperture all that much and kept it mostly at F5.0, which is my standard for flash photography. However, I was happy to be able to take a few F2.8 wide angle shots at 17mm, which is something I had been unable to do in the past. I find the 17mm visibly larger than the 18mm of the kit lens. This is both good and bad. Good in that you can take more into once scene, but bad in that while I almost never noticed the wide angle distortion at the edges of the kit lens, the distortion is now much more more pronounced at 17mm.
As much as the Tamron has potential, I'll still be getting Canon's new kit lens though - the 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 IS. Having used three kit lenses in the past, I find them optically quite satisfactory (at least for my current purposes) and the price, size and weight simply can't be beat. Now that one of my favourite lenses has the added bonus of image stabilization, it's a no-brainer. Had I had a choice, I would probably have used the kit lens instead of the Tamron even now. First of all, although the Tamron is not an overly big lens, the constant F2.8 still makes it larger and heavier than a walkaround lens needs to be. The main draw of Tamron is the constant F2.8 aperture, good for freezing action and separating the subject from the background, but fixed lenses are better for those purposes anyway - smaller, lighter, better optical quality and with a much wider aperture. So if I'm looking for a wide aperture, I'll use the Sigma 30mm F1.4 or Canon 50mm F1.8. But when I opt for a wide angle zoom lens over a fixed lens, I'm probably not chasing wide apertures as much as I'm looking for good depth of field, however at F8 the Tamron loses its wide aperture advantage and and the Canon IS kit lens would deliver far superior pictures. With good lighting conditions, the kit lens would enable lower ISO pictures using the same DOF. However, the worse the lighting conditions, the bigger the advantage for the kit lens becomes, enabling either higher DOF pictures at maximum ISO or blur-free pictures at maximum ISO wide open, compared to blurry pictures from the Tamron using the same settings. Of course, this is just theory, since I don't have the IS kit lens yet and haven't done any side-by-side testing, but I don't see why it shouldn't be so. AS for the Tamron, I'd say its role is pretty much confinded to shooting low-light action, which takes place quite close (wide angle), constantly changes distance (so that zooming will be easier than changing constantly between prime lenses) and it is important to freeze the subject (which is where F2.8 becomes more important to IS). I'll keep the lens for now, but it remains to be seen, whether I will actually find proper use for it or not.
The biggest surprise of the Sigma 50-150mm F2.8 was that it was pocketable. Well, not literally, but I was able to carry it in my belt pouch alongside another lens and didn't even notice I was carrying it around. In fact, I had to check several times that I still had it on me and yes indeed, it was still there, but this kind of invisibilty is not something I would have expected from a F2.8 medium zoom lens. Having tried the Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 a few times, which was an absolute monster to both carry around and used on the camera, this lens is an extremely pleasant suprise. Plus on a crop factor camera the 50-150mm range is a lot more useful for stage and event photography anyway. I've been wanting the F2.8 of a 70-200mm lens for quite a while now, but not its weight and size, and I think with the Sigma lens I've now found the perfect solution.