As part of my day job I’ve recently had the chance to compare a couple of Nikon zoom lenses against their Sigma equivalents. The lenses were:

Nikon 18-35 f3.5-4.5 IF ED
Nikon 24-85 f2.8-4 D
Sigma 15-30 f3.5-4.5 EX DG
Sigma 24-70 f2.8 EX DG

I was testing them with specifically for their performance with respect to micro lens vignetting (MLV). MLV is a problem that only affects digital sensors and its appearance can be quite horrendous (permit me an evil chuckle). Interestingly the Sigma lenses were significantly better than the Nikons. The Nikon 18-35 was over 3 stops down in the corners at the 18mm end.

I really like the very wide angle Sigma zoom. It has an amazing field of view and controls the distortion very well. It handles well and focussing was snappy. The only downside is its sheer size which forces the use of rear mounted filters. This would make a great wide angle zoom for a 35mm film camera. Dear Santa……

I was contacted today by Primary Colour because they were unable to process my prepaid Scala mailer. This is because AgfaPhoto have gone into liquidation and will not be honouring payment to the lab for prepaid processing.

In the end I've had to pay £7.50 to get the roll processed which is a pain but that's life! I've got a few rolls in the fridge but fortunately they are not prepaid so I won't loose out.

I've added 4 new galleries this weekend:

London

Frosty Garden

Newcastle University

Sunsets

Just click the links to go straight there.

Tate Britain has an exhibition looking at the creative relationships between French and British artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has a substantial collection of works from Degas, Sickert & Toulouse-Lautrec to show the web of influences and friendships that were driving art at the time.

What has this got to do with photography ? Well a couple of things struck me as I was looking at the works on display. The first was that many of the pictures dealt with uncomfortable themes such as poverty and alcoholism. L’Absinthe by Degas is very reminiscent of the sort of documentary image that has been the bread and butter of reportage photography for many years.

I was also intrigued to see how similar the paintings were to a lot of modern photographs in terms of cropping and composition. A number of the pictures had the subject off centre or walking out of the scene. At the time critics were furious to see feet and elbows being cut off by the edge of the frame!!

The show is on until 15th January 2006.

I went to the Diane Arbus exhibition at the V&A this weekend. I didn't know quite what to expect as her work is often controversial. Overall I was really impressed, she clearly had an eye for the unconventional and produced many revealing portraits. Some of her photographs do cross the line into freak-show territory and seemed rather exploitative.

I was impressed with the way the exhibition was presented and laid out. The little sub-rooms in some of the galleries were a particularly good idea as they gave an additional insight into her life and work without distracting from the images on the walls.

The exhibition runs until 15/01/06.


Revelations Website

16th October 2005

I popped up to Edinburgh this weekend to see an exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's work. They had 100s of photographs covering pretty much all of his career. Some of the presentation was a bit haphazard but that didn't lessen the impact of the images.

27th September 2005

It's a conspiracy!! I few days ago I saw reports that Agfa were going to withdraw their Scala B&W transparency film. Their website was vague on the matter so I contacted Primary Colour who handle all Scala processing in the UK. Their reply was:

"Agfa have withdrawn the prepaid mailers due to the uncertainty of their future as the has the company has gone into administration. We will continue processing Scala film as long as the chemistry is available from Agfa. We still have enough stock to take us to the end of the year. "

14th September 2005

A few weeks ago tried a roll of Ilford SFX. I really like the results so naturally I wanted to buy so more. Jessops didn't have any which is not that unusual as they are prone to only stock very small amounts of film these days. So I paid a visit to 7dayshop.com and they reported that Ilford had discontinued SFX with no notice!! Ilford's website is silent on the matter.

Great! So just as I start to use and interesting new film it disappears!!

I've moved my "Ramblings" section over to a blog format. I hope it works!!