Generally, when you start getting interested in photography, your natural step is to purchase an interchangeable lens camera. The idea is to have the flexibility of multiple lens focal lengths and the quality that comes with prime lenses.
However, this comes at a price. When you plan to go out photographing, you have to take multiple lenses with you, because you don't know which lenses you will need. I have a terrible habit of taking too many lenses. Walking miles encumbered with numerous lenses of various types, focal lengths and aperture ranges, the most of which never leave the bag.
One alternative is just to stick to one lens, such as a 35mm prime and there are many benefits in restricting yourself in terms of forcing yourself to be more creative. However often just don't know what sort of photography will present itself and you want more options. For example, if you are going to a one-off event you want to record, taking just a single focal point risks you missing that critical shot.
Therefore you want the holy grail of lenses, the one lens that will do it all. The lens needs to cover a wide range of focal lengths from the wide angle to telephoto, have a large constant aperture for good light capture, be fast to focus, but light enough to be always carried easily. Finally, it should be capable of create images as sharp as an equivalent prime at any aperture
The problem is that a lot of these requirements are contradictory. If you make your aperture too big, the lens becomes very large and unwieldy. The mechanics of zooming a lens, means you have to compromise on the image quality because the lenses within are moving independently making accurate focus across all focal legnths a challenge. It also means the motors within the lens will have more mass to move, so focusing becomes slower and less precise.
For fuji users, like me, there is an additional issue. Fuji just don't really make many very good zooms. Yes there are some decent ones like the 150-400mm, but in most independent tests, Fuji zooms fall a long way behind those for other manufacturers.
There is the XF70-300mm, which is not really wide enough, and the XF18-120mm F4, which is not really long enough or fast enough. Not only that, but there is a price premium on these lenses that they really don't deserve.
Generally, when people speak of everyday lenses, they are looking at a FF equivalent of 24mm to 70 f2.8. These are the bread-and-butter lenses. Fuji offer a 16-55mm f2.8, but at a high price.
Fortunately, where Fuji has left a gap in teh market, other manufacturers have stepped in. Recently my walk about lens has been the Tamron 17-70mm F 2.8. It has a good wide range, fast constant aperture and at a far lower price than the Fuji equivalent. The only real downside is the lack of a dedicated aperture ring.
Searching for the holy grail
As good as the the Tamron 17-70mm F 2.8 is, 70mm is a little of the short side for a true all in one lens.
Generally, this is not an issue, but I had tickets to the European athletics championship in Birmingham. I had attended a similar event during the commonwealth games, and I knew, unless I was going to pay through the nose in track side tickets, I would need some serious zoom power to get decent shots.
However, the games rules stated that although interchangeable lens cameras were allowed, the maximum length was 6 inches (15 cm in new money)[insert obligtory dick joke here]. That meant my 150-400 was out (In reality I could have taken it because the security check was so perfunctory, that I could probably sneaked in a small bazooka. Bit even if I had of taken it, the lens is unwieldy I would of needed a monopod).
There was however a potential solution.....
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| Comparing the Sigma 16-300mm (left) with the Tamron 17-70 (right) |
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| Bit bigger extended - Sigma 16-300mm top |
Let me introduce you to my new lens. The Tamron 16-300mm f3.5 to 6.7.
Again, for less money than the Fuji 70-300, it offered a much wider focal length at the bottom end, and a wide aperture (although slower at the top end).
So, had I found the holy grail of lenses? Was this the last lens I would ever need? Or was it just a naughty boy?
First Impressions
The Sigma 18-300mm is a relatively compact lens for its reach. In fact, at its smallest, it is no bigger than my Tamron 17-70. However, at 300mm the lens does extend a considerable way past the 6 inches that in theory I was limited to. I would therefore rely on the fact that security staff employed in these events would not know this.
In terms of controls, it only has a lock switch that keeps the lens closed at minimum when applied. The zoom ring, however, is very heavy, meaning that this lock is probably unnecessary. My 17-70 has a lot freer zoom pull, and does not have any locking, and I have never felt it to be a problem. The fact that the zoom ring is so stiff, means that doing a creative zoom blur is probably not possible with this lens, and moving it from the widest to longest positions is not going to be a fast operation.
The lens does not have an aperture ring, which is OK since this is not a constant aperture lens. Control on the aperture is through the camera front control dial. What would have been nice would be an auto/manual aperture switch. This is missing on the Tamron as well, and the only way to switchto auto is to move the aperture past F22. If you are at the largest aperture, this can take a few spins of the dial, and also it is not always obvious from the Camera viewfinder what mode you are in.
Also missing is a focus limiter that limits the focus range from 0 to infinity to a smaller range such as 15m to infinity. Being able to limit the range like this can really improve autofocus performance. And for a lens like this would have been useful when at 300mm.
First Light
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| Heavily cropped tern image...not great |
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| Fly by |
To test out the lens I decided to go to Attenborough nature reserve to take some bird photos. The initial results were not that great. In truth, 300mm is too short for decent bird photography, when most dedicated bird photographers use sometying like a F4 600mm lens required. A more successful outing was taking images at a vintage fly-past of a Spitfire and Hurricane at the National Tramway Museum at Crich. It did a far better job here, accurately focusing on the fast-paced object, even if the light was too harsh to get a good image
Sports Day
For those of you that have never gone to a major athletic event, I always say it's a bit like a 3-ring circus. Unlike other sporting events, there are often 3 or even 4 events going on simultaneously, and your head must be on a swivel to keep up with it.
The expensive seats are by the trackside, while the really expensive ones are near the finish line. Ours were on the top tier, on the other side of the track, which sounds not great, but in fact we had a great view of the Women's triple jump and a good view of most of the track.
Getting in proved to be easy. Despite carrying two lenses and a camera, the security search was perfunctory. Unlike say a football match, you are never feel crowded, and despite mixing with multiple nationalities, the atmosphere is more celebratory than confrontational.
So with my 17-300mm lens attached, My 1st issue was actually getting my camera to function. At one point the storage to the flash disk slowed down to a crawl. I tried everything, swapping cards, settings, etc, until I realized I had set it to HDR mode in my rush.
The next problem was that when I had the camera on burst mode, but it was not focusing that fast. I eventually realised that the human recognition auto focus mode was slowing everything down. When I turned it off, things were far snappier.
The other issue was ths disk buffering during high speed burst mode. It would take a long time to clear and lock the camera up, so I aws at risk of missing the next event. This is Fuji issue because it is just not designed for this sort of high-speed shooting. Hopefully the XT-6 will have a bigger buffer, although with DRAM prices as they are, that may just make the camera unaffordable.
So how did the lens perform? Generally pretty well. It sometimes struggled to focus and I think this is where a focus limiter would have been useful. I did not notice the stiffness of the zoom however and its size meant I could use it without a monopod or tripod.
The slowness if the lens aperture created issues, with the ISO of 1600 required to give a reasonable shutter speed. Saying that, often I wanted my images to have some motion blur, so the slower shutter speed a good panning often worked well.
All access Pass
There are some amateur photographers I know who get an actual press photographers pass. While this may sound great, it has its issues. Firstly, you are in a high-pressure environment where you are having to deal with staying out of the way of other photographers, who taking photos is their living, and also the athletes themselves. Making a mistake could not only affect their performance
but also be publicized around the world
Also being in the stands actually gives you more opportunity since you can see multi sports, while on the ground you are limited to a small area.
What actual sports you can get decent photos of, varies. We were fortunate to be in front of the triple jump runway, which turned out to be a great sport for photography. The 800m and 3000m steeplechase were also good, although longer races such as 5000 and 10000m, give you more opportunity. With the middle-distance races, you have to make a decision early on, on what photo you want, since you won't get many opportunities.
The sprint races however gave far less opportunity since they finished on the other side of the track. Also, the pole vault was just too far away to take anything. The worst events however are things like the discuss and hammer, since the competitors are ensconced in a cage meaning any image is nigh impossible.
One issue was really just learning to setup the camera to get the best results. The use of subject detection, while in theory, would be useful, turned out to be a major performance drag, when I wanted to shoot off multiple shots. The buffering performance of the XT-5 was als a hinderance, meaning only after a relatively few images, the camera was locked up until cleared. In hindsight it may of been better to go JPEG only, instead of RAW/JPEG. However luckily the events went on long enough for me to work out the best settings, and by the end I was getting much better results.
While I won't pretend they match photos taken by the pros with all track access, I personally feel they are at least comparable, and in some cases give a unique viewpoint
So, the next question is how did the lens perform?
Final Word
So, is the last lens I ever need to buy? Is this the holy grail of lenses? Easy answer...no
While the extra zoom range was welcome and the lens worked well, given a choice I would stick with my 17-70mm F2.8 for a walk around lens. The actual need for the extra zoom range is actually rare, and in the end the ability to a lens with wider, constant aperture is more useful, especiall in low light scenarios. Also the lack of a range limiter meant that autofocus was never as snappy as I would like.
While 300mm sounds impressive, for those moments when you do need that range, such as wildlife photography, 300mm is actually just too short. There is a reason that dedicated wildlife photographers use 600mm F4 beomoths.
If I did need the longer range, and had no restrictions on usage, I would go with my 150-400mm, which with a teleconverter can be extended even further. However, for a niche opportunity like this, where taking such a big lens is not possible, this lens will do the job.
This is why ultra bridge cameras such as the Nikon P1100 at face value offer everything, but in lower light or when you want to isolate a subject by using a bigger aperture, the supposed advantages quickly fall apart. Saying that the days when all photos had to be taken at less than ISO 400 due to noise are no longer here. I am happy now to take images at ISO 1600, and with modern noise reduction software, ISO 3200 are quite usable. This allows you to take pictures at 1/200, at long range with little issue.
However, if you need a compact zoom with a reasonable reach, this will do the job.
Finally, a mention for the athletics. Like the commonwealth games before, I really enjoyed the experience and taking images. Unfortunately, like most things, these tend to be London centric, and local opportunities like this are rare. The atmosphere and access are a relief compared to most sport events, and I have had a lot of fun processing the images. While I could not hope to be a professional sport photographer, it's nice to pretend for a while and put my own spin on it.
Unfortunately we live in a world where access to such events for photographers like me are increasingly rare. For example at the recent FIFA world cup, nothing bigger than a phone was allowed. Therefore having a lens that does not look like a small bazooka is useful is an unfortunate consequence of the world we live in where media rights are increasingly controlled by giant organisations, leaving people like me to pick up the crumbs.
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| The no flags rule was largely ignored |
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| 3000mm Steeplechase |
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Saliyya Guisse (Belgium) on her way to the Triple Jump Silver
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| Leo Neuberger (Germany) Decathalon Gold |
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| Marino Bloudek (Croatia) 800m Silver |
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| Kristjan Ceh (Slovakia) after winning Discuss Gold with a Championship record |
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| Kristjan Ceh, Mykolas Alekna (Lithuania), Henrk Janssen (Germany) |
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| Amy Hunt on her way to 200m Gold |
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| Rhasidat Adeleke 200m Silver (Eire) |
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| Queen Amy, nicely came over for a photoshoot |
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| Greeting the crowd |
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| New Discus Championship record |
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| Dariya Derkach (Italy) on her way to the Triple jump crown |
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| Some of the many Irish fans on the way home |
