Zim: Today's special guest is Vicki Hibbert from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Vicki is an avid photographer who also has a lot of questions. If you're a regular listener of the podcast, you've likely heard her name mentioned more than a few times, as Vicki has provided many of the questions that have inspired episode topics. And back in November, Vicki joined me on my Antarctica trip. And before we headed out, Vicki tested her lens. Today, I want to talk about what her experience was with that. Hey Vicki, how you doing?
Vicki: I'm great. It's a beautiful day here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's about 70 degrees and sunny.
Zim: Thanks for bragging. It's about 24 degrees here. First question: why did you finally decide to test all your lenses?
Vicki: Here in Oklahoma, we get migration of pelicans, and I knew I was going on a trip to Antarctica. So I thought I would go out and try to shoot some pelicans, and I wasn't happy with it. It wasn't very sharp.
Vicki: Some of the images were blurry. So I came to you with these, and we worked out that I had two problems. One of which was that I wasn't shooting at a high enough shutter speed. And the second was that you thought it might be my lens. So you suggested that I test my lens.
Zim: Okay, so you were troubleshooting a problem with the lens, right? A problem with sharpness in particular. So what lens did you test?
Vicki: I have a Sigma 150 to 600, and I tested it on my Sony A4.
Zim: What was the process for testing your lens?
Vicki: What I did was—I have a sunroom. It's long and narrow, so I was able to set my camera up on a tripod about 10 feet away. I propped up a puzzle box on a chair. Lots of contrast, lots of color, but it was all also on the same plane, so my depth of field wasn't a factor.
Zim: What focal lengths did you test at?
Vicki: I tested at 150, 250, 350, all the way up to 600.
Zim: So basically, you tested at 100-millimeter increments.
Vicki: Yes.
Zim: What about your f-stop? How did you handle that?
Vicki: I tested starting at 5.6—that's as wide open as that particular lens will go—all the way up to 22.
Zim: So you tested at 100-millimeter increments at every f-stop available to you.
Vicki: Right.
Zim: And what did you find at the end of that?
Vicki: I was really surprised at how easy it was to see what the difference was. You could very clearly see that it just fell off—not necessarily a slow progression of the images losing clarity, but after f/9, it just fell apart. It was very obvious that I really shouldn't probably even try to use that lens above f/10 or f/11 unless sharpness is really not the priority.
Zim: Was that surprising to you?
Vicki: It was, actually. I really didn't think it would make that much difference.
Vicki: And it really helped me a lot shooting in Antarctica because I used that 600-millimeter lens a lot. It hardly came off my camera.
Zim: So I'm curious—did you find any differences shooting at different focal lengths?
Vicki: I didn't see a lot of difference in the different focal lengths. Not only did I test at every f-stop, I tested every f-stop at all the available focal lengths in the lens.
Zim: And there wasn't a difference between that lens at f/8 at 150 versus extended all the way out. The level of sharpness was extremely consistent throughout your lens.
Vicki: Yes, that was the result of my test.
Zim: So how did that influence how you were shooting in Antarctica?
Vicki: I was really careful. Even if I was shooting in an automatic mode, like P mode or shutter priority, I would make sure that I kept an eye on what my f-stop was at.
Vicki: There's a ton of light, right? So I wasn't really worried about what my ISO was doing, but I did keep a close eye on that f-stop.
Zim: So what were you shooting in Antarctica?
Vicki: I shot a lot of landscapes, a lot of wildlife, and we couldn't really get that close to the wildlife because there are rules in place to keep them—and us—safe.
Zim: So did you find the experience of testing your lens difficult at all?
Vicki: I put this off, honestly. I wanted to do it before I left for Antarctica, but I put it off because I thought this is going to be tedious, and I don't want to do it. And it really was kind of fun. It didn't take very long at all.
Vicki: It was really interesting to see the results, and very instant. Once I put them into Lightroom, I could see right away what my results were going to be.
Zim: Are you going to conduct more tests moving forward now that you've done this?
Vicki: Oh, absolutely. Especially my longer lenses. I think that it would really benefit from having the test done. I do wonder, though, since that Sigma is a non-native lens, if there's going to be as noticeable a difference between it and my native Sony lenses.
Zim: Well, the fact of the matter is that lens is probably less than half the price of a native Sony lens. So it's not surprising that there was a cliff in the sharpness there.
Zim: Is there anything else you'd like to share with other listeners?
Vicki: I would really encourage everybody to test their gear and to find out what the limits of that gear are. I think it'll really help you come out with images that you're happier with, with less work in the end.
Zim: Yeah, I think it's really important to test equipment too. When I was in school, we tested paper, we tested film, we tested chemistry. There were a lot more variables involved with that.
Zim: Now we're just down to the lens and the camera, because the sensor is the sensor. You can't do anything about that. I think probably the next test that you should be thinking about is an ISO test. That's the only other variable that we have to work with.
Zim: Well, Vicki, thank you so much for joining me today. Maybe we can do it again after your ISO test.
Vicki: That would be awesome.
Zim: For everyone else out there, if you have a question, send me an email—[email protected]. Until next time.
Zim: Keep on shooting.