Check it out! OWUSSEurope.org is off and running! Good on ya Filip!

I took a day off work last week and did two dives at Clifton Gardens with my mate Jayne.

It is so nice to dive during the week when the crowds are down and on that day we were blessed with nice sunny weather and good visibility  in the water (but lots of “snot” present as can be seen the shots below). I also got to Clifton Gardens with Jayne on Saturday, so that was 3 dives at Clifton last week.

I took the wide angle in for one dive, primarily to do some video, otherwise I was trying out my Sigma 150mm with a Canon 500D close up lens on the front of it. So far so good with the combination although on the last dive I have asome shots where the images aren’t as sharp as I’d like. Not sure why yet, need to do a bit more investigation.

So the shots below are from 3 dives at Clifton Gardens. How good is that! I’m happy with one keeper out of a dive, but Clifton can be really good if you look hard….in 3 dives we had 2 Anglers (one Striped and one Black), zillions of Pipefish, Seahorses and Cuttlefish, a nice Cowfish and a nice Turretfish, the Shrimps are back on the Anemone and lots more…and all this in the harbour of a city of 4 million people..Awesome!

Having moved from a cropped sensor 40D to a full frame 5DII I knew I was going to be up for some new lens, but on the close macro side I hoped to get away with adding a Kenko 1.4x to my EF100 (which I normally have a +2 on the front of) rather than splash out on a new lens.

4 or 5 weeks ago I had my first outing with the Kenko 1.4x on the Canon EF100mm and boy did the auto focus struggle in low light even with plenty of additional lighting on the subject, very frustrating.

It was looking like an expensive couple of months between buying extension tubes (bad buy) and the 1.4 (worth it) and now the experience with the 1.4 and 100mm. All of this has me thinking Sigma 150mm, and then I read this;

Analysis Paralysis!!

The Tamron with a 500D looks interesting but I like to dive and look out for shots to suit the selected lens focal length, I like to have a specific mind set,  I don’t enjoy a dive if I’m imagining shots between 70mm and 200mm. too many options, and if your stuck with a focal length and something comes along that doesn’t suit, fine, either you don’t get a shot or it forces you to think outside the box.

I consulted with Gudge and followed my initial thoughts and went for the Sigma 150mm. Gudge put me onto this crowd in the US who had by far the best price, and within a week I had my lens.

So here are some Sigma 150mm shots on the 5DII. I’ve only had one outing so far but I’m very happy. I also managed to score a Canon 500D close up lens (+2) at a great price and hopefully in the next couple of posts I’ll have some shots with that. The 500D will allow me to get closer to the really small stuff and hence get greater detail.

To get the same magnification but from a greater distance it makes sense to add the 1.4x, however my tests indicate that autofocus will not work with the Sigma 1.4x added to the 150mm. That said, I should go and retest that since someone on Wetpixel said that shouldn’t be the case (I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work).