NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D4 + “unknown lens” — ¹/640 sec, ISO 100 — image data
Toeing The Line
( this photo is almost entirely black; この写真はほとんど黒い、下を見ると分かる )

Nikon D4 + “unknown lens” — ¹/500 sec, ISO 100 — image data
Big Production
( this photo is almost entirely black; この写真はほとんど黒い、下を見ると分かる )

Nikon D4 + “unknown lens” — ¹/200 sec, ISO 100 — image data
Props Set Aside
( this photo is almost entirely black; この写真はほとんど黒い、下を見ると分かる )

(If you can't see the photos above, try viewing your screen from an extreme angle, perhaps from way above, and the image should somewhat appear. Or, scroll down...)

(カメラのレンスのミスのせいで上の写真はだめに成りましたけれども、アドベLightroomというソフトで半分まで立ち直る。)

Fourth-grade Anthony had his school Sports Festival today. Wanting to keep my baggage to a minimum, I chose the Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm Zoom for the day. I loved this lens when I first got it two and a half years ago, but it quickly developed CPU problems that caused it to “freak out”. I ended up having it replaced twice, and while the third copy's CPU seemed okay, its image quality didn't really seem up to snuff, so I lost interest.

But, I picked it today for its versatility, and paid the price. Halfway through the 1,102 photos I shot at the sports festival, it started to fritz out again. When its CPU goes dark, the camera thinks that a non-CPU lens is attached, and the default settings on my camera for a non-CPU lens is for the most-delicious Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 (which sadly does not have a CPU).

So, shots taken during these moments are severely underexposed, as you see above.

Of course, because I shoot in raw-sensor format (instead of JPEG), I can tap into its latitude for exposure correction and in Lightroom can recover from disasters to at least some extent.

Here are the three photos above, after having invoked Lightroom's “Auto Tone” on them, and added a lot of noise reduction:

Toeing The Line

Big Production

Props Set Aside

The quality is horrible, of course, and these particular photos are all throw-away shots anyway, but it seems that all the photos of when Fumie did one of the silly events together with Anthony were ruined by the Sigma, so this is the only way to have any photographic memory, which is a lot better than nothing.

Shoot raw.

And perhaps be wary of Sigma. My lens will be on its way to them (for the third time). I've owned only two Sigma lenses in my life, this 50-500mm and many years ago the 30mm f/1.4, which also went through three copies before I got one that seemed reasonable. (That link, to a post about the lens six years ago, is quite the blast from the past for me, to back before Lightroom when I painstakingly processed each photo in Photoshop, without the burden of skill.)