M A Andrew Black and White Photography Blog

Been away for the last few days and so not had chance to update the blog. Was in London staying with friends. Spent two days walking around various parts of the city. Feet are completely blistered. Got home and sent off four A4 prints to New York. Uploaded my London galleries to my main site:- www.picturesforwalls.com. They came out quite well I think. Particularly pleased with the Lloyds building shots. The weather was changing and this added a sense of drama to the images.

You can see the two new London galleries here :-

www.picturesforwalls.com/cgi-bin/inks.cgi

One of the first decent lenses I ever got was the 50mm f2.8 Sigma EX Macro lens. Being a primes lens and part of Sigma’s professional EX range, this lens is sharp. It was also outstanding value for money. I think I paid about £170 for it. The lens allows you to take 1:1 macro photography. Here are two samples I took using it.

My only criticism, if that is the right word, is that with this lens to achieve closeup macro shots like the ones above you need to be right in there. The barrel extends right into the scene and for both shots I was literally about 2cm away. This is fine for still life flower shots but a lot more difficult when trying to capture moving objects. Sigma do have longer telephoto macros lenses that might be more suitable for this type of application but I have yet to use one.