Pedro A. Vera
- Comment
I have owned at one time or another pretty much every SEL-series lens between 16mm and 210mm, and this is the only one I refuse to let out of my sight. My two main walking around lenses are the Sigma 19 and 30, and I prefer to do portraits with a Carl Zeiss 1.4/50 for Contax/Yashica that I got about 50% under market. But for macro work? Only the SEL30M35. I have had a ton of fun with this lens, and it always earns me lots of praise. I use it with a NEEWER® Macro Ring LED Light - Works with Canon/Sony/Nikon/Sigma lenses which also acts as a stand when shooting flat items like currency, etc. Hint: go to the dollar store and grab a couple glass photo frames, use them to flatten the specime and just let the camera stand on top of the ring light. I have done this with the NEX-C3, NEX-7 and ILCE-6000, neither of these three bodies plus the SEL30M35 are too heavy so sit on top of the Neewer, and it will make sure that the focal plane is perfectly parallel. And due to the way in which the ring light is designed, even if the light is flush with the sample, it will light towards the center of the image. I have also used the SEL30M35 to do focus stacking, just shot a few frames, dumped them into PS Elements and used a couple of actions I downloaded. Instant focus stacked. The tutorial I used is at : http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77567 (it includes the PS Elements actions needed to align the layers and blend them into the stack). Pros: fantastic lens, simple to use and very affordable. Cons: none. I used to be annoyed at it being f/3.5, so I stopped walking around with it, but thats a matter of education and experience. Now I wouldnt hesitate to take it with me if I need something even sharper than my two Sigmas. Sadly theres no way to caption the images: 1. Bee: this is focus stacked as I described above. 2. Pen: handheld, the pen is held by SE MZ101B Helping Hand Magnifier 3. NEX-7, SEL30M35, Neewer Macro Ring Light sitting on top of a $1 photo frame, which was used to take photos 5 and 6 bellow. 4. US Quarter, focus staked. 5, 6. US Dollar note. Update: somehow Amazon deleted the images from my review, and theres no way can see to re-insert them so here are the URLs: 1. https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-rmZ3v4zzD_U/Ul72_j3-8eI/AAAAAAAD59g/xn4F3KE15pI/w1428-h952-no/bee.jpg 2. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-X6vghUee4IY/UOUS6AEinpI/AAAAAAABxdo/pVGLIZH1t2k/w1428-h952-no/DSC02234_Snapseed.jpg 3. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4zIKtJ1prAI/UPGWD1ZVmVI/AAAAAAABybU/DNNZsEJFDpI/s1600/DSC04005_DxO.jpg 4. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-89KTrkAs6oc/UN551_RNdfI/AAAAAAABvOk/HsW4EpawzHA/w1428-h952-no/DSC01714_Snapseed.jpg 5. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JlNzQmroepw/UN554HVStuI/AAAAAAABvPU/M4nbz3fdQzo/w1428-h952-no/DSC01728_Snapseed.jpg 6. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-D7yVm8U_98k/UN553eIKsFI/AAAAAAABvPE/v4GQ-q9jYbw/w1428-h952-no/DSC01727_Snapseed.jpg