Sigh – nostalgia!
Last week I sold my old first-ever tele-lens on Ebay – I just didn’t touch it anymore now that I have the large high-quality and heavy Sigma 100-300 f/4.
Back in the days when I wasn’t sure if I would use a tele zoom at all – can you imagine? – I decided to go cheap before wasting any serious money and after a quick research session decided that I would get a lightweight (and old, and we’re talking probably about the 80s here!) Sigma 70-210 mm f/3.5-4.5.
I got in on Ebay in August 2005 for about 80€, and now sold it off for 45€. Too bad my Photoshop Elements 5.0 won’t allow me to search (like Lightroom would) for how many photos I took with it in those years, but I found 1714 shots made at exactly 210mm focal length: Most of those had been taken by me with this lens, hoping it would be longer :=).
You will not find much information about this lens on the Internet (at least I didn’t), but build quality and performance were fine for me for a start into the longer focal lengths, looking at it today I’d say
- Incredibly slow autofocus (gear driven, so it won’t focus on D40, D40x, D60)
- Noisy screwdriver-type AF
- Clunky manual focus (but that’s the case with most of the consumer lenses)
On the positive side:
- Light-weight (ah, I said that already)
- Sturdy built
- very nice zoom range on a crop camera
- Nice macro option for getting close at maximum focal length
And don’t get me wrong, the lens was very well suited for my first attempts at photographing flying birds! Here are some images from the zooom-in class “Artists of the Air” I took in January 2007 led by professional photographer Marion Hogl, all with the little Sigma!
[svgallery name="artists-of-the-air"]
Ah, the beginnings… Certainly it was not fault of the lens if these images do not hold up to my standards anymore. Though I must admit I like the swans. Still so much to learn….
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