19/09/24

Unfortunately a few duds here. Retro lenses are a double-edged sword, when ordering them off eBay they could arrive and prove themselves either a grossly undervalued powerhouse or a fungus-riddled swamp-thing with several gaskets blown, and I think my Sigma 400mm falls firmly in the latter camp. I had tested some shots with it prior to the hike and it appeared at least functional but on location at Grafham Water something in the mechanism must have failed completely and almost all of the images have the shadow of an aperture blade or something obscuring the top-half of the image, which is a shame because I wasn’t wanting for good subjects. The amount of chromatic aberration in the images was dire even at the very centre, it’s been removed in Lightroom but as a result the images appear somewhat flat. I don’t think I’ll be taking this lens out again.