I spend most of my time taking photo's of climbers. This means I need to spend alot of time getting into tricky positions ie climbing a rope or hiking for hours in remote settings. weight and size is a big issuie. I much prefure wide angle lenses and thought the sigma 15 -30mm zoom lense would cover what I would need. You can't fit many filters onto this lense. Can you fit this lense onto a canon XL1 mini dv camera? Are polirized filters important for making the colours come through rich. Has anyone used this lense that can give me there opinion?

-- daniel jenkins (danielcontact@hotmail.com), February 28, 2002

Answers

Daniel, I haven't used this lens, but I do have the 17-35mm HSM Sigma. It's a good lens and you can put regular (although 82mm) filters on it. I understand the 15-30 uses rear mount filters. Not sure if a polarizer is available or not, but it might be hard to use, depending on how Sigma implements this.

All that's a moot point anyway because seldom do you want to use a polarizer with a super wide lens. The lens takes in too wide a view. The sky (& other parts) would be be inconsistent in the polariser's effect from side to side. Since one side would be so much closer to the Sun than the other.

The XL1 can use EF mount lenses (nearly all lenses for EOS cameras are EF mount) with an adapter. So it should work. Most video folks wanting to do this prefer to use a longer lens though.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), March 01, 2002.

I should also say that the 15-30 is supposed to be fabulously sharp & distortion free, if you can believe the reports on the net.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), March 01, 2002.

thanks Jim for your response.

Do You have any web address that I could check to find more comments on the lense. The 17mm - 35mm might me a good option. 2mm can't make that much of a difference + the lense is cheeper.

-- daniel jenkins (danielcontact@hotmail.com), March 02, 2002.

Dan,

I just got the Sigma 15-30 2 days ago and can attest that it is very sharp. I've only used it so far with a D-30 so I can't comment on the extreme corner and edges becasue of the 'cropping' effect inherent in using that body. I hope to shoot some film with it over the next couple of days (hopefully still in the 10 day return period my dealer offers).

It does use rear drop in gel filters that have to be cut to size so that may or may not be on issue for you. As said above, however, with a lens that wide you really can't use a polarizer because the effect would not be the same across the entire frame and the resulting image wouldn't look right.

Don't discount the difference between 15mm and 17mm. At the wide end of a lens that is a significant increase in angle of view. There is a 13.3% difference between 15 and 17. I feel that's fairly significant - if you need it.

Dick

-- Dick Tope (RTope@yahoo.com), March 03, 2002.

I have been looking at the Sigma 15-30 lense too (for my Minolta). After reading these comments I called the camera shop and they told me there is not a filter available, but it has a hood to protect the lense. Not very encouraging when you think about the price of the lense. I would hate to spend the money only to have the lense accidentally scratched because there isn't a filter available. Maybe someone knows something the camera store clerk doesn't about filters for this lense??? I prefer pink (on the premise that the world looks better through rose colored glasses)

I need a wide angel lense like this for my Mexico pyramid trips and explorations. Some times the pyramids are so large - or the view from the top of one not as dense as I would like - and you can back up only so far before running into another pyramid, or if you're on top of one, before falling off. I've been lucky a few times in getting the full pyramid in on my 28-80 lense, but most pictures the corners are cut off because of the mass of the pyramid and I ran into another while backing up.

I live in the Houston are, but I'm willing to contact an out of area store who might carry a filter for this lense.

thanks!

-- Freda (MargaritaFreda@aol.com), April 11, 2002.

Recently got the 15-30 and I have to say it is a superb lens. Made well and the hood is metal and permanently mounted, the front group is quite round like a fisheye and just meets to the edge of the hood but if you zoom in, the whole assembly slides back into the hood area by about 1/2 inch. So basically, retract when you are on the move or cap it. The only 2 gripes I have are: its a bit heavy, and I sure wish I could use Cokin graduated filters for landscape shots. As far as the image, its tack sharp and the perspecive isn't all botched with non-rectilinear lenses. happy shooting! :)

-- Lance Lau (llau@rs-e.com), April 19, 2002.