A couple of days ago I received my latest lens purchase; a cheap and old manual Sigma Super Wide II. I have completely fallen in love with buying slightly older statesmen of the lens world. Yes in some situations I miss the auto focus, or occasionally I might even wish for my camera to do some correct metering for me, but generally, the image quality to price ratio has me hooked. My head also turns at the wonderful build quality of slightly older lenses; they may be generally heavier, but the wonderful smooth focusing rings are a joy.

Back to my new purchase: This sigma lens is a prime 24mm, with a maximum aperture of f2.8. So yes this is hardly super wide by todays standards, considering the crop factor of my Pentax DSLR, this lens comes out only a bit wider than a normal-ish length. It’s fast enough to capture most things though, and is sharp enough from wide open, and sharpens up even more a couple of stops down. One thing I didn’t actually count on when purchasing this lens was how great it would be for macro. It can focus right in to about 10cm by my estimate. At this distance though it does seem to have some noticeable distortion, as seen in the next shot.

My friend J’s forehead doesn’t normally have that warped kind of look I can assure you. I can’t say this bothers me hugely, as it only affects the real close ups, and often the effect goes unnoticed (or may even be desirable).

I can’t say I have many other lenses to compare it to yet, but colours wise it does seem slightly colder than my Pentax-M 50mm f1.7 (which is still my main lens love), but nothing that isn’t absorbed by post processing. Here are a couple more shots from my walk home from Bristol Temple Meads train station yesterday early evening.