spent a few frustrating minutes trying to find the focus of the lensbaby sweet 35 tonight... and have come to the conclusion that it's a lost cause... IF i have it set to be "straight on" and IF i set it to f/22 i do seem to get a fair bit of focus... but the minute i start to move the lens around in the socket it goes all unpredictable on me... sigh... tomorrow is another day...
I wonder if it's because you're using it on a crop sensor? I didn't realise how easy it was to tilt the sweet spot off the edge of the crop sensor until I started using it with the Turbo adapter. It's made it noticeably more usable for me.
Question. What was your aperture? Staying at 4- 5.6 until you feel good with your focus is good. This wont show in your metadata, being that it is an all manual lens. I know this will be tough with low light shots. So practice more on awesome light. We will get this. ;)
@aprilmilani you have the patience of a saint :) i have no clue what aperture this was... i do know how it is controlled and i was experimenting, but not keeping track very well... i'm thinking this was f/4 but i could be wildly wrong... i am focussing in bright light... but bright light for "perfect" exposure does not do much for me so once i set the focus as best i can i dial it down... and yes, i know i should really apply myself to learning, and i have tried, but it's just not going that well... I spent over an hour on the weekend shooting an onion and never felt that i got a good sense of where the focus was... btw, one thing that nags at me is that a lot of the time (but not ALL the time) the focus appears to be on the right hand side (as photographer looking thru the viewfinder)... is this correct? i am finding it crazy making because i tend to prefer the focus on the left in terms of composing my shot...
@northy I'm feeling your pain on this! A thought - you can't focus and recompose using the lensbaby: the focus point of the camera and the 'sweet spot' of the lens have both to be aligned on the part of the scene that you want to be in focus.
I've been thinking about this and have a couple of thoughts. Do you have the same issues at short and long distances (i.e. can we discount minimum focal distance as a factor)? Do you have the same issue with both optics? I mention this as some of what you're describing with the Sweet 35 sounds an awful lot like the lens decentring issue I had with my 600mm - especially if you're not getting anything when the Composer body is dead centre. Don't suppose you have anyone local that has another copy for you to try - just for the sake of comparison? I spent 6 months trying to convince myself it was operator error and I'd eventually "get the hang of it" with the 600mm when I should have just sent it back to Sigma in the first place!
Btw - I had to google the reference but OMG I haven't seen that film in years! ;)
@vignouse oh yes... i know that for sure! just adds to the frustration!!!
@humphreyhippo - after a round of experimentation this evening i think i have come to the conclusion that the sweet35 is capable of focussing, but it is somewhat soft... want some purple wrapping paper?
@humphreyhippo it's quite possible... i ordered it online as an "open box" item from a reputable place but for a lot cheaper than it should have been... turns out it was being sold with a "4/3" mount, not a MICRO 4/3 mount... meaning a mount that was outdated some 5 years ago... after some research i decided that i probably wouldn't be able to get the optic for any cheaper so i kept it... sigh...
January 13th, 2018
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Btw - I had to google the reference but OMG I haven't seen that film in years! ;)
@humphreyhippo - after a round of experimentation this evening i think i have come to the conclusion that the sweet35 is capable of focussing, but it is somewhat soft... want some purple wrapping paper?