Sigma SD1 | Telephoto

What better to shoot on a dull grey day than dull grey photographs!!

(Please be sure to click on the images for larger versions.)

Well despite the poor weather and equally poor lighting conditions, I took a stroll along the River Thames in an effort to find some good shots with a couple of telephoto lenses I brought with me.

The first lens is a Sigma 70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro, an incredibly sharp lens that is useful for all types of subjects and not just small ones:

The second lens is also a macro, the fantastic Sigma APO 150mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro, which I teamed up with a Sigma 2x teleconverter to give me a 300mm f/5.6 equivalent lens:

As much as I am enjoying the feeling of shooting with a DSLR again, the lack of in-body stabilisation compared to many mirrorless cameras is very noticeable when shooting with telephoto lenses. Neither of these macro lenses has optical stabilisation, but they do both have a wide aperture of f/2.8 which helps keep shutter speeds up. All four images shown here were shot at base 100 ISO and I was managing a shutter speed of around 1/200th of a second.