Sigma Dramas

2020 was a crazy year for many, I was one of the many. Most have been quick to label 2020 as a terrible year, understandably so. For myself it was a year full of ups and downs, many professional and many personal. For today though i'll just discuss the photography side of things.

Covid kicked in and I had what felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity to upgrade my camera equipment. I had been using a crop sensor Canon 80D, don't get me wrong it is a great camera but it was time for an upgrade and I knew exactly what I wanted, the Canon 5dmk4.

I shopped around, did some haggling with the sales staff at DigiDirect and got a great deal that I couldn't turn down. Grabbed a Sigma 85mm 1.4 whilst I was there after falling in love with this lens after borrowing it at university. Obviously super excited about my new gear I was itching to shoot immediately. Grabbed my partner and we were off to shoot. The Sunshine Coast was the target, Buderim Falls specifically.

We had a great time exploring the area, walking up and down the trails, jumping over the water and looking for interesting spots to shoot with nice lighting. We have been here before but not to shoot so it was a bit different, when you have a camera you are more aware of your surroundings, you're evaluating the lighting, framing and composition. I was super happy with the shots and how the lens and camera where performing, until I got home.

When I looked at the photos in Lightroom I noticed a lot of them were out of focus. A lot more than normal, obviously shooting wide open you expect to have a few that the focus had missed but not to this scale. I was upset to say the least, what was happening was it me? User error?

I decided to do a test shoot in the backyard just to check what was happening. Same results, many images out of focus. Was my lens defective? I began to do some research and found this is fairly common with Sigma art lens and they need to be calibrated. So that's what I set out to do. I rang DigiDirect who were very understanding and happy to help, Unfortunately this is where the experience went down hill. They did what they could and it was no better, no fault of their own but it had to be sent off to be calibrated. Okay I thought, it will be a few days without my camera and lens no big deal really.

This is where it really went downhill, the calibration company was unable to perform the calibration for whatever reason so they sent it to Melbourne, which I wasn't informed of until it was two days past when my camera was due back. I rang DigiDirect to find out where my camera was, he didn't have an answer for me but would find out. You can imagine my surprise when he called back and told me my camera was in Melbourne. I was not happy of course but I couldn't change anything so I said call me when it is back. I was given a day that it would be back and it wasn't. This happened multiple times. The company in Melbourne sent my lens back to the calibration place here in brisbane instead of sending it to DigiDirect.

Digidirect said they would personally go and collect it for me that day. Good I thought, it had now been two weeks for something that was meant to take three days. They call me back, I assume they have my camera and he is calling me so I can go get it. Nope, the calibration company had arranged a courier to collect it and deliver it to DigiDirect. The afternoon before a public holiday, which meant I now had to wait another two days.

I finally got my camera back, thank god I said thought. What a nightmare that turned out to be. It wasn't over, the lens was still missing focus majorly. By this point I was FURIOUS, two weeks, dozens of calls and countless emails later and still the exact same issues I started with. Another call to DigiDirect and they decided just to replace the lens. I agreed and thought good, finally a solution, if only it was that easy.

I took the lens in expecting to swap it over there and then, nope of course not. They had to order one in and the only one in Australia was you guessed it , the other side of the country, Perth. This took another week but finally I had my lens. Now it's still not perfect and it was a painful process but it is a lot better than the previous version I had. I love this lens and expected to use it alot more than I do but that's because I have the amazing 70-200 f2.8.