Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM Art Lens Sample Pictures

The clearance rack at your local (cheap) formalwear store can be a great source for you portrait wardrobe. The kids spend hours playing with the dresses, but the best part is that they want to have their picture taken after putting on their finishing touches.
 
When using a wide angle lens, do not get too close to your subject. Perspective distortion can deform their pretty faces. But a wide angle advantage is that it is easier to work above your subject. In this case, getting over the subject allows the big dress to become the background.
 
This is an ambient window light portrait.

The 13-foot Oneida Falls is easily one of my favorite Ricketts Glen State Park waterfalls. I typically time my RGSP daytrips to coincide with cloudy weather to prevent contrast issues with bright sunlight reaching the forest floor. Add a little rain and it chases the other visitors away (they are sometimes hard to clone stamp out of images). Well, this day I was a little over-optimistic on the "little" part of the rain. A storm came up and dumped perhaps 2 inches of water on me. I was prepared, but could not shoot during the deluge.
 
When the rain slowed, I shared the entire Falls Trail with practically no one. And, many of the falls had a streak of color in them due to the heavy runoff. I'm always looking for something different, so ... perhaps the rain was not too heavy after all.
 
A B+W XS-Pro circular polarizer filter was used for this picture.

I know – sorry about the creepy subject. Sometimes these situations just fall into my lap. My wife, using her unmistakable slightly panicked voice, called me to our finished basement to eradicate this little monster. Upon arrival on the scene, I decided that the 3.25" (82.5mm) wolf spider would make a great subject.
 
As I said in the review, the Sigma 18-35 has been a great lens to have available for around-the-house use. I grabbed it, a Canon 600EX-RT Speedlight, a Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3 RT and a small softbox and returned to the scene of the home invasion. As I gathered the gear, my stress level was being increased as my wife learned that I had left the hairy creature alive and unattended.
 
Fortunately, the spider remained findable. Since the carpet was not the background I wanted, I slid a piece of printer paper under it. That was of course much easier to say than to do. I grabbed and arranged two white (to not introduce a reflected color) plastic storage containers to hold the downward-directed softbox above the spider.
 
The above picture was captured at the 18-35's minimum focus distance. I released the spider outside as the carpet would have needed cleaning if I had squished it as requested. My wife swears that the same spider was back on the window, though outside this time.
 
Note that the EOS 60D has an integrated Speedlite transmitter and could possibly have fire the remote flash without the ST-E3-RT attached. But, the softbox can get in the way of the transmitter's light, preventing the remote flash from functioning. Radio-fired wireless flash is awesome.

The clouds opened up just enough to show the Milky Way during this 20 second exposure. While the clouds show a noticeable amount of motion, 20 seconds is short enough for the stars to retain most of their roundness at this focal length.
 
The Sigma 18-35mm Art Lens is very sharp, even at its very wide f/1.8 aperture. It is a very good choice for your night sky photography. With this lens and a stable tripod, shots like this one are very easy to capture.

Adams Falls is the easiest of the major Ricketts Glen State Park falls to access. Simply pull into a parking lot and walk down over a steep bank.
 
Of course, easy to access means lots of people access it. Arrive just after a rain storm on a weekday when school is in session for the best odds of having no people in your way.
 
Otherwise be patient. Or, use a telephoto lens.
 
A B+W XS-Pro circular polarizer filter was used for this picture.

While f/1.8 is a very wide aperture, 18-35mm is a relatively wide angle range of focal lengths. This means that creating a strong background blur with a mounted APS-C format (only) DSLR camera requires a close subject. You can see a mild background blur in this mid-distance 35mm example.
 
Note that I was using a 1/8000 shutter speed for this shot. Not all cameras have this extremely fast shutter speed available.

I often see pictures of reflections, but don't see swimming pools used as the reflector very often. Here some landscaping and a sunset reflect on the surface of a still swimming pool. The reflected light takes on a strong low-contrast blue appearance.

After a heavy rain, R. B. Ricketts Falls in Ricketts Glen State Park flows strongly along with another small stream falling into the frame. The rain runoff also added a bit of color to the water. I recall this picture being taken during a light rain with some fog being visible here.
 
While this lens' wide aperture gains it a lot of attention, the image quality it delivers makes it an excellent choice for landscape photography.
 
A B+W XS-Pro circular polarizer filter was used for this picture.

To give your viewer a sense of presence in the scene, move in close and use a wide angle focal length. At this close focus distance, even an 18mm focal length can create a strong background blur at f/1.8.

To get maximum background blur, select the longest focal length and move in to the minimum focus distance. At 35mm f/1.8, even subjects not far behind the focus point are rendered as a blur.

There is a very large log leaning against the 30-foot Shawnee Falls in Ricketts Glen State Park. Most captures of this falls include this signature log. And the log looks good in some images. But I'm always looking for a variations.
 
Access to this falls is limited by the steep rock, but using a slightly longer focal length allows the falls to be framed tight enough that the log, while visible, remains essentially unrecognizable.
 
A B+W XS-Pro circular polarizer filter was used for this picture.

This sunset was beautiful, but it was not a huge dramatic show. So, I used the distant mountain as a base for the image and then aligned a tree to fill the more-clear area of the sky. The result is a simple, clean image with some nice color.
 
I was working with the wide-open f/1.8 image quality of this lens when this picture was captured. The focus is on the foreground tree with the distant background going only mildy blurred.