Two Lenses, Two Wildly Different Outcomes - How Come?

Kintarō Hattori

I took two different photos of the Vistula river when I was in Poland earlier in the year. One with a Sigma 70-300 lens and the other with an old Tamron Macro lens. Both were fitted to a Pentax K100D Super camera.

Perhaps it's a silly question I'm asking but how can the results be so wildly different? Both are at 70mm at sunset with White Balance set to Auto. I quess I'm just trying to understand the science to it. Can anyone hazzard a guess?

Sigma:




Tamron:




I think the better photo was taken with the Tamron lens and that really surprised me as it's an old lens designed for macro photos. So what makes the same subject taken on the same camera with two different lenses so different?

Perfect fit

there 2 different pictures tho because in the second the sun is much higher so there was obviously more light and it illuminated the water too

melekalikimaka

yup as perfect fit said


i prefer sigma shot tbh

pixbyjohn

But the lighting is different, the sun is lower in 1 photograph and the angle of the shot is different too.

melekalikimaka

glass coatings and elements set up and numbers inside to will refract light differently

Kintarō Hattori

Hmnn there's only six minutes between the two. What I guess I mean specifically are the following:

A - The colour range with the Tamron is much more natural looking. With the Sigma it's a strange mix of pinks and yellows.

B - The sun is a much more natural shape in the second one. With the Sigma it's a very indistinct blob.

Perfect fit

its a blob because it is not in the sky in picture 1 its just the glow off it and the colours are better in the second because the sun gave more light to everything when it rose

Kintarō Hattori

melekalikimaka wrote: »

i prefer sigma shot tbh

Really, why's that? I thought most folk would have preferred the second shot as the colours are more life like and the sun is less of a blob.


OK many thanks for the replies. I didn't think that a few minutes would make such a dramatic difference. Guess I'll have to remember that for the future.

democrates

Also can you post the apertures used? Each lens has an optimal aperture, either side becoming progressively softer as light rays traverse differing areas of lens elements. If the Tamron is a standard lens then this matches my experience of better colours, the extra lens elements in a zoom come at a price.

Ok just skimmed this it may be at least part of the answer (some great tutorials there, plus a new section).

Kintarō Hattori

democrates wrote: »

Also can you post the apertures used? Each lens has an optimal aperture, either side becoming progressively softer as light rays traverse differing areas of lens elements. If the Tamron is a standard lens then this matches my experience of better colours, the extra lens elements in a zoom come at a price.

Ok just skimmed this it may be at least part of the answer (some great tutorials there, plus a new section).

Many thanks for those links, I'll get reading. The Sigma was F8, the Tamron I don't remember I'm afraid as it's manual only so not reported in the EXIF data.

CabanSail

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I didn't think that a few minutes would make such a dramatic difference. Guess I'll have to remember that for the future.

When listening to people who do Landscapes well, you will nearly always hear stories of how the light for a certain shot was only there for a very short time. It can be minutes but is often just seconds & then the moment is gone. These few seconds can be the only opportunity for "the shot" after hours of setting up & waiting. This is why doing Landscapes well is so difficult.

Six minutes at Sunrise/Sunset is a very long time, this is even more so the closer you get to the equator. This is a time of transition when the light changes most rapidly. On a seasonal scale the changes are most pronounced in Spring & Autumn as they are the seasons of change. You can notice the days getting shorter at this time of year.

There is also a different composition for the two shots.

dudara

I remember reading recently that the thin film coatings and chromatic aberration correction in modern lenses is sometimes not as good as would have been present in older lenses - the reason being that modern cameras can correct a lot of errors through processing while the photo is being recorded. I wonder if there is anything like that going on here.

I know from being in optics labs for a fair while that old (30+ years) glass elements with coatings etc can be very well made.