DIY Weather Proofing for your Sigma 35mm f/1.4 | A

It's no secret that the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 | A is one of my favorite lenses. It's just a good lens. It's well built, beautifully designed, and most importantly the image quality from the lens is second to none. Click the link for my review of the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 | A.

Anyway... This isn't an updated review on the lens, but whenever I see discussions about this lens on camera forums all over the web invariably argument, "well the Nikon/Canon 35mm f/1.4 versions are weather sealed" comes up. I've got a quick and easy solution for that.

With fall and winter coming, the weather tends to get cooler and wetter. So what I have here is a simple do-it-yourself way to weather seal your Sigma 35mm f/1.4 | A. The best part is that it's probably better than Nikon or Canon's factory weather sealing. It also protects against minor impact damage keeping your lens in perfect shape. You can't say that about Nikon or Canon's weather seals.

Let's get down to it. First you need a beer koozie. Or can-cooly, beer sleeve, or can-cooler if you prefer (if you're an Aussie you might know these things as a "stubby holder"). Secondly you need a pair of scissors. That's it.

The great thing about beer koozies is that you can get them for free at just about any event. So weather proofing your $900 Sigma lens won't cost you one red cent! Can't beat that.

Instructions:

1. Take the beer koozie in your hand. It should be folded flat naturally. 
2. Notice the bottom part. Take the scissors and cut that bottom part off. 
3. Slide the koozie over the lens like it was a can of beer. 

That's it! It's really that simple. The neoprene koozie is water resistant and takes the impact of the occasional bump that can often happen to a lens. Just to clarify, this does not make your lens waterproof, but it will protect your lens from splashes and light rain and snow. Of course this works best if you also have a weather sealed camera body. 

So, let's take a look. 

First of all here's the naked Sigma 35mm f/1.4 | A

Here's your beer koozie. I like the Sailor Jerry brand because it has that old school tattoo look. You can choose one that fits your own personality, like a sports team, a company logo, your favorite beer brand, or whatever free koozie that you have on hand!

A typical beer koozie is the perfect length to fit the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 | A lens leaving enough room to attach the lens hood. Coincidence or design?!?

Once your beer koozie is on the lens and the lens is attached to the camera, slide it down to help seal the lens mount. 

There you have it. Not only is your lens weather proofed it's also stylish! I had pinstripes added to the lens hood for extra old school hot-rod appeal (guaranteed to add at least 10hp to your camera!)

A few things you should know before putting one of these on your lens. 

1. You will not be able to access the M/AF button on the lens. Don't worry, just about every camera has one on the body. 
2. You won't be able to see the distance scale on the lens. How many people use these on AF lenses? I don't. 
3. Due to the awesome HSM motor the focus ring does not turn when autofocusing so don't worry about the koozie impeding autofocus functions. I've had mine on for two years with no problems!
4. The focus ring is on the front part of the lens. You can still manually focus by firmly gripping the front of the lens and turning the focus ring. At first the koozie will be tight and you will have some resistance, but in time it will loosen up and turn freely. 

*This DIY weather proofing may or may not work with your zoom lenses. I haven't tried it on any of my zooms, but I'm guessing it will be a pain in the butt. This may work well with other prime lenses of similar size. Again, I haven't tried it on any of my other primes because most of them are too small or too big. If your lens doesn't have an HSM, AF-S, USD, PZD, EF-S or some other type of lens motor that doesn't require the focus ring to turn I would not use this.

Edit: After using this koozie on the 35mm for a couple of years it got pretty loose. I removed it and replaced it with a new one. I tried the old one on my Sigma 24-105 f/4 | A and it works brilliantly. 

New and improved full color koozie!

The old loose koozie on the 24-105

High ISO test. Nikon Dƒ vs. Nikon D700

My D700 is 5 years old. It was the first D700 in Austin TX off the truck and out the door. I've shot well over half-million images on this one D700 alone (I had the shutter replaced right around the 500,000 mark). It's time give the ol' girl a rest and bring in a new workhorse and I chose the Dƒ as my D700's successor. I've had all of the other small-body Nikon FX cameras, but I didn't think any of them bested the D700 which was why I stuck with it. Like a lot of people I was hoping that a D4 in a D800 body would come out, but that's not going to happen and the Dƒ just happens to fit in with what I'm looking for in a camera for the most part. No, it's not perfect, but it's the closest thing to a D700 that Nikon is going to release, for awhile at least, and I have no interest in lugging around a D4 (nor spending $6K on one).

Anyway, I don't want to get into a detailed review on the Dƒ just yet. I'm still working on getting familiar with it and I want to get a few more shoots under my belt with it. I had a little time on my hands tonight so I decided to do a quick and dirty high ISO shoot out between the new Nikon Dƒ and the old standby for low-light shooting the D700.

I love my D700 and it has stood the test of time. It's been my go-to camera for low-light concert photography as well as sports and just about everything else. Suffice it to say I've always been impressed with the D700's performance when the light gets low and the ISO's are cranked. But I just had to see how the Dƒ stacked up against the D700 when it came to ISO.

I shot each image at f/8 using a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 | A using a tripod and remote release. The Dƒ images are on the left and the D700 on the right. The images were shot using fine JPG with NR and sharpening off. They were imported into Lightroom 5 and the default LR5 color noise reduction and sharpening was applied. I would have preferred to use RAW, but as of yet there's no RAW support.

The images from each respective camera are pretty much equal all the way up to ISO 1600. One thing you will notice is that the Dƒ resolves fine detail better than the D700 due to the slight increase in resolution so it looks a little sharper and the Dƒ also has a much more substantial increase in dynamic range showing more detail in highlight areas where the D700 has little. The Dƒ also has a more accurate White Balance, both were set to Auto.

Alright, so here we go. Take a look at ISO 1600. Pretty much dead even here.

Once we crank it up to ISO 3200 the D700 starts to break up a little but the Dƒ holds it together a little better. 

At ISO 6400 things take a big downturn for the D700. I'll have to say that ISO 3200 was usually my limit for the D700 unless I was in a pinch. But as you see at ISO 6400 the Dƒ is still holding more fine detail and the noise is less "chunky". ISO 6400 on the Dƒ is easily usable. 

Pushing it up to ISO 12800 isn't something I'd ever really thought about doing. But the Dƒ still holds it together very well even at this high ISO. The noise in the shadow areas is extremely well controlled in the Dƒ while the shadow areas are a mess in the D700. In the highlight areas the detail is still very fine in the Dƒ while the D700 is pretty messy. To be fair, ISO 128000 is not in the D700's native ISO so I wouldn't expect it to perform that well. I mean it's not bad compared to a lot of other cameras. 

I didn't bother running the Dƒ up to it's H settings. ISO 12800 is higher than anyone really needs in my opinion and the H settings aren't really optimal so I just stopped the comparison there. 

So what are my conclusions? I think the Nikon Dƒ is nearly two stops better than the D700 in ISO performance. The Dƒ controls shadow noise better and holds quite a lot of fine detail even at ISO 128000. Let's take a look at a couple of direct comparisons. The Dƒ at ISO 12800 and the D700 at ISO 3200.

The Dƒ noise is noticeably chunkier, but the fine detail is still there. Keep in mind that these two images are two stops apart. That means you can make images with the Dƒ in 4X less light than the D700 and still have relatively comparable output. That's quite impressive indeed. 

Just for fun let's throw the D5300 into the mix as well. First here's a look at the D5300 at ISO 12800. Pretty much unusable. Noise is out of control and detail is obliterated. 

Taking a look below you can see at ISO 1600 the D5300 clearly shows finer detail, but the results are pretty similar. The Dƒ is almost THREE stops better than the D5300! Of course this isn't a fair comparison. Th Dƒ costs $2000 more than D5300, it better perform better. The D5300 is a great camera for it's price point and can do HD video whereas the Dƒ can't, so there's that. 

The Dƒ isn't a direct replacement for the D700 for many reasons. Build, battery, lack of vertical grip, inferior AF system etc... But if you need the best IQ in low-light and don't want to spring for the D4 this is the camera. 

Just remember, this is pixel peeping. In the real world the differences aren't quite as noticeable. 

Later this week I'll get to a full review on the Dƒ. It's a quirky camera, but this little test has proven to me that the Dƒ is indeed the low-light king in Nikon small-body FX cameras.