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

Bo Diddley 1929-2008

Yesterday the world lost a great and influential musician, Bo Diddley. He was a great blues guitarist and one of the pioneers of rock and roll guitar playing, and was very instrumental in developing the sound of rock and roll. Bo Diddley created the "Bo Diddley beat", a staccato style of playing that has been copied by such performers as the Rolling Stones and many others. Bo Diddley was known not only for the "Bo Diddley beat" but also for his signature square shaped Gretsch guitar which was reportedly designed to mimic the guitar that he had built out of a cigar box as a child.

I was fortunate to have been able to photograph this guitar legend a few years ago at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, TX. The lighting in the theatre was very dim, so it was absolutely necessary to have a fast lens. To shoot this concert I brought along my D200 with a Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8.

In a situation like this, where the light is dim and you have a performer who is moving quite a bit, Vibration Reduction (VR) lenses are all but useless. Nothing will get a good sharp image but a fast shutter speed. Therefore shooting wide open is just about the only way to go.

Even with a fast aperture lens it was necessary to crank up the camera's ISO setting. To get a good sharp image in dim lighting you sometimes need to make the trade-off of capturing an image with a bit of noise. For this particular venue setting I chose an ISO of 1250, which gave me a shutter speed of about 1/250. This shutter speed was about the minimum acceptable speed I could shoot at without getting camera shake blur from hand-holding the camera with a telephoto lens. With the D200, ISO 1250 shows an acceptable amount of noise and I was able to print this image up to 13X9 with pretty good results.

In order to make the most of the available light I chose to use spot metering. Spot metering reads the light and sets the exposure reading the light off of just a small spot of the intended subject. With the D200 and a CPU lens the spot meter is tied to the active focus point so there is no need to meter using the center point then recompose for the shot.

 Using Matrix metering, which takes a reading of the entire scene, would have resulted in the camera trying to expose to capture detail in all of the dark, shadowy areas of the stage behind Bo Diddley. This would cause my exposure times to be much longer giving me shots that had both camera shake and motion blur and also possibly over-exposing the subject. 

Choosing spot metering allowed me to control what the most important area of the scene to expose for. Since the main focus of the image was Bo Diddley I wasn't concerned about what was lurking in the shadow areas and spot metering caused those areas to go black giving the image a lot of contrast and allowing Bo to stand out as the main subject.

One of the most important things for photographing in a setting like this is to be sure your exposure is "dead on". Under-exposed images show excessive amounts of noise in dark areas, and it's often almost impossible to correct in post-production, especially if the subject is relatively dark. 

Over-exposing the image gives you some of the same problems since the shadow areas will show excessive noise. Fortunately, in a low-light setting such as this you can use curves or levels adjustment or a camera RAW adjustment in post-processing to bring an overexposed  back down a bit although any blown-out highlights will still be lost. 

The most important thing you can do when photographing a scene like this is to check your histogram to be sure that your exposure is right. Nothing, not even shooting in RAW, will give you a good solid image like capturing the perfect exposure as you shoot.