Over the next few days the water would rise in my house to between 3 and 4 feet. Here is a photo of what it looked like after about a foot and a half of water had receded.

What you don’t see is that the house next to mine on the right was my parents’ house that I grew up in. Next to that house was the house my sister bought only a year and a half previously. Yep, my family was all in a row. We all got flooded. We all lost a lot of things. Fortunately, we made out a little better than my parents and my sister because we had a two-story home. Nevertheless, we lost a lot. To give you an idea, this photo is just part of the trash pile in the yard.

The next few months were rough on us. Right after we returned home, my dad got an infection from some of the flood water left in my parents’ house. He went into the hospital in September and spent over 7 weeks in the ICU. Right before Thanksgiving 2017 he was transferred into rehab and was able to have Thanksgiving dinner with us. On Nov. 27 he went back into the hospital and passed away on Dec. 1.

You could say that the second half of 2017 was rough. Was 2018 any better? You’ll have to wait and see.

Uploaded by AndyUno1 on 2019-01-10.

So, as I wrote below, I am now streaming on Beam at https://beam.pro/AndyUno1 . This is the intro video I made for my channel. It's just a simple little intro I made to introduce my stream each day.

Stay tuned.

For this first revisited post I am going to showcase I product shot I completed not too long ago for my graphic design firm, Linear Liquid.

This image was modeled in Cinema 4D and rendered using Octane Render. It's a relatively simple model that was created using splines and a Lathe Object. I then textured the label in Photoshop. The lighting was created using Greyscale Gorilla's HDRI Studio pack. I believe I took the rendered image into After Effects for some final adjustment.

What was tricky for me here was getting the liquid and plastic materials looking like they should. This was only my second project to use Octane Render, so I still wasn't extremely familiar with the different material and render settings. For the liquid I used an Octane specular material with an index of 1.33, white reflection, and a colored transmission. The plastic was a specular texture as well with a black reflection and index of 1.575. These two textures gave me the result I was looking for with a nice "sports drink" feel to the liquid.

I'm not sure what the render time of this shot was. I rendered it out at 4K to use as a background image on my computer. I might do another render so I can post the time. When I originally started this project I had a GeForce GTX 760 card, but now I have a GTX 980 TI and a GeForce 1070 so my renders are quite a bit faster now. I also plan on doing a render video in Lightwave comparing it's native renderer with Octane soon, so keep an eye out for that.

This was a pretty short post, but I am planning on coming back full force in the next days and weeks.

I know this one was short, but rest assured that I will be back soon. Really. Like in the next day or two.

Fast forward three years and I am now working as a front end web developer primarily with some 3D and motion graphics thrown in from time to time. This change in my working habits has caused me to consider moving back to the Mac ecosystem for a while, but I really had no compelling reason to. The computer I had built was still working great and handling anything I could throw at it. I did have a MacBook Pro that I used while working on my Master's degree, but really only used that when I needed to turn in a Keynote presentation or work from somewhere else. In all, I was happy.

That was until late last month when my computer decided that it was not going to work with me any longer. Things such as my mouse stopped working, hard drives went from being available to disappearing, and I began having computer lockups several times a day I ran checks on everything I could from the hard drives to the memory and they all came back fine. Before the computer totally died on me I made the decision to use my MacBook Pro as my primary computer until I could invest in something more substantial.

In making that decision I realized that I would need an external hard drive and another monitor to complete my setup so I purchased a 5GB  Seagate drive and an Apple Thunderbolt Display. I debated whether or not to just buy a new iMac or just the display, but in the end decided to save the extra money and use my perfectly fine MacBook Pro. I would really like to get one of the new 5K iMacs, but that purchase will have to wait.

Now that I have been up and running on my "new" Mac setup for about 3 weeks I can say that I am happy to be on an Apple system again.

As you can see, I am currently rocking 3 monitors. I have my MacBook Pro, the Apple Thunderbolt Display, and a Wacom Cintiq. This setup is really nice and allows me to work efficiently when creating websites or editing video. But I could have created a 3 monitor setup with Windows, so why am I happy to be on the Mac again.

Fantastic Mac Apps

I will admit that the Mac just has some fantastic apps. There is an inherent difference in apps on the Mac and the PC. It could have to do with the OS design guidelines, the developers, or both. Since I don't actively develop apps, I am not sure, but I do know that the Mac apps have a more "polished" feel and aesthetic to them when compared with those in Windows. There are very nice looking programs that were created for the "Metro" side of Windows 8, but in all honesty, I rarely used those. I will give you a few examples of programs that I am glad to be using once again.

For my FTP program I use Transmit by Panic as I did for the 10 or so years before moving to Windows. Panic has done a fantastic job with Transmit and I will admit that I missed it when uploading files to remote sites. Yes, it is just an FTP program, but it is easy to use and looks great. Event their icon is well done.

I use email for everything. I don't like to talk on the phone, but would prefer to send an email. Therefore, a well designed email client is important to me. I looked at several different clients before settling on Airmail. While the others were not bad, I just really like the look and feel of Airmail. It fits nicely into how I work and provides all the utility I need from an email client.

The last quick piece of software I am really starting to like is actually a beta of a new photo editor: Affinity Photo. You might have heard of its sister product Affinity Designer which was awarded runner up in Apple's 2014 App of the Year. While Designer is a vector illustration program, Photo is a photo and raster based editor. These two can be considered competitors to Adobe's Illustrator and Photoshop. I haven't had a chance to use Affinity Designer yet, but I have been playing with Affinity Photo for the past few days and I really like it. It feels faster than Photoshop and so far has done everything I have needed it to do. Even though it is still in beta, I think this could become my image editor of choice of 90-95% of what I do. I would still have Photoshop on hand along with Lightroom for serious photo editing, but this is a fantastic app. Oh, and it is only available on the Mac.

Is Windows 8 Bad?

I don't think Windows 8 was bad at all. I really actually applaud Microsoft for trying something new. We've all heard the stories about how horrible Windows 8 is and how difficult it is to use, and blah blah blah. In truth, it was just different. The new "Metro" interface tried to do some things in a new fashion and many people did not like that. I get it. But I think that the problem was that most people do not like change. I am not a big fan of change myself, but I do think it is necessary from time to time. I think that if more programs had been created to take advantage of the newer interface it would have been a better transition. Since most programs still worked on the desktop mode I can understand where the confusion was. I do think that OS X is a more streamlined OS, and I do prefer it to Windows, but I can't honestly bash Windows 8.  I think they do have the right idea of trying to unify their OS across platforms and I hope they will continue to work towards that goal.

The Mac Experience

During my time away from the Mac ecosystem if you would have asked me if I missed it I would have told you that I really didn't. It wasn't until I started using Yosemite on a full time basis again that I realized that I do prefer it to Windows. There is nothing I can specifically point to to say why I prefer it , but I really do. The OS feels more polished than Windows. That is not to say it is better, but just different. I work in a creative field and I still think that is where Apple shines. Things just look cleaner on a Mac. The smaller apps are well designed and look like they are all part of the same family. Once you get to some of the behemoths like those from Adobe, that sense of design falls off. Where Apple has succeeded is in creating a great experience. They started first with their computers then expanded to the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. People wonder why customers pay the so called "Apple Tax." It is because of the experience. You can argue about quality as well, but I believe that the experience plays a large role. It is why many customers prefer one brand over another. In this case, I can honestly say that I would rather have the Mac experience than a Windows experience. My problem from the beginning several year ago was the direction of the Mac Pro. I am still not completely satisfied with what they did, but at least it was something. I certainly hope they continue to innovate on the computer side and not just focus on the iPhone. Although I did like Windows 8 and am worried about Apple, I think that Apple continues to make great computers and a great OS, and I look forward to seeing what the future holds.

So I guess that sometimes when you leave Mac you do go back.

This is a really good question. Almost 10 years ago I switched from a PC to a Mac. For all that time I never second guessed myself. I knew how Windows worked, never got a virus, and built my own computers, but there was something intriguing about the Mac and its OS X operating system. My first Mac as a PowerMac G4 Dual 867 MHz. I was floored both by the performance and the design that went in to this machine. Since that time I have owned an iBook, MacBook Pro, and a Mac Pro, as well as an iPhone 3G, iPhone 4s, and an iPad. I even worked at the Apple store for a little over a year. Needless to say, I am a fan of Apple products. However, my Mac Pro is going on 6 years old now, and I am looking to upgrade as it is not keeping up with what I need it to do in regards to my 3D work. Don't get me wrong, it is still a great machine for everyday things such as browsing the Internet, using iTunes, and a vast majority of everyday computing. However, I have found my render times rise over the past few years and the programs and scenes become more complicated. So the upgrade question remains. What kind of Mac should I get?

Well for the way I use my computer, nothing less than a Mac Pro will do. I need the RAM, the multiple hard drive slots, dual DVD burners, and upgrade-able video card. The thing is, I don't know how long the Mac Pro will be around. Apple seems content on running with the consumer side of their business, which I totally understand, but,I need the Mac Pro, not an iMac. So the question remains. Is the Mac still the best machine for me? In all honesty, I don't think so. I looked at what my money will buy if I went with a Mac, or if I went with a PC. In all honesty, there wasn't a whole lot of difference if I bought from Apple or Boxx. However, if I build my own machine, I can save a substantial amount of money. Now granted, I won't have warranty support, but before I purchased my first Mac, I used to build all my machines and never had an issue.

What about the operating system? I really do like OS X. It is now all I really know. I decided that I should try Windows before jumping feet first into switching back, so I purchased a copy of Windows 7 to dual boot on my MacBook Pro. I have to admit that from my initial impressions and about a week's worth of Use, I am really impressed. The aesthetics are nice with the Aero theme, and things are running smoothly and quickly. It also seems as if the newest trend is moving away from the operating system and more into the applications, or apps, and really there isn't anything major that I run on my Mac that is not available on Windows. In fact, the opposite is true. By staying on a Mac system I am missing the opportunity to use two rather large 3D programs, 3D Studio Max and Softimage. I cut my teeth in 3D with 3D Studio version 4 back in 1996 and got really interested in Plasma in the early 2000s, but never had the opportunity to try 3D Studio Max, especially since it is only available on Windows. Sure, I could just dual boot to use 3DS Max, but really, what is the point? Is OS X that much better than Windows 7? For some people, maybe. For me, I'm not so sure.

Like I said, I am really impressed with Windows 7. One thing I have noticed is that the application developers, for the most part, are not as concerned with aesthetics as the Mac developers are. I found some great programs on the Mac that I have yet to find an equal to on Windows. On the Mac you have great developers such as Panic and Macrabbit. Since I am a web developer, I have made use of their programs extensively and find them to be wonderful. They have an elegance to them that I just cannot find on the Windows platform. I don't know if it is because of the way Windows is programmed, or if Windows designers just aren't that good, but Coda, Espresso, and Transmit will be sorely missed. However, one that seems to look a little better than most is Intype. I do think design matters, especially in software development. If I am going to be looking at a text editor, it should look nice. I mean, the rest of windows looks nice, why can't the applications? I love the look of Google Chrome, especially since it just gets out of the way. I think that maybe as Windows 8 gets closer to launch with its Metro interface, we might be seeing a shift to good looking applications.

Other than that, I really don't see any compelling reason to stay with the Mac platform I do think Apple's business practices are better, and I like Apple better as a company overall, but is there anything tangible that will make me stay with my Mac? In all honesty, no. When you put all the marketing hype aside, I really see no compelling reason to purchase another Mac. I am sad to say that, as they have served me well since 2002, but I think that Windows might finally catch OS X in the next few years. I will still have my Mac Pro and will use it as a spare computer, so I am not totally getting rid of my Mac systems. Of course, the transition to the Mac from the PC back in 2002 was more difficult than my transition back will be, but I  do anticipate some bumps in the road. Luckily there are some great people out there such as Chris Pirillo and the Gnomies that I can use to help me through this time if I have any trouble. With that being said, I don't think I will have too much trouble getting up to speed with Windows 7 and Windows 8 when it is released. In fact, I already have my MacBook Pro set up to run Windows 7 and I am not having any issues at all.

So I guess the answer to the question is: Yes. Sometimes you do go back.

http://linearliquid.wistia.com/medias/3faymdx3t0?embedType=iframe&videoWidth=640  

Hey everyone. I've just finished making the first tutorial under my photography company Double-Tap Photography. In this tutorial I show you how to take and ordinary image and really turn it in to something you can be proud of by using one of my favorite plugins HDR Efex Pro.. The image I will be using is the Trump Tower in Chicago. I was on a boat going down the Chicago River and only had a few seconds to capture the image. I wasn't that impressed with the original when I returned home, but began playing around with all the various tools at my disposal to come up with a final image that is one of my favorites. I take you through the process of creating multiple exposures from one image, converting those images into an HDR image in Photomatix Pro, tone-mapping the image in HDR Efex Pro, and then using Color Efex Pro to tweak the final image. The video is recorded in 720p so make sure you watch it at full resolution so you can see all the text.

I hope you enjoy the tutorial and learn something from it. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them.

I won't make excuses. I have been busy for the past few months, but that is changing now that things are starting to wind down a little. Just to recap, I've been in the process of buying a house since the end of January (don't ask), starting a new business (Double-Tap Photography), working, and going to school. Unfortunately, the blog has been neglected. I apologize. There have been some faithful readers as I am getting new visitors every day, but I am going to try to keep up with my self imposed schedule to keep updates rolling along. I am excited about what is going to come soon and I hope you will continue to be faithful visitors.

For this edition of Make Something Monday, I actually created an object that I will be turning into a little website for a class I am taking. The assignment is to collect recipes from my classmates and then turn them into a working website. Many of my classmates are doing a cook book motif, but I wanted to go with something a little different. In researching ideas, I came up with the idea of using a Rolodex type device to manage the recipes. Since my drawing skills aren’t the greatest, I decided to use modo and Cinema 4D to design, texture, and render the object for use on the web.

I created the entire model in modo 501. It really didn’t take too long to get things like I wanted them. In all I would say it took me about an hour or so to create the model. I then took it into Cinema 4D for the lighting, texturing and rendering since I am still not as familiar with modo’s texturing tools.

Over the next few weeks I will be turning this into a fully working site, and I will be sure to post that link when it is finished.

For this week's image I decided to post a photo I took this past summer on the World Wide Photo Walk. I didn't go any where fancy, but just stayed local to try to find interesting subjects. I tried to find different subjects other than the usual ones you would find in a small town. I shot the requisite barber pole and old theater building, but i really wanted to push myself to try to find something more out of the ordinary. I walked around the corner and found this old beat up door. For some reason it was painted blue and put on red brick. I really liked the contrast of the two elements in regards to both texture and color. I also wanted to get close enough to grab the detail, but I wanted to make sure I shot some of the brick as well.

The weathering of the door immediately caught my eye and I really wanted to emphasize this in the image. The colors were as weathered as the wood, so I decided to do some work to enhance them in Lightroom. While this is not a 100% representation of the door, I really enjoy this image because of the strong colors and textures.

For this installment of Make Something Monday I have decided to show you something that I have been teaching my video production students. We purchased a lab license of modo a few weeks back, and I have been teaching them the fundamentals of box modeling. To accomplish this, we have been working on making a truck out of a box.

Now I know that I am supposed to make something new every Monday, and for the most part I do. I usually spend Monday afternoons working on my lesson plans for the week, so I model the truck on Mondays so I can lead my students through the process the rest of the week. I was inspired to do this truck by a 3D Studio Max tutorial I saw on the web, but since I don't have 3DS Max I decided to adapt it to modo. So far I am really happy with how this is turning out. Of course, it is not a photoreal truck, but it gives the students a good modeling foundation and practice with many different tools.

We have pretty much modeled the main body of the truck. The next parts we will focus on will be the wheels. Once we have finished the wheels, we will start adding details such as the body panels, door handles, lights, and a roll bar. Hopefully we will complete this soon so we can move on to something else.

Happy Friday everyone! I really do enjoy Fridays. Usually Friday means work, then home, then looking forward to a relaxed weekend. However, that was not the case last Friday. I actually had last Friday off because of the weather here in Houston, and instead of looking forward to a relaxing weekend, I was thinking about a rare weekend that would be filled with activities. On Saturday we would be attending the Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam in Houston while Sunday would be spent shooting a local volleyball game and then watching the Super Bowl. Needless to say, it was a busy weekend. One of the things I noticed about my shooting is that most of my shots happen during the summer months. I guess it is because I am off from school and work for two and a half months, but I wanted to make the time to shoot more during the school year as well. Now that my blog has been designed and is running smoothly I have decided to implement Photography Fridays. I am intending to shoot something during the week to post on Fridays, but if I can't do that I will go through some of my older shots and discuss them, perhaps talking about what I did to capture the shot, or what type of post processing I used. For this first Photography Friday I have decided to post a few of the shots from last weekend's Monster Jam. This was the first time I attended and I must say that I really had a great time. I went with some good friends, the wife, and Junior, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, except for the massive traffic jam getting out of the parking lot afterwards. I think this might be one of the yearly events we try to attend from here on out. So here are the images. I hope you all have a relaxing and stress free weekend.

Yes, I know. I haven't posted in a while. It's been a busy few weeks, but now that things are somewhat back to normal I will be resuming my posting schedule. I haven't forgotten about Make Something Mondays, and I have been working on something. I will post that soon. The new semester for school has started so I have been working on that and getting everything under control for a nice orderly semester. This semester I am taking Web Technology 1 and Crossing Border, a type of art history course. In all honesty I am not really looking forward to it. I think the web technology course will be fun and will help to fill in some gaps of my web programming knowledge, but I really don't like art history. I understand its importance and all, but I just don't care for it.

I used to have the Double-Tap logo here, but took it down due to many people STEALING it and using it as their own.

If that wasn't enough, I am also a founding partner in a brand new sports photography company: Double-Tap Photography. We specialize in action shots of sporting events. It has been a dream of mine to shoot sports and I am finally able to begin to make this a reality. We had our first shoot this past Saturday and it went really well. I hope to have some images to show soon.

If that wasn't all, I still have my other company: Linear Liquid. This is a design firm that I am a partner in, and it is really starting to pick up steam, so I have been working on those projects as well. We will be doing a complete site overhaul soon, so I am trying to get everything in place so it goes smoothly.

This is to say nothing of my "real" job which is teaching video production to high school students and my family life, so needless to say, it has been busy lately. Luckily, I am able to manage my time well so it's not too much of a problem. Now that things are sufficiently manages, I will be updating regularly, and I will be adding more regular weekly content. Look for more on that this Friday.

Well, last week I modeled the USB cable so today I thought I would texture and render the model. Unfortunately, I didn't save the render and had to re-render on Tuesday. I think that texturing and lighting my models are two skills I really need to work on. The render I finally ended up with is okay, but it is not as good as I would have preferred. I textured and rendered the USB cable in Cinema 4D 12 because I have not really used modo's texturing and rendering features. I hope to study modo's features because it would be nice to stay in one program for simple scenes like this. I must admit that I am reasonably pleased with how this turned out after only 2 hours of work. No, it is not the best, but I am not a full time 3D artist. I am hoping to devote a lot of time this year to honing my skills and bringing them to the level I want them to be.

One of the things I really want to do this year is develop my portfolio and my technical and artistic skills. I have been dabbling in a lot of different things in the past and I really want to narrow that down. I want to get rid of the "jack of all trades, master of none" moniker. I don't think I will truly ever master anything, but I want to become better in 3 main areas: 3D animation/motion graphics, web design, and photography. Since I am a busy guy with my school work, teaching, and family, I have decided that I am going to start Make Something Mondays. My goal for MSM is to make something every Monday. I am going to give myself an hour to tackle a little project. My goal is to complete the task in an hour or less. If I don't finish, I will stop at an hour and I will post what I completed. My goal is to develop both my technical and creative skills over the next year.

For this first Monday I decided to start easy and create a USB cable in 3D. Now, to be fair I have done this in Maya before , but I really want to learn modo this year. I have Cinema 4D version 12 for its animation tools, but I like the modeling tools in modo a lot better. Of course, it would help to know modo inside and out since I will be teaching it to my video production students soon. I couldn't think of anything to model so I figured why not start with that. I was surprised with how much I remembered of modo. It's been a little while since I have played around with it, but I was able to get up and running quickly. I am using version 401, but I plan on upgrading to 501 as soon as I can.

I barely finished all the modeling within my allotted hour, but was able to get everything done. I went for detail, so this is not a low poly model. I want it to hold up to some scrutiny for some renders. Since I didn't have the time to render my model this week. I think that's where I will pick up next week for Make Something Monday. I encourage you to set aside some time in your week to try a project to help get your creative juices going. If you have any suggestions for future Make Something Mondays, drop me a comment and let me know.

Well the new year is upon us and I have finished designing and migrating my blog from Squarespace to Wordpress. It has taken me longer than I would have liked, but I think that I have pretty much finished the migration. I seem to have gotten all my posts, comments, and images transferred from the old blog to the new one, and it looks like I have worked out most of the bugs. Of course, now that I say that, the site is probably going to start breaking down. Such is the worry with technology.

Well, those of you who have been reading since I started back in 2009 might wonder why I switched from Squarespace back to Wordpress after originally switching from Wordpress to Squarespace. Well, it was not that I was unhappy with Squarespace. In fact, I would wholeheartedly recommend Squarespace to anybody. The reason why I switched is that I would eventually start learning how to create themes for Wordpress and I figured the best way to begin would be to jump in feet first. I purchased and excellent ebook: How to be a Rockstar Wordpress Designer from Rockable Press to help me learn some of the ins and outs of starting my first theme. You will notice that I have adapted the theme from the book to suit my own needs. I am sure there is some bloat in the code, but overall, I think this transition has been a success. Over the next few days I will continue to tweak the code and test in various browsers, but all looks good right now. I just hope it stays that way.

If you are looking at this in an older browser, it probably doesn't look right. Honestly, I don't care. You need to update your browser. It is free to do so and there is really no reason why you shouldn't be using the latest browser. I do understand if you are using a work computer and you have no control, but in that case, I hope you go home and look at the site in a newer browser. In my usability class we discussed things like this, but honestly, with technology changing as fast as it does, there is no excuse to use and older browser. Unfortunately, the browser with the most problems is Internet Explorer.  The site seems to run fine on version 8, but is messed up on version 7. If you are using version 7, just update to version 8. Please.

Since I am looking to start creating my own themes in the future, it is entirely possible that the look of the site will change from time to time. Hopefully the designs will become better and more cutting edge as I learn the ins and outs of creating the themes. I can say that I have learned quite a lot over the past few weeks. I am still a beginner, but I have really enjoyed myself.

Now on to the fun stuff. I really aim to update this blog several times a week. I have some interesting ideas in the works and I really want to create more tutorials that cover a wide range of topics. I think creating tutorials has been one of my favorite things to do. Over the past 6-7 months I have created three photography related tutorials that have been pretty successful, and I really hope to expand that and produce at least 2 new tutorials a month from here on out. I also hope to do some things with stock photography. I don't want to say too much now, but I am excited about where the new year will take me and this website.

For everyone who is reading and watching, I want to wish you a great new year. I think this is going to be a great year and I hope we can get to know each other. As always, feel free to leave comments, or contact me if there is anything you would like me to write about or cover. Thank you again for reading, and I will see you soon.

-Andy

http://linearliquid.wistia.com/medias/kqfiz809tg?embedType=iframe&videoWidth=640  

This is my workflow and a tutorial for creating HDR images using Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro plugin. I create the HDR image in HDR Efex Pro then take the image back into Aperture for further tweaking and editing. Once again, this is just my personal workflow. I don’t claim it to be the correct or even the best workflow, but it works well for me. I hope you enjoy.

I have read the horror stories about Sigma’s quality control and optics being sub-par, but in all honesty, I have never had any issues with a Sigma lens. I own three Sigma lenses and this rental makes the fourth Sigma lens I have used. In fact, my first lens ever was a Sigma 28-80mm that I purchased with my Minolta XTsi back in 1997. It was a quality lens and I never had any issues with it. When I upgraded to my Nikon D50 in 2005 I purchased a Sigma 70-300mm. This is also a quality lens. I took many photos with that lens including the ones below.

It has been an extremely capable lens, especially for the price. When I purchased my D300s last October I was in need of a macro lens. I again looked to Sigma and purchased the 105mm and have produced some excellent images with it.

I do not doubt that some people have received bad copies of Sigma lenses, but the same can be said of anything that is mass produced. I am thankful that my experience with Sigma has been a good one, but I wonder if many of the bad press against Sigma has been by photo snobs that will only use Canon or Nikon lenses. Of course the same can be said about snobs going after camera manufacturers too, but I won’t go into that here. What I will do is talk about my experience with the Sigma 150-500mm lens.

I won’t mention of MTF charts or brick walls because I don’t think most people care. When people purchase a 500mm lens they want to shoot stuff far away. That is what I am going to focus on. This won’t be a completely thorough review because I only used the lens for one day during one event. However, I think this will give you an idea of the capabilities expressed by this lens and will hopefully provide you with some answers to questions you might have.

First of all, this lens is huge. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to take a shot of this behemoth on my D300s, but here is a shot I found on the internet of the Sigma 150-500 on a D700 which is roughly the same size as my D300s.

Although it is big and heavy, it really wasn’t a problem hand holding the camera and lens most of the day. My back was a little sore the next day, but shooting was not an uncomfortable experience in the least. Of course, it probably helped that I was shooting with a Black Rapid strap instead of the neck strap that comes with the camera. I honestly cannot imagine walking around with this thing dangling from your neck. If you haven’t invested in a Black Rapid strap, I would highly recommend one. Just so you know, I had my strap secured to the tripod mount on the lens, and not secured to the camera. I recently purchased the MB-D10 Battery Grip for my camera and didn’t want to put any undue pressure on it by securing the strap to it.

Since I was hand holding the camera, I decided to utilize the built in optical stabilization (OS) on the lens. I didn’t worry about it too much when shooting the jets because I could adjust my shutter speed to compensate for any shake, but when shooting the propeller driven planes I needed a slower shutter to blur the propellers. The OS handled this fantastically. I was able to drop the shutter speed and capture the shot I wanted without introducing any blurriness.

I was really surprised at the sharpness of the lens. I thought it would be blurry at 500mm, but I was really impressed with the clarity of the shots especially considering the fact that these airplanes were traveling a few hundred miles per hour. Did I mention that this lens is heavy?

If you are in the market for a good lens that has a nice zoom range, I would highly recommend the Sigma 150-500mm F5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM. Man that is a mouthful.