Portraiture a subject most artist would talk about for hours depending on the artist method, mood and perception - perhaps, there could be more articulating factors behind a creation.

These days, we are fortunately given more options, tools to do something similar. In recent years; we find ourselves marbling technology and with more advanced, compact size chips we can now create our own master piece just like what Picasso did many years back.

Theoretically, that is ...

Today, we feature photos taken with the Sigma 17-70mm lens and later on we will feature in another article those taken with the Tamron 17mm counter part to show weak and strong points of both lenses - out in real world conditions.

In these test photos, Flash was disable through out the whole testing period. The images have been resize to fit the uneven columns on this page and for page loading issues.

Shooting with the Sigma 17-70mm is quite enjoyable and very satisfactory in the general sense that the images came out real well and with some unexpected effects too, but generally i like how the images turns to be; just fine.

These photos where taken on a real cloudy day and perhaps just after rain as on my way to Singapore's Botanical Garden via Orchard road; the roads and pavement seems a little wet that day.

Noise
Sigma 17-70mm works well and hardly noticed much noise even at the far end of the lens. However; IF you really listen hard enough you might noticed very very low resonant sound for less than a second and that is it – which you need to be in a closed room.

Focus
Focusing is very easy and fast with a filter size of 72mm, it does perform well even at low light as i also took this lens out for some night time shooting with a friend who does the same with a different camera configuration and lens mount.

Even IF you are shooting real close to your subject, you still manage to obtain focus quite easily and setting the ISO to 1600 during low light conditions with out the use of a Flash is acceptable as well too ...

AF Mode
Auto-Focus is Great with this Sigma 17-70mm lens and quite easy as well too, even IF You have an entry level dSLR camera like the Canon 1000D which was used for this test shoots.

I am very happy and satisfied with how the lens work real well with the camera and the Nikon counter part is as good as well too for sure.

MF Mode
It is a little slow and Manual Focus with this Sigma 17-70mm is not as fast and easy compared to the auto-focus mode.   But, still you will be able to obtain better quality of images IF you are more comfortable shooting in this mode.

Personally; it seems to take longer to shoot in manual mode than in auto-focus but there are those who are gifted whom seems to be able to produce stunning and breathtaking images in manual mode.

Well, this section ends here for now and i will be amending the link to the other photos taken with this Sigma 17-70mm lens, while in Singapore's Botanical Garden as soon as i have them rescaled or resized to 567px for faster uploading and page loading issues.

This Sigma 17-70mm OS HSM lens retails around $ 738.30 SGD - 7% tax included in Singapore and you can find them in Sim Lim Square a few blocks from Bugis MRT station.