The Sigma 150 journey

I always did aspire to have a decent equipment, to be specific, a power packed lens which could give me the ultimate level of satisfaction as that of gulping a pint of chilled draft beer, especially after traversing down the sliding rubble topped paths of Sinhagad. For almost 3 years, till Aug 2009, my F65, D80 bodies were gratified to have themselves merged and synch up with Sigma 150mm Macro F2.8. I was spellbound looking at the majestic results delivered by the Nikon-Sigma combo. Convinced and contented, all thoughts that raised heads to contemplate on other lens were slaughtered then and there. Now, I decided to concentrate of flowers, insects, water droplet art, and anything and everything that was macro. I did stick to this principle for monsoon and one winter. A day sometime in Feb 2007, I came across a Mont Blanc catalog. The pictures were extremely fascinating. The golden tips with a black background got my eyes sparkling with a gesture of smile. This resulted into a drizzle of ideas to set up a studio simulation with lights to cover some trinkets and ornaments. Patience is something which I am always in deficit of. Immediately, was on shopping spree to do some stationary like black marble coated chart papers that will serve as a background and some other stuff like thick clips to lock the position of papers once they were spread on a drawing board which i managed to smuggle from my dad’s office. I must have donated more than Rs. 600 to Venus Traders. After coming back home, the broken tripods were taken out. Mounted umbrellas with reflecting coat on it and placed them at 45 degree angles on each side. Suspended a 200W bulb which was to serve as source of light. Mounted D80+150mm on my operating tripod and then my setup was done. Now, the only missing thing was a subject for trial. Looked around and picked my Samsung handset. Was about to remove the battery and dissect it in order to expose the circuit. But, then suddenly realized that I could use a simple fountain pen nip which was readily available in my sis’s drawer. Anyways, the drawer was full of trash. Eventually managed to get it and placed it in the center for a trial. Focused the camera with center weighted metering @ F8 with 1/250 flash opened. Clicked. The resultant was a photograph developed by technicians of FotoFast. It was bright white which sliced all the gloss that the nip was to deliver. Now the question was do I switch off the 200W bulb? Or do I eliminate the flash? Applied all principles and decided to go with the ingalhalikar technique by eliminating the 200W bulb. Changed to F16 with flash popped @ Aperture priority and clicked. Voila……. Bright and white FotoFast effect was not there anymore. But still, wasn’t impressive. The chart paper reflected traces of flash and thoughts just didn't seem to get ideated as to how do I get this going. I had already lined up some of aai's jewelry to be used as subjects. Distressed, i just wrapped up everything and dumped them in the closet. But i was determined. The following weekend, gave it a try again, this time with jewelery. And since then, there was no stopping. The Sigma 150mm macro is a gem to play with. Portraits, macro, gestures, action shots. Its an amazing piece of glass.