Compare how? The R1 is only 24 MM wide...not what I would call wide at all.
There aren't many quality 24mm effective lenses for DSLR that are also standard zooms reaching 120mm, particularly if you are on a budget, got to hand that to the R1.
And what REAL difference does that make? You have a full resolution 8 megapixel image covering a frame that would require a 320mm lens on a full frame camera, it's not like the lens crops the sensor to obtain that narrower FOV.
Compare how? The R1 is only 24 MM wide...not what I would call
wide at all.
These two shots were taken with the cheap Sigma 10-20. Wider than
the R1 could do, and is now printed at 10x20 and 8x10 on my wall.
Looks good enough to be printed. I wouldn't call it poor by any
means.
And how will you tell? Except perhaps at huge sizes, these lenses produce results that are hardly distinguishable from Ls (and there are no L lenses that cover the same range on APS DSLRs).
The sigma is an EX lens, which is their prosumer line.
From these posts I understand that it does not digitally enlarge (interpolate) images, just crops the image in the camera to produce a tighter composition at a lower resolution - which is what you can do yourself in postprocessing anyway?
It doesn't really matter because the lens cannot be detached and used on any other camera, full frame or APS (particularly since its design makes it incompatible with SLRs anyway).
There are two options:
As far as I know, if you crop a 10 megapixel image to imitate a 2x zoom, the resulting image will not be 5 megapixels, but 2.5 megapixels, since you have to divide linear dimensions (vertical and horizontal) by 2, not the total pixel count.
Cameras haven't advanced that much. This type of shooting has always been Dslr/Slr type of shooting. Not that you can't get some nice shots without a Dslr, as you mention. But low noise higher ISOs, fast burst rates and fast lenses make them much better tools for this type of shooting than regular digitals.
Speed is one of the R-1's issues IMO. Wide open it's not bad, but with any amount of zoom and you're at F4.5 and still only at 120mm's. F4.5 is about 2 stops slower than what you would normally look for in a low light action lens. So you will still be stuck at 1/125-1/160 speeds even at ISO1600 :-( You are correct in thinking the noise should be at least a stop or two better than the 717. But the loss of speed tells me this camera is not the right tool for this type of shooting.
Nope, sounds like you know what you're doing and making the best of the tool you use. My suggestion would be to look into a more appropriate tool.
You see why digital zoom is so poor - to get 2x, a 2.5 megapixel image is blown up to 10 megapixels.
