geopapa

one of the sharpest on crop e mount, sharper than the 50mm, although significantly slower

This image could be a camera ad.. "Even a monkey can shoot perfectly focused selfies.."

This is a really lovely picture! could you give some details on how you shot it? Did you use a backdrop? as it is a long exposure I assume you didn't use flash or some kind of light?

The picture is not dull at all..

First attempt of long exposure focus stacking 3 images shot with Samyang 12mm @f8 or f11 and a 6 stop nd filter with different focus points

Don't go completely manual (aperture, shutter and ISO) unless you really know what you're doing (e.g astrophotography) Your light meter is there for a reason..

Regardless of the camera you will choose you should definitely consider buying something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01JBUZ86U/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It's a ...

The light seems ok and looking natural to me. Are you tempted to upgrade the sigma to the new 1.4 version?

In theory it can, but you need some patient and static subjects :-)

Agreed. But even with focus peaking, it's not always easy to focus on the eye of a static subject and almost impossible on moving kids... It's in longer focal lengths where af is mostly needed

Great pictures and processing! I have the Pentax m 1.4 and it's really nice especially above f2 but a bit tricky to manually focus at that focal length..

Nice portraits. Good use of the respective focal lengths. There's something like noise artifacts when zoomed even at ISO 100. A bit oversharpened perhaps?

if I had the 18-135 I would skip the sigma 19 and complement it with sigma 30mm 2.8 or 1.4 or/and Sony 50mm for portrait work.

If your phone supports infrared, there are also free apps available..

The title is slightly ambiguous... Great tits indeed :-)

If your kit lens is broken, replacing it with a prime lens is not a good idea. Very very limiting. You need at least 3 prime lenses to somewhat cover the focal range. So you either must service it ...

The infinity on mine is exactly at the vertical line of the "L" mark

I would definitely bring the 12mm with me to Iceland regardless of I had the 16mm too. Those vast landscapes offer great opportunities to take advantage of the ultra wide perspective.

There's a hands on review with image samples here: https://dustinabbott.net/2018/04/zonlai-22mm-f-1-8-image-gallery/ Looks pretty interesting.

Great images! You don't need the latest most expensive gear to produce good photography