Underwriting ReflectionsI was down in London on Tuesday with some time to kill, so I decided to take the camera along. I grabbed a few photos at the British Museum, but wasn't feeling very inspired (my mind was elsewhere), and didn't fancy getting more shots from the Egyptian section (which reminds me, I've still got those to edit from our last trip there...). However, I did manage to get a few good shots of the Lloyd's Building, the Aviva Tower and 30 St Mary's Axe (aka The Gherkin or Swiss Re Tower) in the City.

I've got some from a previous trip that I don't think I've processed before, but I was trying to find a new angle on these much photographed buildings. On the way back to the tube I did manage a couple. This is my favourite, which is Lloyd's reflected in the glass of one of the other buildings on Leadenhall Street. It could have done with being taken pointing down slightly more, and the street light is a bit distracting, but overall I'm pleased with it.

The full session is on my photo albums, and the higlights are in the London, March 2008 set on my Flickr account.

The session also gave me a change to play with the new Sigma 18-50 mm f/2.8 that I bought off Mark / Shootin' the breeze. It's not the HSM version, but it still seems to focus quickly and reliably. It's also pretty sharp, and doesn't suffer from the vignetting that the Nikon AF-S 18-70 mm does when wide open (although I hadn't noticed until I did a side by side test). However, one thing I did notice was a lot of purple fringing (chromatic aberration) on the high contrast sections of the Lloyd's photos (eg the cranes againt the sky). Photoshop's Lens Correction filter managed to reduce it slightly, but it's still present. Still, for the money, it's a good lens and gives me a few extra stops over the Nikon kit lens. I'll try and do a more in-depth comparison (inclusing playing with it's macro function) later and post it up here. Meanwhile, I'm still contemplating spending my bonus on a super-wide zoom, but am split between the quality of the Nikon 12-24 mm f/4, the price of the Tokina 12-24 mm f/4 and the even wider angle Sigma 10-20 mm f/4-5.6 (or whether I can justify the Nikon 10.5 mm as well as the Tokina).