Over the past two years Sigma has easily been the most prolific lens developer on Sony FE and Leica L.  We went from no full frame options from Sigma on Sony’s mirrorless platform two years ago to some 25 lenses just a few years later.  Sigma’s DN lineup (their designation for mirrorless) revolution has been nothing short of startling, and we now have everything from ultra-wide angle to extreme telephoto, with both zooms and primes throughout a lot of that range (save long telephoto primes).  Sigma’s releases have been so heavy that they have often come in bunches, with multiple lenses announced and released side by side.  The most recent pair of lenses is the Sigma 90mm F2.8 DG DN that I’m reviewing today and the Sigma 24mm F2 DG DN, which I reviewed here.  These lenses are a part of Sigma’s “iSeries”, a new lineup they debuted in late 2019.   These include the Sigma 45mm F2.8 DN lens (my review here), 24mm F3.5 DN (my review here), 35mm F2 DG DN (my review here), 65mm F2 DG DN (my review here), and then these most recent two. While Sigma’s marketing language for the iSeries is typical marketing silliness, the premise for the series is sound.  Sigma has recognized that there are multiple segments within the mirrorless market, and they have two different priorities.  One group wants maximum performance in aperture and optics, and these are served by Sigma’s larger ART series, but there is a secondary market who bought into the mirrorless vision of smaller and lighter while retaining the performance.  This second group is the target audience for the iSeries.  The iSeries lenses are beautiful crafted, very tactile, but are also much smaller and lighter than more premium lenses.  I’m a fan of the premise, myself, and have liked most of the iSeries lenses quite a bit. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle of the i90 (as we’ll call it for brevity) have been done with the new Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).

This new 90mm lens is very intriguing to me for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is the nature of the focal length itself.  Both Sigma and Samyang have developed lineups of compact lenses, and Sony has some as well, but the longest focal length in Samyang’s “tiny series”, for example, is 75mm.  There are probably some 15 compact, high performing autofocus lenses under 75mm on Sony, but none over 75mm…until now.  Typically to get 90mm and F2.8 you are either looking at a macro lens (like Sony’s excellent 90mm F2.8 G Macro) or a zoom lens like Sony’s 70-200mm F2.8 GM or Tamron’s 70-180mm F2.8 VXD.  All such lenses are comparatively huge, however, and so getting that very useful focal length in a little lens that is less than 62mm long and weighs only 295g is a very welcome proposition.  Even the Sony 90G is more than twice as long and over twice as heavy!  Being able to pack along some actual reach in a tiny package is a very interesting idea.

The second reason why I’m intrigued by the i90 is that when I first started testing Sony APS-C gear (starting with the a6300), I tested Sigma’s first DN lenses, which were an original trio of 3 F2.8 compact primes that were only designed for APS-C.  They are now discontinued mostly due to an outdated autofocus design that introduced limitations to available focus areas, but they were optically sound.  One of those lenses was a 60mm F2.8, which, when you account for Sony’s 1.5x APS-C crop, delivers an angle of view equivalent to 90mm on full frame.  In other words, a little lens very like this one.  I always thought that 60mm F2.8 had very nice rendering and a very useful focal length, so I’m also intrigued by a spiritual successor to that lens on full frame…but without all the limitations of that older lens.

As has frequently been the case with this series, I think that Sigma has managed to strike a nice balance between a high quality rendering along with excellent sharpness.  This isn’t a cold, sterile lens, but rather one with some character despite being well corrected.  The only lens in the series that I didn’t love the optical performance of was the 45mm F2.8, but by and large I’ve found this series consistently excellent.  That’s very true here; this is an extremely high performing lens that I really enjoyed using, and the price point of $639 USD will be well worth it to some and a hard sell for others (people have a hard time getting excited over a prime lens with a maximum aperture of F2.8).  You can find my thoughts in my text or video reviews, or just enjoy the photos below.

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Thank you to Sigma Canada (Gentec) for getting me pre-release loaners of the 24mm and 90mm lenses.  As always, this is a completely independent review.  The opinions here are completely my own.

Photos of the Sigma 90mm F2.8 DG DN

Photos taken with the Sigma 90mm F2.8 DN (Alpha 1 + a6600)

Gear Used:

Purchase the Sigma 90mm F2.8 DG DN @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | eBay 

Purchase the Sigma 24mm F2 DG DN @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada  | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | eBay 

Purchase the Sigma 24mm F3.5 DN @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

Purchase the Sigma 65mm F2 DG DN @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase the Sigma 35mm F2 DG DN @ B&H Photo  | Amazon | Camera Canada  | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Sony a9M2 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Sony a9 Camera:  B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada  | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 
Sony a7RIV Camera: B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Peak Design Leash Strap:  Peak Design Store | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada  | Amazon UK

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