It was April 2016 when I reviewed Sigma’s first 20mm F1.4 ART lens, a lens designed for full frame DSLRs.  I came away very impressed with the optical performance of the lens and felt like the greatest negatives were a curved front element that precluded the use of filters, a lack of weather sealing in a lens that would be used outdoors heavily, and on the optical front, a bit more coma than what I would have liked in a lens that was otherwise so obviously well suited for astrophotography.  Fast forward to 2022, and Sigma has its new mirrorless design of the lens – the Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG DN ART  – and it seems to have solved all of those problems with ease.

DN is the designation Sigma uses for its purpose designed mirrorless lenses, so, while there is an existing 20mm F1.4 ART lens for Sony E and Leica L, that lens is a “ported” DSLR lens (essentially with a built in adapter to allow autofocus to work properly and to move the optical path forward for proper focus on a camera without a mirror.  That lens is a bit compromised as a byproduct, as it is A) bigger and heavier than it needs to be (about 18mm longer and 150g heavier than the DSLR version) and B) has an adapted autofocus system which works fairly well but not quite as well as a lens natively designed for mirrorless autofocus.  The new 20DN ART is 30+mm shorter and weighs over 400g less.  The new DN lens is not what you would call a small lens, but it is considerably smaller and lighter than the previous edition.  That’s impressive when you consider that this is the first 20mm F1.4 lens for full frame mirrorless and that it joins the previous Sigma lens as the only 20mm F1.4 full frame lens, period.  In short, Sigma has improved on something that other lens makers haven’t even attempted yet!

Sigma has taken a bifurcated approach to lens design on mirrorless, with smaller size, smaller aperture options in their “i-Series” (which they put under their “Contemporary” brand umbrella) and then more robust, larger aperture, professional grade lenses under their “ART” brand.  There is already a 20mm F2 DN lens in their i-Series (which I reviewed here), but this new ART series lens is clearly pitched at competing with the top-shelf Sony G Master and similar lenses.

I’m excited about this new 20DN ART lens because it retains so much of what was good about the first lens while improving on basically all of its flaws.  The byproduct is a lens that delivers incredible image quality even at F1.4, focuses accurately, has a very nice build quality (including weather sealing), can use traditional filters up front (in a large but common 82mm size), has a rear filter holder also, and a host of other features that we will detail in a moment.  All of this at a price point that is hundreds less than any competing first party lens (only $899 USD), and you’ve got yourself a potential winner.  

So does the Sigma 20mm F1.4 DN ART hold up under intense scrutiny?  You can judge for yourself by either watching my video review , reading my text review, or just enjoy the photos below.

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Thanks to Gentec (Sigma’s Canadian Distributor) for sending me a pre-release review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7IV along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).

Photos of the Sigma 20mm F1.4 DN ART

Photos Taken with the Sigma 20mm F1.4 DN ART

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