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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my final review on the newest Sigma
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lens. This is the 14 to 24 millimeter F2.8 art series lens. And I've spent quite a bit of time with
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this lens shooting in a variety of different situations. I've had a chance to compare it to
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a few of lenses that I would certainly consider competitors, including the Tamron 15 to 30 millimeter F2.8 VC lens
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and then adapting it on Sony FE. I've also done a comparison to a couple of prime lenses
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and that includes the Loudwa 15mm F2, and then also the Zeiss-Badis-18-millimeter F2.8 lens
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And so in all of those comparisons, this lens has stood up really, really well
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In fact, if you would like to take a look at the image quality comparison on the native Canon mount
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this is an EF mount that I'm reviewing, and I reviewed it on the Canon 5D Mark 4
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I would encourage you to take a look at this episode here, where I cover a lot of the main features of the lens itself
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To hit just a couple of those high points, what really stands out about this lens is that it is sharp from corner to corner
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And it is unusually so, in fact. Usually, I find with wide angle lenses that they often will struggle at just the very edge portion of the frame
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And in fact, you know, for example, the Tamron of 15 to 30 millimeter F2.8, it's very, very good in the center
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But it's quite a bit softer than the Sigma by comparison at the edge, the outer portion of the frame
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Now, when I moved over to the Sony A7R Mark 3 to see how it work via the MC11, I found that a few
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interesting things there. Initially I had some glitches, some issues with it and discovered that
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the MC11 needed an update to be fully compatible with the lens. And so initially, even those of you
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that watched my Sony FE comparison, which you can see here, you noted that even as a part of
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the XIF information, it wasn't displaying the lens information properly. Fortunately, that part is solved by the update. I was also having issues with Improfen
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proper metering and the firmware update to the MC11 also solved that issue. I did still get an
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occasional bug slash glitch in which I would have, for example, the aperture resetting in between
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periods where I turned the camera off, it would kind of reset to an F8 value that seemed to be
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the go-to. And so, you know, not a big deal, but it did mean that before I took the shot
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I would have to often change the aperture if needed to the desired aperture
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And so just a little bit of a quirk that I've not seen with other art lenses
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I would say that this is something that Sigma probably will still address in a future firmware update either to the lens or to the MC11
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But anyway, it's not a major thing, but just something to note that there was a glitch that did remain
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The other thing that I did notice is that like some other wide lenses that I used via the MC11 including say the Sigma Zone 14mm F1 art that while focus confidence is really really excellent with a lot of the other
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art series lenses, with the wide angle lenses, I did get a bit of pulsing, particularly if you
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have a wider zone selected. It's almost like there's too much information there to select from
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and maybe the processing power of MC11 doesn't immediately grab the correct result
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And so I did find that if I narrowed down the target area, maybe to a flex AF point
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that I got more confident, quicker lock-on results instead of some pulsing
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The good news is that whether it pulsed or not, I got very, very accurate results when it locked focus
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And so the actual combination in terms of image quality is fantastic
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I mean, great resolution. And this lens has awesome, awesome image quality, great resolution results
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And so it's a very nice pairing there on the A7R Mark 3. And so I certainly would utilize that combination, despite those very minor glitches
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if I were to own the lens and use it between two systems
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Now, going back to the build quality for a second, I would encourage you to take a look at this episode here
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There's a couple of things that I do want to highlight and maybe elaborate on from that
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Number one, this lens has a very, very familiar design. If you're familiar with, for example, the 12 to 24 millimeter
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F4 art lens, it looks very, very similar. It's extremely similar to that lens
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and it weighs the exact same amount, in fact. And so, you know, the tradeoff there, of course
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is you're getting more glass, a max aperture of F2.8 versus F4
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With the other lens, of course, you are getting an extra 2 millimeters of focal length
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and those 2 millimeters are going into extremely wide territory. I'll circle back in a moment and highlight why Sigma made both of these lenses
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that have such a serious overlap of focal length and who I think both of them are for
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But first, in looking at the build, when, actually, the 12 to 24 F4 was, I believe, the first of Sigma's wide-angle lenses that I saw with weather ceiling
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I noted in that review, however, that the weather ceiling was still not fully evolved at that point
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And so it mostly was about some ceiling at the gasket. I could tell even in physically handling the lens that the ceiling was more robust with the 14 to 24 art
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that I'm reviewing here. And after I did some further research, in fact, I did discover that it has received the
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grade of weather sealing equivalent to Sigma's sport series. In other words, it is the serious, hardcore weather ceiling, which includes not only sealing
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at the mount, but also sealing at various rings throughout there, you know, in the area
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where the front element merges into the housing at, you know, all of the key junctures
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switches, or in this case switch, actually, the weather ceiling there. And so this is a lens that really has the kind of robust ceiling
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or ceiling that a lens like this should have because this really is much like the Nikon or nickel or 14 to 24 millimeter F2 has been it really probably going to be a lens like this should have because this really is much like the the Nikon or nickel or 14 to 24 millimeter f2 has been it really probably going to be a lens used by a lot of serious
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landscape photographers that travel and do trips like that it's probably going to see a lot of weather
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and so as a result it is it's obviously that's an essential thing for that so kudos to sigma for really
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bumping up the weather ceiling on this lens the other thing that was a standout to me when
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when it came to this particular lens as a Canon shooter is that this is the first of any third party lens
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that I've ever seen to get full support in the camera body
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for camera, or excuse me, Canon's lens profile correcting. And so as a byproduct of that
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if you look under the lens aberration correction, it has information loaded on the lens
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and supported in the camera for everything, say, Canon's digital lens optimizer
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And in fact, using Canon's digital lens optimizer is really only suggested if you're
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planning on being very deliberate in your shooting because after you take the shot
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there's quite a pause while it kind of does all of that electronic trickery and then it
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writes the JPEG file to the card. And so it's quite a slow process
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Beyond that, however, there is support for the peripheral illumination correction, the
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distortion correction, the chromatic aberration correction, and the diffraction correction. And I noted in the first image quality segment that there's really a great job that's
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done on the JPEGs. And in particular, I really particularly notice it with the peripheral
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illumination, which delivers an extremely even lighting across the whole frame. And I was very
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impressed by that result. So that was another kind of standout thing when it came to the build
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In operation, the lens works well. The zoom ring is nice. The focus ring works as it should
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and so good results there. Another thing that I felt helped to differentiate this lens
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from some previous Sigma Art Series lenses is that I felt like the
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coma performance, while maybe not the absolute top of the heap, was much better than what I've seen
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from any other Sigma lens to this point. Enough so that I would have no hesitation
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using this for Astro. I do still think that probably the best option
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is the Rokinon-Samian Premium Series 14 millimeter F2.4 lens. It's a really exceptional astro lens, but this lens is really not, you know
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super far behind. And so byproduct in all of this is that this is a really, really strong lens from
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Sigma. It has very, very few flaws, very low chromatic aberration. One thing that it does
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have is that, you know, Sigma touts that it has near zero barrel distortion at infinity
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What that really means is that in the places that it matters, you know, namely if you're trying to shoot interiors, that it has more barrel distortion than what I would like
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And at infinity is a place where distortion is rarely all that obvious anyway
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That's typically more at landscape focal links. And frankly it not nearly as much of a factor where it mostly a factor for my typical use is when I shooting architecture or interiors which is typically at closer focus distances than infinity And so as a byproduct of that here where I think the major differentiator is there are a few
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people, and by the way, I think it's probably a very few people that actually need the wider
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focal range of the 12 to 24 millimeter F4 lens. But some of those people that might need that are interior shooters, you know, maybe real
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estate shooters or if like myself you've done maybe some projects where you're shooting the
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interiors of hotels or public buildings and you know you have some commercial work to do that
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something that I've done a little bit of having a lens that has very low distortion and a very wide
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focal length that will allow you to get as much of a room in in one frame as possible is certainly
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you know a desirable thing and so I think that if you are a interior photographer and you're
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shooting venues like that, you may prefer the 12 to 24 F4, particularly since a lot of times with that
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kind of work, you're going to be shooting off of a tripod anyway to make sure you get everything
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kind of as clean as possible. But if you're just looking more for a versatile, wide angle
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focal length, I think that the 14 to 24 F2.8 is the way to go. It's going to be a better
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lens for landscape photographers. It's going to be a better lens for, as I've noted, those that are
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just doing landscape shooting and, you know, those that are not even just shooting weddings
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maybe you're doing photojournalism or things like that. This is a really desirable lens because
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it's just incredibly sharp. Autofocus in my experience has worked well. This is not a focal length
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and a maximum aperture that puts a huge strain on a, you know, a focus system anyway. But I have
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no hesitation, no concerns that did a great job for me during my focus period. And so all in all
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this is a lens that I'm personally, I think Sigma has done a fantastic job on. And so kudos to them
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And it's a lens that I think will make a lot of Nikon shooters say, hey, you know, here's a more
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modern version of the 14 to 24 millimeter focal length. And I think then in a number of ways it will
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better the NICOR lens and of course it bested in price by a very good margin
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At 1299 I think this is an excellent value and you know of course if you're a cannon shooter
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there really isn't anything that's an exact comparison to this lens and so as a result it does
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get at least for the moment to occupy a somewhat unique niche
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And so all in all if you are interested in this lens I would recommend getting a pre-order
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in, you know, sooner rather than later, because I think that this is going to be a lens that has a
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fair amount of demand for it. Fortunately for you, you can find some pre-order links right down in the
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description below. You can also find linkage to my full written review that's supported by a lot
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of images. And of course, there's also a linkage to the image gallery where I've posted a number
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of photos there. And of course, you can find linkage in the description to follow me on social media
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to become a patron, or to sign up for my newsletter. And if you haven't already, please click
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that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a great day
