Sigma 135mm F1.4 DG | ART Review: World's First F1.4 at 135mm!

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[Music]
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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to review a special lens and that is the new Sigma 135mm f1.4 DG art lens. Now, a
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lot of you have been clamoring for two lenses. One of those being the a new
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mirrorless version of the 135 millimeter f1.8 from Sigma and others that really loved the 105 millimeter f1.4
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which was what they called kind of their bokeh monster uh back in the DSL DSLR
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era. Neither one of those lenses have had a direct replacement and that continues to be true. Though in many
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ways the lens I'm reviewing today is kind of the spiritual successor of both. We have both a new 135mm lens designed
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specifically for mirrorless. Sony E-mount and then also Lmount. But we also have a portrait lens that is longer
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than 85 millimeters. It has a maximum aperture of f1.4. So here in the form of the 135mm f1.4,
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this is a world's first to combine that focal length with this maximum aperture. And it means that as you can see right
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now, I'm shooting at f1.4 for on the lens that you're able to get more subject isolation and separation from
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the background than ever before because this has the equivalent of the pupil entrance diameter, the effective
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diameter uh the has the equivalent of a 200 millimeter f2 lens making this truly
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special if your priority is subject isolation. Now obviously that's going to come at a cost as is always the case.
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This is a lens that is bigger and heavier and has kind of a different form factor than any of the 135mm lenses that
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you might have been familiar with in the past. Fortunately, the price, however, is pretty moderate, $1,549.
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Though, while that positions it between the Sony GM lens at $2,200, you've also
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got on the other end with a lot of pressure the Vtrox Lab 135mm f1.8.
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Another exceptional lens in its own right. And so this really boils down to whether or not that extreme jump from
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f1.8 to f1.4 is enough to be a difference maker for you. And we'll try to explore whether or
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not that is actually the case in today's review. So we're going to dive in and take a look right after a word from our
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and use code dustin20 for 20% off. Now in full disclosure, this lens was sent
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to me by Sigma for evaluation. It is a loaner that will be going back to Sigma
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at the end of this video and they have had no input in the review and they will not see it before you do. As always,
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this is a completely ind independent review and my findings are my own. Now, while I filmed all of the outdoor
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segments with the 135mm f1.4 because I'm going to demonstrate and talk about it in here, I am filming this on the new
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35mm f1.2 Mark II from Sigma. Now, obviously, there is a significant
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difference when you go from f1.8 as has been the most recent conventional. It
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used to be f2, moved to f1.8, and now sigum is going to try to make the new standard f1.4. 4. That really makes a
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significant difference because the effective diameter goes from about 75 mm at f1.8 to a whopping 96 mm at f1.4. As
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I mentioned in the intro, that's the same as a 200 mm f2. So that is a lot of
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subject separation and isolation. But it also means obviously when you press the
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boundaries on the maximum aperture at a particular focal length that comes with the downside of making a lens that is
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going to be bigger and heavier. Now ironically if I put the Viltrox and the
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100 the Sigma side by side and stand them upright and turn the tripod collar away you would be tempted to think that
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one is not particularly bigger than the other because the Viltrox is actually a little bit longer. It's 145.7
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millimeters versus 137.5 millimeters or 5.4 inches in length uh
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for the Sigma lens. But if you turn them the other direction with the front glass
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foot facing forward, that's where you get a radical difference. The diameter is 111.7
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mm or 4.4 in for the Sigma versus 93 mm
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for the Viltrox lens. It also means that while most 135 millimeter lenses have an
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82mm front filter thread, we jump up to a 105 mm here on the Sigma. Now, that's
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a little bit more of a challenge uh here because very likely you don't have a complete feature filter set at 105
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millimeters, which is exceptionally large. And that means in this case, unlike, you know, let's say a lot of the
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lenses that have had 105 millimeters, you know, be like 150 to 600 millimeter type lens, you may not need filters for
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a lens like that, it's got a relatively slow maximum aperture. In this case, with an F1.4 aperture, you're very
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likely going to want to use at least an ND filter to try to do flash sync speeds. If you do strobing at all, well,
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that means probably buying some new filters. And so another thing to factor in there comparatively and unfortunately
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it's not going to be filters that you get to share across a lot of other lenses because this is a relatively
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uncommon filter size. It also comes with some additional weight. This lens weighs in at 1,420
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g. That's 50.4 oz. So that makes it about 500 g heavier than the Sony 135mm
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f1.8GM for example. And so it is a significantly heavy lens. And unlike any
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of the other 35 135 millimeter lenses, it necessitates in Sigma's mind coming
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with a tripod collar here. Now, unlike some of their other recent lenses, this trip collar is actually removable. It's
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quite simple to remove and so you can take that off if you don't want to use it. However, uh when it comes to
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balance, it you may find that it's easier to use it with a tripod collar and foot on the tripod itself. The prof
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profile of this lens is really different from most of the 135mm lenses. It looks
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less kind of long and slender, but instead more squat and that it looks really probably more like most like the
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105mm f1.4 from the DSLR DSLR era. Now, we have a as is now common for Sigma, we
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have a thorough feature set here. And so that includes uh thorough control of aperture, the ability to have clicks at
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one/ird stop to tints. There is a switch here on the left side of the lens barrel
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low down which will allow you to go to a decllicked position and I was able to get smooth and effective aperture racks
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uh when I uh was in the dclicked position. On the right side of the barrel there is an iris lock and so you
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can either lock yourself into or out of the manual aperture ring uh depending on
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your taste whether or not you want to always prefer uh control from within camera or prefer with the aperture ring.
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You can use that lock to keep you in or out of that. Also, in terms of other controls, we have an AFMF switch here on
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the side. And we have dual function buttons, custom buttons, and the value of those buttons are assigned from
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within the camera. They both will share the same function. They're just designed so you can have one readily available
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whether you're shooting in landscape or in portrait orientation. And so, the one
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thing that is missing here, interestingly, is the fact that there is no focus limiter. It shows maybe some
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confidence in the autofocus speeds of that. However, most of the competing lenses do have a focus limiter. So, I
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was kind of interested to see that omitted. The aperture iris itself is a higher than typical 13 blades. It helps
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to keep the aperture shape very circular as you stop down. We'll go through that aperture rack once again. You can see
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that it keeps a nicely circular shape as you go by from that. And so, um, it does
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an effective job on that, which is great. the manual focus ring. It's not small, but it comes across as being
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relatively small compared to some other 135 millimeter lenses. And that is because this particular lens has to
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flare out so much to that huge front uh entrance pupil there element. And so
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that means that it limits the space that this can occupy. It does have a nice degree of damping. It moves very
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smoothly. I think that the manual focus is excellent on here. No concerns about that. There is no optical stabilizer in
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this lens, but there isn't in any of the competition either. So, I'm not going to make any kind of stink over that. We do
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have uh Sigma's dust and moisture resistance built into the lens. So, that's gasket at the lens mount, seals
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throughout, and then a coating on the front element to prevent fingerprints and dust, make it easier to clean. And
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so, all of that is good. The lens hood is massive. I mean, you can drop it right over the outside of most other
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lenses because it is so big. Um, and so it has that huge diameter to it. It does
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have rubberized front element. It It's kind of the shape that typically you would expect it to have. The tension
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knob here on the bottom. This is a bayonet style lens hood, however, and it does click into place with a lock here
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on the side. As is has unfortunately been the case with all of the 135mm
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lenses on Sony E-mount that I've tested. There is no room for teleconverters here. That's true on Sony, but also I
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think it's going to be the case on uh Elmount as well. I see no mention in any of Sigma's literature of any kind of
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teleconverter compatibility. That is unfortunate. Minimum focus distance is
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not fully competitive with some of the other lenses. And so if I look across the Sony GM, the Viltrox, and the
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Samiang 135 F1.8 eight lenses, I find that all of them can focus in and around
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70 cm and have a maximum magnification of about 0.1 or 0.25 times. In this
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case, the minimum focus distance is considerably higher. It is only 1.1 m or 110 cm versus that 70 or that's 3.61 ft
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and the maximum magnification as a result is much lower. It's only 0.144
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times. So, here's how that compares looking compared to the Viltrox. So, not
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nearly the same degree of magnification. As mentioned, the price is $1,549.
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And so, that fits in between the uh the Sony GM at $2,200 and then the Lab
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Series lens at $900. And so, obviously, it's hits the middle ground, which is
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kind of a the sweet spot for Sigma lenses. Though I think in this case having such an excellent lens available
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for 900 bucks is going to put some pressure. You have to really want that f1.4 aperture, but there will be some of
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you that do obviously. So at the end of the day, it's pretty much we would expect from a modern Sigma lens. It's
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nicely built, featurerich, handles well. It's also big and heavy in this instance. So let's talk autofocus. This
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is the first of Sigma's lenses to receive dual HLA uh focus motors. that
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stands for high-speed linear actuator and that is Sigma's latest and best
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autofocus system. The fact that they have employed two here and they didn't in to my knowledge in the 300 to 600
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millimeter f4 or in the 200 millimeter f2 is actually pretty interesting. But
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obviously with such big glass elements there was a need for a little bit of additional thrust with this lens. And
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what I found is that auto speed autofocus speed is very very good. In my
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uh formal test you can see that I go from a close to a distant subject pretty close to instantly. It's there's very
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very little lag. And if you go back to the previous generation, a lens with such a large maximum aperture to be
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focusing this quick is really really impressive. What I also found is that even at f1.4, I was had no problem in
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tracking birds in flight. That tends to be a little bit less complicated, particularly when they're moving in a
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lateral kind of way. But shooting at f1.4 and nailing basically every shot is very impressive. I had a little bit less
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impressive results when I had Ferrari run towards me. Ferrari being one of my
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cats. And you can see that it really is kind of hit and miss. And what I found is that sometimes there would be a a
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swing where focus would be dropping back to back focus, try to move forward and just kind of overcompensate a little bit
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there. And so in that kind of situation, I wouldn't call this a sports lens, particularly if it's kind of, you know,
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moving linearly towards you. That tends to be a little bit more of a problem. But for all the other types of shooting
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that I did, I had no problem. So let's take a look at the lens in its primary application and that is for portrait
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work. So unfortunately the tight turnaround with my time with the lens and also my very tight review schedule
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at the moment means that I wasn't able despite my best efforts to get an actual portrait session. So unfortunately you
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and I are stuck together. And that's unfortunate for a couple of reasons. Number one, you have to look at me even more. But number two, it means that I
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have to work from in front of the camera remotely as opposed to being behind the camera when it comes to the actual focus
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for portrait work. Now, the good news is is that these days it's pretty foolproof
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when it comes to shooting portraits on modern cameras. The eye tracking is so good. And on top of that, of course,
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focus systems have gotten better and both in the cameras and then also in the lenses themselves. And so from what I
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saw shooting in other scenarios, I have great confidence that this is going to perform very, very well when it comes to
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portrait work. And you'll be able to see the results here in the review as well. But I did want to give you this
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disclaimer that I had to shoot remotely for the portrait type shots. There was not a human operator behind the camera,
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just one in front of the camera. And unfortunately, that same bozo was also the model. Now, that caveat aside, you
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can see by looking at the various shots that this is a lens that has no problem focusing under that situation and
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probably more importantly producing really beautiful results with great subject isolation and a beautifully
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blurred out soft background. And I think that that is kind of the main thing that people are looking for this lens. It's
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got plenty of thrust to keep up with portrait type subjects, wedding subjects, things like that. And it's
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going to deliver accurately focused results. That's what we're all looking for here. So, when it comes to shooting
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video, we'll test the AF performance in a variety of ways, but I wanted to start by just doing a little bit of
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approaching the camera and then we'll do our test where I'll back up a little bit here for the sake of framing. I'm going to step out of the frame
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and back into the frame. See how it picked me back up, out,
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in. Now, let's go a little bit more fast and back in.
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Hopefully, it's done fine in these tests. Now, as far as other aspects for video, you can see here in my focus
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pools that there's relatively good confidence going back and forth, maybe a little bit of a micro pulse as it
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settles there at the end. You will notice that when you're making major focus changes, as we just saw in the
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stepping in and out of frame, and then also in this test, that if it's a major focus change, focus breathing is fairly
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obvious. uh in smaller focus changes, it's going to be far less obvious. So, your mileage may vary depending on what
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kind of footage that you are shooting. My hand test went reasonably well with good transitions from my hand to my face
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and vice versa. So, no major problem with that. And as we've seen from these outdoor settings, shooting like this,
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there's no problem with stability. If I'm walking towards the camera, if I'm moving around, it's staying locked on
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even at f1.4. So at the end of the day, I would say that autofocus is doing a good job for video work. So how about
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the image quality? We've got an optical design of 17 elements and 13 groups. That includes four LD elements, two
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aspherical lenses as a part of the design. The MTF chart um shows that
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actually the mid-frame is a bit sharper than what the center is. There's a little bit of a rise in the middle and then a little bit more of a fade towards
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the corners, though not to any kind of significant degree. Sigma benchmark the Sony GM lens here showing that there's a
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little bit of give and take between the two lenses but the Sigma is very competitive at f1.4
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with the the GM lens at f1.8 both of them being at their maximum apertures.
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Now the Viltrox lens is really the sharpest lens 135mm lens available on on
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this Sony platform that I'm testing on. And what I found is that head-to-head I
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it's not by any significant margin, but the Viltrox is still a little bit sharper with the uh than the Sigma lens.
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Even if I stop the Sigma down to f1.8 as well. And so if you're looking for kind of like the to have the absolute highest
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performance, it's not that. But the fact that it's competitive while going, you know, twothirds of a stop wider is
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impressive obviously. And so that makes it significantly different uh com compared to any lens that's come before.
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Now when I move on to other metrics, as is kind of the case with say their 85mm f1.4, there's a little bit more pin
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cushion distortion than what the competing lenses have. Most 135mm lenses are pretty neutral when it comes to
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distortion. This has some pretty obvious pin cushion distortion. It's not terrible and it's linear, so I could
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correct it with a minus 6. No major issue there. The vignette, however, is very low. At plus 27, it is better than
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the competing lenses, and that's where the payoff for that massive front entrance pupil is paying off there. I
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also found that there are very low amounts of fringing any of the tested situations, be it longitudinal style
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before and after the plane of focus. That's very relevant here because there's going to be a lot of things that are out of the plane of focus here. And
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then less maybe relevant is lateral style chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame. Those are well
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controlled as well. So, no problem with that. When I did my test charts on a 61 megapixel Sony A7R Mark II, and I'm
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going to show the crops at 200% magnification in this um this overview here, you'll find that sharpness is
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really good and very consistent all across the frame. It's good in the center, even better, as the MTF suggests
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in the mid-frame. And the corners are really not far behind. They are very, very good. I also found that this lens
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had good centering. the copy that I tested with the four corners delivering similar results. Stopping down a little
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bit, I would say that by f2.8, the corners are pin sharp and sharpness is
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basically perfect all across the frame. I did feel that just kind of instinctually, and so I went to test for
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it, that there isn't quite as much bite to images as what the Viltrox produces. And that proved to be the case in this
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comparison. For example, if I look in close at those textures, there's just a little bit more micro contrast, a little
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bit more information and contrast in the textures um on this than what there is. But it's it's exceptionally good
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already. And frankly, without the two lenses side by side, you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference. Obviously, as you stop down with this
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lens, it's not because you need additional sharpness. It's to produce increasingly deep depth of field. And
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you will need that because it at 135 millimeter it's pretty surprising how
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shallow depth of field it is still is at say f4 for example. So there will be situations where you can stop it down
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though obviously you buy this lens to shoot it probably often at f1.4. Uh when
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I got to testing defraction at the other end of the spectrum it does soften a little bit by f11 and a bit more by the
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minimum aperture of f6 f16. It's not bad. However, and you know, in a critical situation, you probably could
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get by with shooting at that. Obviously, you're going to have an extremely shallow depth of field. And so, here I
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just wanted to give you a look at, and it's not a very uh enticing pose here, but just wanted to give you a look at
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the difference between f1.4, then f1.8, then f2, then f2.8 at a distance from
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the camera of about let's say about 3 m away. And so in that situation, 10 feet
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roughly, even at that distance, you're going to find that it's a only a little
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is in focus at a time. And so you may need to stop down the lens if you're shooting at closer distances just to
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increase depth of field enough to say that to where both eyes are in focus, for example, because they won't be at
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f1.4. That's for certain. What I also found is that not only is the bokeh quality good, and of course at closer
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distances, you just obliterate backgrounds. are just turn into this soft amount of cream. But at more medium
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distances, I think that where and that's really where I think 135 millimeter lenses are special. At that medium
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distance, anywhere between say 20 and 40 ft. Uh, and you go throughout that range
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and you're going to to find that there's this beautiful three-dimensional cutout effect where you just have this the
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subject just kind of pops from the background. And that really is what makes 135 millimeter lenses generally
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special and in this case really uniquely special because of that f1.4 aperture.
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Now surprisingly for having such a huge front element I actually found that the lens showed pretty good flare resistance
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which hasn't always been the case for you know lenses with big apertures like this in the past. And so as I shot in
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various situations I found that you know flare resistance was really quite good. So no complaints there. I just so
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happened to be shooting astro, testing a different lens one night and it's like, well, why not throw it on there and take a look and I know that there might be a
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few of you, it's niche, but there are a few of you that might be interested in a lens like this for deep field astro and
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I would say that this is a great option for that. It's not only got that f1.4 for aperture and low vignette in the
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corners. It's also got very low instance of coma. And so it's it's actually that again that's a niche application, but I
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do think that it is an interesting application for this lens because it's just another area where it performs very
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well. So my overall uh overview of the optics here is that it's Sigma's done a
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bang-on job of, you know, increasing what's possible at this focal length while still delivering very very high
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performance in basically every metric. And so great job on that front Sigma. So what's my conclusion? The biggest
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challenge I would say for the Sigma 135mm f1.4 is the fact that 135
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millimeter lenses are beautifully dramatic. And as you've been able to see from the footage in this video, they can
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produce really, really gorgeous images and video footage. The challenge, however, is that 135 mm is not a
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particular flexible focal length. It's probably too long for most people to use in any kind of studio setting. In many
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indoor settings, it's a little bit too long. And so that means that this is a lens like other 135 millimeter lenses.
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Really for people who are going to shoot out in big spaces like this that will go out and do environmental portraiture,
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maybe like 135 millimeter for shooting in certain kind of indoor spaces to give
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that unique cutout look. And it does provide a really unique look. And of course at a with an f1.4 for aperture.
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It's able to do a little bit more of that than any 135 millimeter lens before, but it's still going to be a
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niche lens for only a certain amount of people. And in this case, that means not only accepting the limitations of the
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135mm focal length, but also accepting the limitations of a lens that is bigger and heavier than any of the competitors.
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At the end of the day, I think that there is a market for this lens. The same kind of people that love the 105mm
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f1.4 four may love this lens also, but of course 135 mm is not 105 mm. That
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extra 30 mm means that it's just a slightly less flexible instrument and
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that is going to come with a bit of downsides. In some ways, I think Sigma might have been better off at doing a
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new 105mm f1.4, but then again, Sigma loves to be the world's first at things
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and they've done it once again. And not only have they done it, they have done it successfully. This is a lens that
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autofocuses well. It is a lens that produces beautiful image quality. It has very few optical limitations at 135mm
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f1.4 despite the fact that no one has ever done it before. And so kudos to
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Sigma on that front. And I just hope that there are enough of you out there for whom this is your dream lens. And
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that is going to make it worthwhile for Sigma. Now, if you want more information, you can check out my full text review that is linked in the
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description down below on the newly redesigned dustinbott.net. Check it out. You'll enjoy it there. Also, there are
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buying links at $1,549. This isn't cheap, but for what you are getting, it's a pretty exceptional lens
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that is going to undercut the first party competition by close to $700. And so, that is a meaningful difference.
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Now, if you want the deep dive into the optical performance, stay tuned with me right now and we're going to jump into
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that together. I will also follow this up a few weeks down the road with a direct head-to-head with the Viltrox Lab
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135 millimeter f1.8. So stay tuned for that. Let's jump into the optical deep dive. Okay, let's start by taking a look
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at vignette and distortion. You can see that there is some obvious pin cushion distortion here that squeeze in in the
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middle. In some cases, it's not a bad thing. Some pin cushion distortion could be a bit flattering for models because
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it makes them a little bit slimmer. This is maybe a little bit more than what you would like. Takes a minus6 to correct
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it, but you can see it does correct in a nice linear uh fashion. Vignette is very low. So, I only needed about a stop
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around plus 27 to correct for that in the corners. So, no big deal there at all. Now, when it comes to fringing,
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there is a tiny bit of fringing before the plane of focus. Not really much after the plane of focus. No big deal
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there. Likewise, lateral style chromatic aberrations in the corner. Everything is near perfect here. When it comes to
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sharpness and contrast, here's the test chart that we're going to use. And uh we're going to take a look at 200%
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levels of magnification. And this is on a 61 megapixel Sony sensor. You can see in the middle of the frame, nice and
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sharp, good contrast, no problems there. Mid-frame looks even better. We can see this mo pattern. It's because there's
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even better contrast here. Uh both of the planes are lining up really nicely. We go down here. We can see that the
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upper left corner and the lower right corner look almost identical on this, which is fantastic. And as we pan
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towards the extreme corner, we can see the detail really is holding up right out until the very edge. And so this is
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a really consistently good performance. And this is not just a paper tiger either. I can go out into real world and
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I can get nice crisp looking results at f1.4. And obviously, even though I'm just isolating this in the midst of a
27:27
lot of other of these uh heads of dried grass coming up, you can see just how much subject isolation you're able to
27:33
get very quickly to turning this into a piece of art from a very simple subject. Likewise here on the wing shooting at
27:40
f1.4, we can see, you know, good, not only good focus, but also good detail
27:45
there. And with a slower moving seagull here, you can see just how great the detail is. And all of this is at f1.4.
27:53
in that transition zone towards defocus. There's a tiny little bit of jitteriness there, but you can see very quickly it
27:59
just becomes this really creamy, completely defocused background. Now, if we close the aperture down to f1.8, it
28:05
allows us to do one head-to-head here with the Viltrox. I'm going to save most of these actual headto-heads for the
28:10
sake of the length of this video, but also I'm going to do a second complete head-to-head versus uh video episode,
28:17
and we'll do reserve most of the comparison shots for that. So here in the center of the frame, you can see
28:23
both of them at f1.8. The results are largely similar with maybe just a little
28:28
bit of additional contrast for the Viltrox lens. In the mid-frame, you can see that both of them are extremely
28:36
good. I would have a hard time calling a winner from one of these. Down in the corner, I would say that they again
28:43
remain very close, though maybe the Sigma remains crisper right out to the very corner, just a little bit better.
28:49
Up in this corner, we can see similarly, I would say that the Sigma has a tiny edge in the corners. So, a little bit of
28:56
an edge for Viltrox, maybe in the center of the frame and then for uh for Sigma in the corners, but you know, as we can
29:02
see, both of them are delivering really excellent performance, very sharp. This zone, you know, Viltrox is a little bit
29:08
better. So, it's it's give and take across the frame. From f2 to f2.8, you can see that contrast increases even
29:15
more at f2.8. Now it's just exceptionally sharp in the center of the frame. It was already exceptionally sharp in the mid-frame and it's even
29:22
better now. And we can see down into the corners. The corners look super crisp now. I mean, that's the level of corner
29:29
performance that I rarely see. So, fantastic results there. And as I've noted previously, centering is good with
29:36
consistent results across the frame. Beyond that, you're not going to see a lot of additional sharpness. You're going to treat it more for depth of
29:42
field. By f11, defraction will start to soften the image a bit and you can see a bit more by the minimum aperture of
29:48
f-16. Though it's still not terrible. It's but it's nowhere near the kind of levels we saw at the wider apertures.
29:56
Now, we've seen already that the Sigma doesn't have quite the level of magnification that some of the competing
30:01
lenses do, but fortunately, it is quite good up close, even at f1.4. Contrast
30:07
isn't off the off the charts here, but detail is really quite good. And we can see that the plane of focus is fairly
30:14
flat, delivering a consistent result out towards the edges of the frame. Now, we can see a couple of things from this
30:21
next series of shots. This is at f1.4. And so, at f1.4, you can see the
30:26
bokecast circles are huge, massive, big, and round. And we can see here that there's minimal amounts of fringing,
30:33
almost nothing in the transition from focus to defocus. There we can see also if we look at the specular highlights,
30:40
not too bad in terms of outlining there. Pretty clean overall. And then as we stop down at f2, the geometry is looking
30:47
really good except for this tiny the extreme corner. And then by f2.8 even in the corners were resolved to a very
30:54
circular shape. And so a really great result there as well. So at its best images like this we can see that it
31:01
delivers super high contrast detailed results even at f1.4 four. And then a
31:06
beautifully soft defocused background here at a little bit closer focus distance, but also closer to the
31:13
background. Detail and contrast is looking very good. And we can see that even though the background is close
31:19
here, there's not really too many hard edges, it's handled quite well. This shot looks beautiful, I think, and it
31:25
shows the beautiful foreground bokeh you can achieve as well to really isolate a subject. And you can see even at this
31:32
distance, the depth of field is so tiny that this is in focus, but this is already going out of focus. And that
31:38
kind of subject isolation is really special. This was maybe my least favorite as far as the busyiness. Now, I
31:45
loved the amount of sharpness and contrast there. This particular background, it just feels like it's a
31:51
little bit busy, but it's it's a difficult scene as well. But I would say this is about as bad as what I can show
31:57
you from the lens. Generally, however, when it came to portrait work, it's a great lens. And so, uh, you'll see that
32:04
the amount of detail and contrast for subject, all of that is great. But then, of course, the ability to have this
32:11
defocus background is really special. Colors look good. All of that here, this shot, and this one, I have given it just
32:18
a little bit of a process look to kind of suit the scene. But you can see shooting through these various layers
32:23
that focus is really good. Everything that's defocused in the foreground looks good. And then if we zoom into our
32:29
subject here, you can see great detail and contrast. Everything looks great there. Uh here again, and this is
32:36
probably my favorite thing about 135 mm lenses generally and particularly this
32:41
one with such amazing subject isolation is to be able to shoot from quite a distance. In this case, I was a good
32:49
pretty close to somewhere between 13 to 15 m away. So 40 to 45 ft away from the
32:55
camera. And yet, look at how crisp the cutout is of the subject from the background. Detail all looks good, but
33:02
then that background still looks so completely blurred out. Moving just a little bit closer here, about 3 or 4
33:08
meters closer to the camera. You can see big round specular highlights even though I'm still about 25 ft or so away
33:16
from the camera. Great detail and contrast. All of that looks really good. Then on a few other practical concerns,
33:23
flare resistance is surprisingly strong. I mean, there's a tiny bit of ghosting here, but if I didn't point it out, you
33:28
might not see it. And then with the lens stopped down here to f11, you can see
33:33
just that one little glo ghosting blob. Not bad at all. In this case, we've got really, really bright sun reflecting off
33:40
of the uh the river here. And you can see uh contrast is holding up. No problems with that. In this shot, we can
33:48
see the sun is right up here, right out of frame. There's nothing that's coming down into the frame to mar the image.
33:54
contrast is holding up well. Really good results. This shot gave there's a little bit of a glow that entered in with the
34:01
sun and you know maybe you can see a little bit of a halo effect but I I find that to be very artistic and certainly
34:06
nothing destructive to the image itself. Detail and contrast holding up really good. So flare resistance I think is
34:12
impressive for such a big maximum aperture. Then finally taking a look at this astro work. And so we can see now
34:19
obviously you need to use really short relatively short shutter speeds with a longer focal length like this. Otherwise
34:25
you'll start to see stretching of the stars really really quickly. But we can see here that in the mid-frame there's
34:30
no like chromatic aberrations that ruin the look of star points. And we can see if we pan off towards the edges. You
34:37
know there's a tiny bit of stretching here but as far as coma it's really really low. This is a great result,
34:43
particularly considering that low vignette means that you're not going to end up with like noisy corners as you
34:48
try to brighten them up because of the vignette occurring. So, being able to shoot at f1.4 at such a long focal
34:54
length for this could be a really interesting application. Overall, optically, this is a really solid lens.
35:01
So, as always, thanks for watching today. I hope that this deep dive into the optical performance has helped you
35:06
to be more informed as to whether or not this is the lens you've been looking for. As always, thanks for watching.
35:11
Have a great day and let the light in.

Sigma 135mm F1.4 DG | ART Review: World's First F1.4 at 135mm!

Dustin Abbott

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Sigma 135mm F1.4 DG | ART Review: World's First F1.4 at 135mm!

Dustin Abbott