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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott. Back in 2013, Sigma released their 18-35mm f1.8 zoom for APS-C
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cameras. That lens became a kind of a cult classic, particularly amongst those that shot
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video and I've seen it adapted to a wide variety of different platforms when mirrorless
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cameras begin to come out, for the simple reason that it was a zoom lens with a constant
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maximum aperture of f1.8. Now, as soon as Sigma started to reveal the details about
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their newest lens to me, I was immediately reminded of that lens because in many ways
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the lens I'm reviewing today, which is the Sigma 28-45mm f1.8 DG DN Art Series lens
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is the world's first f1.8 full-frame zoom lens. It's not just a shoddy attempt at this
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this is a remarkable performer as you're going to see in today's review. Now, obviously it's
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not small and it's not cheap at $1350 USD, but this is a lot of lens for the money. So
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is it worth considering? Well, we're going to explore that together right after a word
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So some of the standout features of this lens include the fact that it is the world's first
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f1.8 full frame zoom. Sigma touts the fact that it has prime like optical performance
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which is certainly the case. In fact, in their own internal literature, they actually favorably
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compare this lens to their 24 and 50 millimeter f1.4 Art Series Prime lenses. So that tells
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you optically it is very good. It has a full range of features, including some video specific
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features as we'll explore in just a moment. There's multiple custom buttons here. There
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is an aperture ring with iris de-click and iris lock. There is also, and this is an internally
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zooming lens. And because of that and the fact that it has thorough weather sealing
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this is a very quality lens when it comes to the weather sealing because of the fact
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that it's internally focusing, internally zooming, and it has all of the gaskets and
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seals inside. Now, as noted, this is a large lens. The diameter is 87.8 millimeters or
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3.5 inches, which by the way, is the exact same as the recent 24, 70 millimeter f2.8
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Art Series zoom. But this lens is longer than that lens. It's 153.4 millimeters or a full
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six inches in length, 82 millimeter filter threads up front. Now, part of the reason
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why this lens is so long is the fact that it is an internally zooming lens. Those tend
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to be longer because all of the, what would be happening outside of the lens in terms
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of external focus or zooming happens inside the lens barrel itself. So you do pay a price
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of having a larger lens, but the trade-off for that has always been the fact that there
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are some real advantages. When you have an internally zooming lens, for one thing, the
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zoom action as it is here tends to be a smoother, better damped. There is nothing that is coming
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in and out. And so that means that there is less opportunities for particularly dust to
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get sucked into the interior of the lens. It means that if you're using the lens on
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a gimbal or some kind of system where you need to balance it, it means it doesn't matter
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where you are at in the zoom range. The balance is going to be the same with the lens. There's
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just a lot of positives there. And certainly while I don't always love carrying internally
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zooming lenses out to the field, once I have them there, I love them because the zoom action
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is really quick and light. It gives you a lot of control. And the fact that you're dealing
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with a constant length does make it a little bit easier to use in a variety of situations
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As noted, this lens does have an aperture ring, which has become standard for Sigma's
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Art Series or Sport zoom lenses. And so this is the fully featured aperture here. There's
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one third stop clicks or detents along the way. You can switch it into automatic mode
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if you don't want to use the clicks. But then there's also an option down here on the side
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where you can de-click that aperture and then you can smoothly rack through the various
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aperture options there. There's also what's called an iris lock. So when you have that
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engaged, if you're engaging it while you're in the actual aperture ring portion, it means
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that you're going to be able to go throughout that aperture range and in particular do aperture
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racking without worrying about going past the F16 point and into the automatic mode
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which obviously would ruin your shot. But there's also the option there that if you're
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a person that says, you know what, I don't like an aperture ring. I prefer to control
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that from within the camera. No problem. Put it into the automatic mode here, A here on
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the dial, and then engage that aperture lock. And then you don't have to worry about inadvertently
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bumping it into the manual aperture range. And so it really does give you a great deal
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of control there. We have an AF-MF switch here on the side, and then we have two custom
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function buttons. Now these are redundant and so they're located to where you have one
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on the left side for your typical horizontal shooting. But then if you're shooting in vertical
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position, there's one at the top that allows you to access it there. Inside we have 11
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aperture blades, rounded blades. And so it does give you a more circular aperture shape
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with that higher blade count than the older standard of nine blades. And it gives you
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an interesting 22 pointed sun star when you stop it down. Minimum focus distance here
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is constant throughout the zoom range. It is 30 centimeters and you can achieve a maximum
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magnification at the 45 millimeter end of 0.25 times. That's a one to four magnification
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ratio, which is high enough to be very useful. Combine that with a fast maximum aperture
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on this zoom and you're able to get nicely blurred out backgrounds. And of course, as
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we're going to see in the moment, the bokeh quality is one of the really great aspects
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here. Sigma always includes a lens hood and then also a lens case with their better zoom
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lenses. And so both of those things obviously are welcome. So as you can see, this is a
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professional grade zoom. It has all the features you would expect on a top tier G master lens
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or equivalent. So yeah, it is big and heavy. It does weigh in at 950 grams, right under
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a kilogram, making it quite heavy. But at the same time, I would point out that Canon's
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28 to 70 millimeter F2 zoom, which is another unique zoom like this. It weighs in at 1450
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grams, so an extra 500 grams. And of course, the Sigma is $1350. That Canon lens is 3000
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So obviously a value on that front as well. All told, this is a pretty nice package if
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you're willing to set aside the size and the weight. So let's talk autofocus here. The
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new standard for Sigma's better lenses has been their HLA focus motor. HLA stands for
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high speed linear actuator. This is a high thrust, high powered focus motor that is basically
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silent in all the applications I've seen thus far. Actually, when I put the lens up next
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to my ear and I focused, I actually had to pull the camera away and check to make sure
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that was actually focusing. That's how quiet it actually was. As you can see here from
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my indoor and outdoor focus tests, focus changes are basically instantaneous. There is no lag
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no hesitation. You're going to get very, very fast autofocus out of this. This 45 millimeters
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is not super long, obviously for shooting something like sports, but I did take it along
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to a softball game and as you would expect, I had zero issues in focusing in that kind
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of setting. I also saw really excellent focus consistency in all of the various focus environments
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that I did from some events, shooting out in nature, all the different things that I
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typically do. I had very, very great autofocus accuracy. No issue with that. Now, I do always
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have to point out that when you're talking about third party lenses on Sony, which I'm
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reviewing here right now, this lens comes to Sony E-mount and then also to L-mount
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Here's hoping that it comes to Z-mount in the future because what I'm about to say is
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not true on Nikon, but Sony imposes a 15 frame per second limitation for all third party
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non-Sony lenses. Part of the time I've used this lens on my Alpha 1, which has a maximum
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burst rate of 30 frames per second, but I'm capped off there at 15 frames per second using
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this lens. Now, to be fair, 15 frames per second is still a lot, so maybe not a major
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limitation for you, but obviously something you always have to consider if sports or action
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photography is part of what you would like to do with a lens like this
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Now on the video side of things, I found what I would call a little bit of a mixed bag
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Now when it comes to the focus pull side of things, you can see that focus pulls are very
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fast, very confident, no pulsing, no settling. There is some focus breathing there, but it's
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not overly pronounced. I also found that when I was testing for focus to see if it
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was parfocal, the lens is perfectly parfocal, but it's close enough that I think you can
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probably pull it off and you can see here zooming in and out that it's not perfectly
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in focus. I had focused at 28mm, so at 45mm it wasn't perfectly in focus, but not bad
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really. Where I found a little bit of the limitations is when I did my hand test, for example, the lens tended to stay a little bit stickier
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than what I would like. Obviously I'm trying to get it to go from one thing to another
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and sometimes even when the camera was fully blocked with my hand, it didn't shift focus
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to my hand. I didn't love that, but more importantly I think for practical situations is that I
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found that focus was kind of held onto in some situations during focus transitions and
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just real world video clips. And then when it actually did make the focus, it had a lot
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of thrust, so it focused really fast, but that feels a little bit abrupt. Now I could
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slow down focus a bit in camera, but it doesn't completely replace a kind of a detuning of
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that focus speed for a little bit more of a cinematic feel. And I do think that maybe
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Sigma should have gone for that. I've been actually filming a number of my
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recent YouTube episodes with this lens, just kind of testing how it works in a static environment
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like that, and I got flawless results. I never had any kind of moving around or hunting at
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all, but it locked onto my eye, stayed perfectly focused on that. So high marks in that regard
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Overall I would say this is a great autofocus performance. I just think that there's almost
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too much speed and thrust when it comes to the video side of things
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So finally, I'm going to give you an optical breakdown here. There's an optical deep dive
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that will come at the end of the video if you would prefer that, but I'll give you kind
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of an overview here. We have 18 elements in 15 groups. Five of those are SLD elements
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Three of them are aspherical elements. Sigma, as I noted actually in their internal literature
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compares this lens favorably to their 24 and 50 millimeter F1.4 primes. Now technically
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this lens covers neither of those focal lengths, but what it does do is it's able to actually
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outperform them when you aggregate across the frame. It's able to outperform both of
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those lenses, which is pretty impressive since those are recent, high end designs that came
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from Sigma themselves. This is a lens that is extremely, extremely sharp and beyond that
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it has a little bit of that special sauce that I only occasionally see from Sigma and
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more on that in just a moment. Now when it comes to the technical side of things, I saw
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basically no longitudinal chromatic aberration. I also saw no lateral chromatic aberrations
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near the edge of the frame, so fringing is very, very well controlled with this lens
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I also found that this is a much better lens when it comes to the distortion side of things
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than the recent 24 to 70 millimeter F2.8 Mark II zoom lens that I tested from Sigma on the
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wide end, which of course isn't quite as wide, but on the wide end there is a little bit
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of barrel distortion. I needed a plus eight to correct, but it was very linear and I could
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very naturally correct it even without using the correction profile. There was a plus 45
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of vignette in the corners, which is really not bad for an F1.8 zoom on the wide end
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That's about a stop and a half or so, so not bad at all. On the telephoto end, the distortion
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pattern inverts to a pin cushion style distortion, just a hair more. There's a minus nine to
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correct, but very linear, no real issue there. A little bit more vignette, I needed a plus
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60 to correct on the telephoto end, but again, that's about two stops, really not all that
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bad. When it comes to the sharpness and the contrast, this lens is amazingly good throughout
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the zoom range in the middle and the mid frame. It's as sharp as probably you could ever want
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at F1.8 and from there on. The corners, as the MTF suggests, are not as sharp, and so
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I found that the corners sharpened up at 28 millimeters. They sharpened up by about
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F4, giving you really great detail all across the frame, even on a 61 megapixel camera that
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I tested it on. There is some diffraction that starts to set in by F11 and a little
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bit more by F16, but this lens is so sharp that I actually found that it still looked
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pretty good, even with the effects of diffraction going even on my a7R5 and it's 61 megapixels
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35 millimeters is the next mark place on the zoom range and the lens is probably at
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its peak at 35 millimeters, just exquisitely sharp all across the frame, even at F1.8
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35 millimeters is just fantastic. And moving on to 40 millimeters, there's a mild regression
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from 35 millimeters, but the lens is still really, really sharp. And then at 45 millimeters
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it ticks up a little bit and I would say that it is second only to the 35 millimeter position
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in sharpness and contrast at 45 millimeters. And there it is actually really consistent
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all across the frame. Even the corners are sharp, even at F1.8. Beyond sharpness, however
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I found that this lens had really beautiful bokeh and just overall rendering from the
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lens. There was something about the images that I just really liked. And there's been
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about three or four occasions where out of the dozens of Sigma lenses that I've reviewed
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I'm surprised by just how extra special it is. It's like all of a sudden I found a Zeiss
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lens that's got Sigma branding on it. And this is one of those lenses, the bokeh is
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just really, really nice. And it's in a variety of situations, whether it's just ordinary
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shots like this one of just a gift on a table, people shots, you know, nature shots, it just
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really looks fantastic. I also found that the flare resistance was good from the lens
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It handled also the, you know, when there's the sun right out of the frame, just a really
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strong performance there. And I would say that this is definitely one of Sigma's optical
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standouts. And that was true whether I was shooting stills or I was shooting video. In
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conclusion, this is, I believe, one of Sigma's best zooms ever at this point. And if you're
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looking at it technically from a comparison to the 18 to 35 millimeter lens, this is a
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much better lens than what that lens was in terms of the feature set, the autofocus
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system, and then the optical performance. That lens was well-loved for a lot of reasons
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but this is a better lens, period. It is feature-rich, it is well-made, it has great autofocus, it
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has incredible optics. It is a world's first lens that is actually really, really well
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executed. Now, I mean, obviously it's not a huge zoom range. It is big and heavy, but
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this is a lens that I think if you can put up with the size and the weight and can afford
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the price tag of $1,350 US, it's a lens that I think you will probably really, really love
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using. Now, if you want more information, you can check out my text review that is linked
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in the description down below. There's an image gallery and buying links there as well
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Or stay tuned with me right now as we dive more deeply into the optical performance
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So let's start by taking a look at vignette and distortion. Here at 28mm, you can see
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that there is barrel distortion, but it is mild and also it is linear. Here's a manual
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correction using a plus 8 and you can see that everything is really nice and straight
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so no issues there. Plus 45 to correct for the vignette. So again, for a full-frame zoom
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with an f1.8 aperture, that's not bad at all. As you move throughout the zoom range
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you start to invert to a pin cushion style distortion. You can see once again here, it
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is a little bit more pronounced than the barrel distortion, but just very mildly so. I needed
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a minus 9 to correct for it. And again, you can see very linear, very clean correction
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There's a plus 60 to correct for the vignette in the corner. So a little bit heavier, but
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about two stops. Again, not bad at all. Longitudinal chromatic aberrations are very well controlled
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You can see how neutral everything is before and after the plane of focus. That carries
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out into real world situations where you can see that even in this high contrast area
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there is just no fringing to see as we move towards defocus. Also in this shot with a
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lot of specular highlights, you can see if we zoom into where, you know, that's the highest
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contrast areas where the sun's coming around the blades of grass and you can see there's
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just no fringing to see there. So there is a little bit of the lemon shape, you know
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to the specular highlights towards the edge of the frame, but you stop down a bit and that will go away. So no big issue there. Likewise, lateral chromatic aberrations are
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very well controlled. If you look at all of the transition areas from black to white here
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along the edge, you can just see it is very, very clean, no fringing to see there. So this
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tells us that we're probably in for a really strong optical performance when it comes to
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sharpness and contrast. Now again, this is 200% magnification that I'll show you the
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results at and it's testing on a 61 megapixel Sony A7R V. So you can see in the center of
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the frame here at 200% that contrast and detail look fantastic. Likewise, in the mid frame
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looks really excellent. As we pan on down, contrast and detail looks good. It looks good
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also on both sides of the frame. Looks excellent here. Looks excellent over here as well. So
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we can see good centering thus far. We can see that it's a little bit softer as you get
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towards the edge. Not bad. I mean, still quite good. This side, you can see the same thing
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as we get towards that extreme corner. It is softening towards the very edge, but again
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it's a consistent level. It doesn't look bad and we get a consistent performance across
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the four corners. Now, if we do the very mild stop down to f2, we can see that there is
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ever so slightly more contrast there in the center of the frame. In the mid frame, it
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does look higher contrast there and I would say that's the biggest gain. Down in the corner
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I don't really see much happening there and so the impact is greater in the mid frame
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really above all else. We can see that from f2 to f2.8, there's only a mild improvement
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in the corners, but a slightly more significant one at f4 and if I switch over here where
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we're not quite as deep down into the corner, you can see that it looks really excellent
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Pop up here and you can see it starting to look quite good. It's really only off in this
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upper last degree that there's any softness remaining, but overall we're looking really
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sharp across the frame here at f4. So that excellent sharpness continues through f11
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where there's a little bit of softening due to diffraction, but you can see that f11 still
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looks pretty fantastic. So I'm not too concerned about that. F16 is softer, but not so soft
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that it's unusable. So this lens is so sharp that even diffraction can't quite keep it
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down. Now, as I noted earlier, there's actually a pretty marked improvement at 35 millimeters
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even though the bar was already pretty high. You can see that 35 millimeters is really
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considerably sharper and we can see that you can see that at different points in the
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frame. This basically looks like the stop down version of 28 millimeters, even at f1.8
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I really found it stood out in this zone here. You can just see if you compare the two, how
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much finer the detail and the contrast is in this zone. Looks really excellent. We can
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take a look over here. Just see how all of those little dots of the, the pigment that
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go into the making up the bill, how much they just pop off the page compared to the
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28 millimeter metric. And so it's a really, really strong improvement. At 35 millimeters
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you stop down to f2.8 and you're getting into pretty epic levels of sharpness and contrast
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It looks really, really amazing. Now at 40 millimeters, there's a very, very mild regression
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when it comes to the sharpness. As you can see, the center looks, still looks really fantastic
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but contrast, if you're looking carefully, isn't quite as high. And you can see here that there's
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just more pop and just a little bit softening of the look of the textures at 40 millimeters
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versus 35 millimeters. We look over here. You can see how that all those individual dots are
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clearly defined. They're just a little less. So if you look at the 40 millimeter edge of things
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though, at the same time, 40 millimeters still looks pretty great. You stopped down a bit at 40
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millimeters here at f2.8, and we see we're right back to that just fantastic pop of contrast that
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we saw previously. Now at 45 millimeters, the end of the range, you can see there is a little bit of
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an improvement there in the center of the frame. In the mid frame, it is a very slight improvement
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not as noticeable, but here in the corners, we can see that it is more noticeable there
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that the corners definitely look better at 45 millimeters than what they do at 40 millimeters
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Here in this mid frame zone, you can just see there's a more contrast, more detail
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not quite as high as what we saw at 35 millimeters, but I think second only to that. So what I love
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at 45 millimeters is just a gorgeous blend of sharpness and then softness. And so we can see
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where the plane of focus is. It's beautifully sharp, but then it just falls off to a really
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creamy, really nice bokeh. Even here at f1.8, when it comes to shooting landscapes, you can see it's
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just brilliantly sharp there in the center of the frame and really right off to the edge. It's a
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little bit softer, but it looks still really, really great. And as I mentioned earlier, I just
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feel like this lens has the special sauce where it's able to take ordinary photos like this. This
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is just of a tote bag in a restaurant. It was a gender reveal party and this was the gift that my
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wife, gift kind of basket my wife put together. So I was just taking it to document the moment
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but I looked at the photo and it's like, man, that is a great looking picture. And that really is a
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tribute to this lens, you know, ordinary shots of, you know, just these family moments. You can see
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that the detail and the overall look of the images is just really great. Here's another one from my
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daughter's birthday and just taking a picture of the homemade ice cream cake. You can just see how
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the image just shines. And that's what I think is really special from this lens. It's also obviously
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beautiful for any kind of landscape type work. You know, it's able to produce really fantastic detail
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but then it's got great color and contrast, just really strong. Now up close at our minimum focus
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distance, you can see a decent amount of magnification 0.25 times. That's a one to four
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magnification ratio. And so I think it's a little bit softer up close, but you can see it's the
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plane of focus isn't perfectly flat, but where you're really in focus, the detail looks really
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crisp. And so if you are focusing in real world shots, I mean, uh, there's, it's not macro levels
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of contrast there, though. It looks good. But if you look at the image as a whole, really
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really nice. Likewise here, you can just see that the fall off is really beautiful from this lens
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Here's another one here. I like shooting along chain link fences because it's a repeating
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pattern with hard edges that, you know, kind of separates the men's from the men, from the boys
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so to speak. And in this case, you can see that while there's just a little bit of, um, you might
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call it jitteriness there. It is very, very mild. And actually the shot overall looks really nice
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This one, I think just looks beautiful. I mean, I really feel like this image is able to create
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a surprisingly creamy defocus area. That is amazing for a zoom and actually great
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Even for a 45 millimeter F 1.8 lens, another shot here, this at 40 millimeters. So even if this is
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the place where the lens is the softest at 40 millimeters, you can see that that is relative
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It looks amazingly sharp and the bokeh is really beautiful. Colors are great
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Even here with the bokeh, if we get a lot in the transition zone, as we do in this shop
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because I'm a little further away from the subject, the background's not as, so the ratio
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from, you know, the camera to the subject to the background is not great, but you can see it's
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really not bad at all. Even with all of these specular repeating highlights, it looks just fine
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And of course, great sharpness on our plane of focus. They're excellent all around. Finally
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when it comes to flare resistance here, bright sun in the frame coming through these leaves
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you can see there's very little in terms of ghosting or flare artifacts in this shot
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where the sun is just right out of the frame. You can see that it's held up just fine. Contrast
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and detail all look excellent. This is the lens that really doesn't have much when it comes to
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optical flaws. So hopefully this deeper dive into the optical performance has helped you to get a
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better sense of the overall feel and quality of this lens and can help you to make a more informed
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buying decision. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in