Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN (Canon RF) Review

Dustin Abbott

October 21st, 2024

The Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DC DN is the second of two Sigma zooms that we’ve seen rereleased on Canon’s RF mount, and they are very welcome. Earlier this year as I was doing my review of the Canon EOS R50 compact APS-C mirrorless camera I couldn’t help lament the state of the lens options for Canon’s RF-S mount. At the time of the review (two years since the release of the EOS R7, the first of Canon’s RF mount APS-C cameras), this was the sum total of the available lenses.

Yuck. I couldn’t imagine a less exciting lineup of lenses. The fastest maximum aperture in the bunch was F3.5, and that lens is F4 and smaller before you make it to 30mm. Canon clearly knew they had a problem, for between the time that I filmed my review and the time I released it, they announced that certain Sigma (and later Tamron) lenses would become available for RF-S (the APS-C version of Canon RF). Now, to be clear, this is only for APS-C lenses, but for now it seems like Canon is going to let third parties solve their APS-C lens problem. This is great news for consumers, however, because it means that Sigma’s lineup of DC DN lenses will be coming to Canon RF. The first release was the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8, a lens that I actually own and gave a positive RF mount review here. A few months later they have followed up with the second zoom release, this time the wide angle Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DC DN. Is this also a lens worth considering for your Canon R-mount APS-C camera? You can find out my thoughts in the video review below…or read on.

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Thanks to Gentec (Sigma’s Canadian Distributor), for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Canon EOS R5, which I reviewed here.

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This becomes the first “fast” wide angle zoom for Canon RF-S (APS-C), giving a constant aperture of F2.8 over its zoom range. Now, to be fair, that’s not a big zoom range, but then again, Canon’s own RF-S 10-18mm not only has that same small zoom range but also has a variable aperture of F4.5-6.3! That means that the Sigma is over two stops faster at 18mm (F6.3 is 2 1/3rds stop slower than F2.8). And, while that zoom range is not large, it is enough to give you a variety of options for framing a scene, from this at 10mm:

…to this at 18mm:

This review of the 10-18mm RF is not a whole new review, but rather an update on how the 18-50mm RF translates to Canon RF. I’ve already tested the image quality at both a 26MP (Sony) and 40MP (Fuji) in 2023, so that covers the full gambit (and more) of what’s available on RF bodies. There are no optical surprises here, but I’m always curious to see how the lens changes in terms of its dimensions, but, most importantly, how well it autofocuses on a platform that it wasn’t originally designed for.

The 18-50mm RF is one of six lenses released by Sigma for Canon RF, and those six lenses represent all of the APS-C mirrorless lenses they’ve released over the past three years. You can see my review of the original releases on Sony here.

Sigma’s DC DN lenses have all fallen under the umbrella of their Contemporary lineup, and while Sigma has proven willing to experiment with new features and design elements within the ART and Sport lineups, the Contemporary lenses have all stuck to a fairly rigid design formula. That continues to be the case here, so this little zoom mostly looks and handles pretty similarly to other lenses in the lineup.

There’s nothing new here on the RF mount, but the lens is more of a standout on Canon due to having essentially zero quality competition. The 10-18mm RF is a genuine treat as an addition here. Why? Here’s a few reasons:

Has at least a weather sealing gasket
Better build quality than RF-S lenses
Includes a lens hood
Constant F2.8 aperture
Good up close performance
Great autofocus on RF

In essence, the poor competition makes this lens a star, though frankly I still found it one of the more compelling options on these other platforms as well.

The crop factor on Canon is different than Sony or Fuji, so the zoom range works a little different. Fuji/Sony have a crop factor of 1.5x, which means that the lens goes from a full frame equivalent of 15-27mm. Canon’s APS-C crop is 1.6x, and so that changes the effective focal range to 16-29mm. You’ll miss the extra bit of width at 10mm but get a little more reach. In this case, I think that most of us would prefer the extra millimeter of wide angle coverage, but that’s just not going to happen.

Marked positions in the zoom range are 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18mm, and here’s what the same scene looks like at each of these marked positions.

Clearly this is a little lens that can make beautiful images, but is it worth twice as much as Canon’s own 10-18mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM lens?

Sigma 10-18mm RF-Mount Build and Handling

There’s really only one significant change to the 18-50mm on Canon, and that is that the lens mount portion of the lens has to be flared out to accommodate the much larger diameter of the RF mount.

Unlike the 18-50mm, however, this isn’t the widest part of the lens, so the exterior measurements don’t change despite this change. It is 72.2mm in diameter and 62mm in length (2.8 x 2.4″). That’s actually 2mm shorter than the Sony version, and this obvious reflects a slightly different flange difference between the two mounts. That extra bit of girth near the lens mount also adds a tiny bit of weight, with the RF version weighing 260g (9.17 oz). Other than these minor physical changes to the RF version, the build is otherwise identical to either the E-mount of X-mount versions.

This weighs about 110g more than the Canon, though the Canon is a very plasticky lens that also has a very slow aperture. The build quality between these two lenses can’t really be compared.

The 10-18mm RF is a mixture of metals and “thermal composites” (high grade engineered plastics) in construction, and the construction feels quality in the hand. It is built around a metal mount, unlike the Canon lens, which has a plastic mount.

The overall build quality just feels much higher than any of the Canon RF-S lenses that I’ve tested so far. This feels like a quality lens.

Up front we have the ability to use traditional filters in a very standard 67mm size.

There is a weather sealing gasket at the lens mount (thicker here on the RF mount than on previous versions), but, like other Contemporary lenses, there are no internal seal points.

The only thing on the barrel is the focus and zoom rings. The closest to the lens mount is is the focus ring, which is fairly narrow (10mm), ribbed, and moves smoothly. Like other lenses designed for mirrorless cameras, this is a focus-by-wire system in which input from the focus ring is routed through the focus motor. It is actually the focus motor that moves the elements, making manual focus more of an emulation than a direct movement of the elements. Some lenses pull this off better than others, and the Sigma 10-18mm DN is one of them. There is good weight/damping on the focus ring, and no visible steps during focus changes. I didn’t notice any focus lag either; the action on the ring and the movement of focus seemed directly linked. I will note that the lens will automatically alert the body to magnify the image when you are manually focusing, which is a big help in visually confirming focus. The focus weight is a little lighter than what I like, but not bad.

There is about 10mm between the focus ring and the beginning of the flared section that leads to the zoom ring. I appreciate some space there, as that was one of my complaints about the Sony 10-20mm; there was almost no room between the two rings on that lens, and it was easy to inadvertently move the wrong ring. There’s a very definite difference between two rings and position on the Sigma, though there is a different problem. At the fully retracted position (there is a slight external zoom action), the lens hood fits so tightly against the zoom ring that there isn’t a lot of space for your thumb to fit on the narrow ring. If you happen to have longer fingernails, you might actually find zooming a bit of a challenge.

The zoom action itself is very smooth. This is a “reverse zoom” in terms of the retraction; the inner barrel is fully retracted at 18mm and extends the furthest at 10mm, though the barrel extension is only about 10mm.

Sigma is experimenting with a new lens hood design for this lens. Rather than bayoneting into place, it is actually just a push on design. You still need to line up the markings on the hood and the barrel, but then you just push the lens hood into place rather than rotate it. A spring/lever mechanism holds the hood locked into place. You can release it by just doing a slight rotation to the left.

The primary “pro” of this design is it allows them to the make the lens hood a little thinner as there doesn’t need to be room in the hood design for the bayonet action. Sigma touts the fact that while the filter size of the 10-18mm is 12mm larger than the 18-50mm (67 vs 55mm), the diameter of the lens hood is only 3.8mm larger.

If you want to reverse the hood for storage, you now line up an arrow on the lens hood with the previous mark on the lens barrel and push it forward. Removing it simply requires a similar slight rotation to the left. As per usual, Sigma’s lens hoods are just a little bit nicer than the competition, including some soft-touch materials, texture variations, and lens information imprinted on them.

The 10-80mm DN has two different minimum focusing distances for the wide and telephoto ends of the zoom range. At 10mm you can focus as closely as 11.6cm (4.6″) and can get as high as a 0.25x magnification…though you have to be pretty much right on top of your subject to get it.

At 18mm that disance extends to 19.1cm (4.6″) and the magnification drops to just 0.14x…though shots at 18mm are a whole lot easier to get!

Get close enough and you can produce some creative shots like this.

The aperture iris is electromagnetic and controlled from within the camera (no aperture ring). It has seven rounded aperture blades that do a fairly good job of retaining a circular shape even with the lens stopped down, though frankly you won’t have a lot of opportunity to shoot shallow depth of field shots with a wide angle lens like this.

Stopping down will produce a decent (but not exceptional) 14 bladed sunstar effect.

There is no optical stabilization on the lens, unfortunately, which is the one advantage I can point to for the Canon RF-S 10-18mm. I happened to test on a camera that had in body image stabilization, so I didn’t miss it, but many of Canon’s smaller APS-C cameras don’t have IBIS.

On other platforms the Sigma is a rather plain lens in terms of features and build. Because of so little competition on Canon, however, it feels next level in terms of build and handling. It’s a nicely made little lens that follows a familiar, well-executed Sigma formula.

Autofocus and Video

Sigma continues to utilize a stepping focus motor (STM) in these smaller lenses as the elements are smaller and lighter than lenses and don’t require the higher torque that some of their large aperture full frame or sports oriented lenses. Autofocus is something that Canon does very, very well, and it is clear to me that Sigma has received access to the focus protocols and algorithms, as the 10-18mm RF definitely handles like a first party lens.

The STM motor provides fast, quiet, and accurate autofocus. Eye detection works fine, and I was able to grab some action photos without difficulty.

AF had no problem with a group photo of some friends and I on the golf course, though, to be fair, it isn’t difficult to have a LOT in focus with a wide angle lens like this.

Autofocus speed was excellent, near instantaneous both indoors and outdoors, and utterly reliable and accurate. My focus tests showed extremely rapid transitions from close to distant subjects. Focus breathing is extremely low, so this helps the transitions feel very smooth and rapid.

This is also a huge factor in video recording, as focus pulls are not only quick and confident, but the extremely low focus breathing helps them to feel very seamless and cinematic. No steps, no pulses, but just clean, smooth transitions that are nicely cinematic.

My “hand test” (where I block the view of my face with my hand and then move the hand to allow focus to pop back to the eye) also went well. Focus transitioned confidently from my hand to my test and vice versa.

The lens is not parfocal, however, and I did notice that there were moments of defocus before the lens refocused while zooming and do video recording. I also noticed a bit of warping as I began to move the from the wide end towards the telephoto end.

But overall this is a really solid autofocus system that delivers a fantastic performance on Canon.

Sigma 10-18mm RF Optical Performance

The Sigma 10-18mm RF sports a relatively complex optical formula for such a small lens. There are 13 elements in 10 groups, and that includes number of exotic elements like 4 aspherical elements (including a large GM aspherical concave lens as the front element), 3 FLD elements, and one SLD element. The MTF chart and comparison shows a significant improvement over the older Sigma 10-20mm F3.5 that the was equivalent lens for DSLRs. The MTF chart shows a very strong center and midframe at both ends of the zoom range with minimal falloff in the corners at 10mm. There’s a stronger falloff at 18mm in the corners.

In this section I will be reusing some of my results from the 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor. It is higher resolution than anything Canon currently makes (current resolution points are between 24 – 33MP. Fuji’s images are also harder to sharpen than Canon, so you will have no problem getting beautiful results on Canon bodies. You can expect sharpness results to look better on Canon. I don’t currently own a Canon RF APS-C camera, so I’m doing this test on my the APS-C mode of my EOS R5, which is only 17MP. That’s fine for showing real world images as I’ve done in this review, but not really for evaluating the limits of the performance.

It has no problem producing beautiful images.

For those that are interested, Canon is not going to allow you to even experiment with this lens for full frame. Only the 1.6x crop option is available; all other options are greyed out.

I will redo the vignette and distortion tests, however, as the vignette amount does change from one mount to another. Here’s a look at the before and after of manual corrections of both at 10mm:

I didn’t expect to see any real difference in distortion (it’s the same optical formula), but I’ve noticed a trend with lenses first developed for Sony that then move other mounts that the vignette tends to be heavier.

At 10mm there is a significant amount of barrel distortion. I settled on a +23 to correct it, though there is definitely some “mustache” shape to the distortion pattern where correcting the barrel distortion across the majority of the frame tends to create some pincushion distortion in the corners. The standard profile does a cleaner job of correcting the distortion. On Sony I needed a +53 to correct the vignette, but on Fuji and on Canon I had to max out the slider (+100). That’s close to two stops higher.

So how about the “telephoto” end of the zoom range?

The distortion flips to pincushion style at 18mm but it was very linear and easy to cleanly correct for (I used a -4 on Canon). Vignette was a little lighter but still required a +74 to correct (+36 more than on Sony). Sigma gets profile support on Canon in camera for everything but distortion for some reason. There is already a correction profile available for Lightroom/ACR that will also clean things up nicely for RAW files. So, not a flawless performance, but nothing critical here, either.

How about chromatic aberrations?

I saw very little longitudinal chromatic aberrations before and after the plane of focus. You can see very little fringing in all of the shiny metal and crystal bits on this decorative reindeer.

Lateral Chromatic Aberrations usually show up along the edges of the frame as fringing on either side of high contrast areas, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue here. Winter is the most obvious time to see issues with LaCA due to all the bare branches, but I don’t see any issues here even with corrections turned off.

That’s good news, as you are far more likely to see lateral CA on a wide angle zoom in real world images than you are to see longitudinal CA.

So how about resolution and contrast? All chart tests done with a the X-H2 (40MP) using a tripod and a two second delay. Here’s a look at my test chart:

And here are the crops (at roughly 200% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and extreme corner shot at 10mm and at F2.8:

In the center of the frame we can see that the Sigma 10-18X has no problem. It still looks fantastic. Mid-frame is a little murkier, though the corner look relatively good. Stop down to F4 and the mid-frame and the corners take a nice leap forwards:

There’s a bit more on tap at F5.6, so that means that real world landscape images at 10mm will look very nice all across the frame.

Diffraction comes early on pixel dense cameras like the X-H2, so I actually found F8 to have very slightly less contrast compared with F5.6. After F8 things go downhill fast as diffraction robs away contrast and acuity. By F22 (minimum aperture) the image looks very soft.

$19-Diffraction$

I would recommend sticking with F5.8-F8 for landscape work on a high resolution camera to get your best results.

I slightly preferred the overall image quality at 12mm. The center is about the same as 10mm, but the results in the midframe and corners are clearly better.

Real world 12mm images look great, though the absolute edges aren’t pin sharp on 40MP.

14mm is very similar to 12mm in contrast, though I didn’t feel like it resolved some of the fine lines quite as well. Take a look at the number 2 and the area around it on the right as compared to the left (12mm).

There’s a clear improvement at F4, however, and landscape apertures look pretty great in real world images.

16mm is mostly similar to 14mm with perhaps a little better detail and contrast…particularly along the edges of the frame.

I did note a mild regression at 18mm in my Sony E-mount review, but I’m seeing it less here on Fuji. As I compare 16mm and 18mm across the frame I see some give and take. Some areas favor 16mm, others favor 18mm. The performance is mostly similar between the two focal lengths, making the overall sharpness and contrast very consistent across this zoom range.

I chose this crop because it illustrates the challenge well – there is very little to distinguish between the two focal lengths…even side by side and magnified to 200%!

As before, you can see some improved contrast a bit more detail by stopping the lens down. I found a more significant different at F5.6 than at F4. By F5.6 the improved contrast is very noticeable.

The two ends of the zoom range are the most important, as you’ll often be in situations where you want to go as wide as possible, while the 18mm end will give both the maximum reach but also will be the go to for up close work…like in the shot of these mushrooms.

You can see from the crop that while the amount of detail at F2.8 on a high resolution sensor isn’t pin-sharp, it is sharp enough to work in most situations.

You are also most likely to get visible bokeh at 18mm. This image allows us to look at both the sharpness of the subject and the bokeh beyond.

At a pixel level I can see that contrast doesn’t “wow” me, but at every other viewing magnification the image looks great. There’s no “bleeding” around the edges of the leaves due to low contrast, and the quality of the bokeh is pretty nice. Wide angle lenses are almost never going to give you amazing bokeh (that’s just not their strength), but I would be happy in getting images like the one above.

Here’s another bokeh shot of a field of frost covered sweet fern. You can see a bit of busyness in the transition zone as things move out of focus (some outlining), but beyond that the bokeh gets fairly soft and creamy.

Flare resistance was fairly good in most situations, with good contrast and only minor issues with ghosting. That performance was pretty similar to what I saw on Sony. Here’s a fresh shot that shows good flare resistance.

I did see some “flashing” with the sun right out of the frame when shooting video, though I did find it fairly artistic and not distracting. Again, that’s a subjective evaluation, and I would recommend watching the video review to draw more conclusions for yourself. Here’s a few screenshots to show the effect.

Overall my feelings were very positive about the flare resistance.

Canon has nice color science, and that means that it isn’t difficult to get images with beautiful color when using the 10-18mm RF on a Canon body.

Here’s another shot that shows nice, rich levels of color saturation.

The Sigma 10-18X is able to navigate the bump to 40MP on Fuji better than most zoom lenses I have tested on the sensor, and that means that Canon RF shooters at lower resolution levels (and easier sensors to sharpen) should be pretty satisfied with the amount of detail you can achieve with this lens.

That Fuji sensor is a monster for making lenses look softer at a pixel level, but that’s not on Sigma. Compared to other lenses, it actually holds up well. Here’s the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD (another lens that looked very good on Sony but softer on Fuji), and you can see that the Sigma definitely better.

All things considered, I feel like there is a lot of optical performance here for such a small package. You can see many more beautiful images by visiting the image gallery here.

Conclusion

I’ve been recommending the Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DC DN to a lot of people looking for a good APS-C wide angle zoom on multiple platforms, so I’m not surprised that it performs well on Canon RF mount. Autofocus was fantastic, image quality looks great, and the lens remains very impressive despite its small size. It’s a great match for smaller APS-C bodies in size, and the performance is strong enough to delight owners.

There really isn’t much in terms of competition, so it’s an easy lens to recommend on RF. It is actually the premium option, and while it is isn’t cheap at $659 USD, neither is it ridiculously expensive.

It’s great to see Canon’s RF mount starting to open to these third party offerings, and very quickly we will see the amount of lenses available for RF-S (APS-C) tripled due to Canon’s move to open the protocols. This gives Canon shooters a seriously good little option, and the Sigma 10-18mm 2.8 DN is what I would be buying if I were in the market right now.

Pros:

Fantastic job porting to Canon
Extremely compact and lightweight
Nicely made with a weather sealing gasket
Useful focal range with constant F2.8 aperture
Great autofocus performance
Good video AF performance
Almost non-existent focus breathing
Good sharpness across zoom range
Nice colors
Good flare resistance
Nicer build and handling than RF lenses

Cons:

No optical stabilizer
Fairly strong and complex barrel distortion at 10mm
Twice as expensive as Canon’s own offering

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Sigma 10-18mm RF @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sigma 18-50mm RF @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Purchase the Canon EOS R50 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Purchase a Canon EOS R7 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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Keywords: Sigma 10-18 DN Review, Sigma 10-18mm Review, Sigma 10-18mm F2.8, Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN, Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN Review, DC, DN, F2.8, Canon R50, R100, Canon R7, RF-Mount, 33MP, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Portrait, Photography, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA, Weather Sealing, #SIGMA, #SIGMA1018mmContemporary, #SIGMAContemporary, #sigmadcdn

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z-Mount Gallery

Dustin Abbott

October 14th, 2024

Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z Gallery

I have found it interesting to revisit certain lenses as mounts like Nikon’s Z-mount have started to open up to third party development. It’s interesting to see just how well these lenses translate onto a new platform. My very first review on my new Nikon Z8 body this spring was of another Viltrox full frame lens – the more premium Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 lens. I really love that lens, though at 110mm long and 550g, it isn’t particularly small. So what if you want to travel small and light instead? That’s where the second Viltrox wide angle option comes into the play, as the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z is very small (about 60mm long) and light (only 173g). It’s also inexpensive, with a price tag of just $175 USD. So does the Viltrox 20Z make sense for Nikon Z-mount cameras? Dive into either the text review or video review to find out, or just enjoy the photos below.

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Thanks to Viltrox for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.

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I have previously done a full review of the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 on Sony E-mount, which you can visit here. I’ve even done a travel video with that lens, which you can see here:

So rather than being a completely new video, this is more of an updated review that looks at the subtle changes to build, autofocus, and optical performance that we find on Nikon rather than Sony. While the Viltrox 20Z retains one difficult flaw here on Nikon, it also produces images that I tend to really like.

I took that image in the woods on a hike in the Blue Mountain region of Ontario, and I mention that because the Viltrox continues to excel as a great hiking/travel wide angle, as it is very light, has a great focal length, and delivers images that look great.

20mm is in the sweet spot for landscape type photography on full frame, with an angle of view of 91.6°. It allows you to get beautiful, dynamic images that really pop.

I would call the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z one of the best wide angle options currently available if you want to travel light. Enjoy the photos of the lens and those taken with it below.

Photos of the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z

Photos taken with the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 @ Viltrox | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Pergear

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Purchase the Nikon Z8 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, Viltrox 20mm, Viltrox 20mm F2.8, 20mm, F2.8, STM, AF, #viltrox, Nikon, Nikon Z8, Z, Z-mount, Z8, Review, mirrorless, Full Frame, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 45MP, #letthelightin, #DA, #NIKON, #Z8, #NIKONZ8

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z Review

Dustin Abbott

October 14th, 2024

Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z Review

I have found it interesting to revisit certain lenses as mounts like Nikon’s Z-mount have started to open up to third party development. It’s interesting to see just how well these lenses translate onto a new platform. My very first review on my new Nikon Z8 body this spring was of another Viltrox full frame lens – the more premium Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 lens. I really love that lens, though at 110mm long and 550g, it isn’t particularly small. So what if you want to travel small and light instead? That’s where the second Viltrox wide angle option comes into the play, as the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z is very small (about 60mm long) and light (only 173g). It’s also inexpensive, with a price tag of just $175 USD. So does the Viltrox 20Z make sense for Nikon Z-mount cameras? Dive into either the text or videos and find out!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thanks to Viltrox for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

I have previously done a full review of the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 on Sony E-mount, which you can visit here. I’ve even done a travel video with that lens, which you can see here:

So rather than being a completely new video, this is more of an updated review that looks at the subtle changes to build, autofocus, and optical performance that we find on Nikon rather than Sony. While the Viltrox 20Z retains one difficult flaw here on Nikon, it also produces images that I tend to really like.

I took that image in the woods on a hike in the Blue Mountain region of Ontario, and I mention that because the Viltrox continues to excel as a great hiking/travel wide angle, as it is very light, has a great focal length, and delivers images that look great.

20mm is in the sweet spot for landscape type photography on full frame, with an angle of view of 91.6°. It allows you to get beautiful, dynamic images that really pop.

I would call the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z one of the best wide angle options currently available if you want to travel light. Why? Let’s dive into the details together and discover the reasons.

Build and Handling

Many of the recent Viltrox lenses have a metal, more hefty feel to them, but the Viltrox AF 20mm embraces a more conventional, lightweight design in polycarbonates (engineered plastics). The very first Viltrox lens I reviewed was a manual focus 20mm F1.8 lens, and that lens weighed in at a whopping 775g, or 618g heavier than this new lens. The new AF 20mm is a completely different kind of lens, only 68mm in diameter (2.67″) and 60.8mm in length (2.3″). It weighs only 173g (6.1oz). That’s a little bigger in every dimension from the E-mount version, largely because the Z mount version has a much wider flange near the lens mount to accommodate the much larger diameter (55mm) of the Z-mount vs the E-mount (which is 46mm). This does change the overall diameter of the lens a bit since this is actually the widest point of the lens. That also makes the lens a bit heavier (+16g). You can see that the lens profile looks a bit different. in the comparison of the two here.

I mentioned the 16mm F1.8, and it dwarfs the 20mm F2.8 (and the Nikon 20mm F1.8 S is longer still!)

Up front we have a 52mm filter thread, which is a small but relatively common filter size. The front of the lens fascia has a variety of information imprinted on it and has a classic profile. You’ll want to stick to slim filters to avoid adding any additional vignette, which is already very heavy on the Nikon version.

There is a very slim lens hood included that bayonets into place but without as much precision and confidence as I would like. It doesn’t feel like it really “clicks” into place and locks in the right position. A lens pouch is also included. The pouch doesn’t add a lot of protection value, but, like the hood, at least it is included. There are many more expensive lenses that include neither a pouch or a hood.

There is no aperture ring or switches on the barrel. The only feature on the lens barrel is a wide manual focus ring. The manual focus ring has a nice amount of damping and moves smoothly. All typical manual focus aids on your Nikon camera will work with the Viltrox.

The Viltrox AF 20mm employs a lower blade count in the aperture iris with 7 blades. I like a higher blade count on many lenses, but sometimes a lower blade count on a wide angle lens works better to produce cleaner sunstars.

The Viltrox AF 20mm is somewhat stuck in between, however, as the lower blade count keeps the aperture from being completely circular when stopped down, but I also don’t find the 14 pointed sunstars to have incredible definition (points to the rays).

We have an important Viltrox standard in the form a USB-C port on the metal lens mount that allows you to connect the lens to a computer and update the firmware directly. Viltrox’s firmware update process is very simple and easy.

Viltrox lenses have traditionally had a fairly poor minimum focus distance and maximum magnification standard, but fortunately that is starting to change. The Viltrox AF 20Z has a minimum focus distance of 19cm and a respectable maximum magnification of 0.17x.

Before 2024 I had never seen a Viltrox with a magnification figure higher than 0.10x, so 0.17x sounds like a win. It’s enough to get close to a subject and blur out the background a bit.

While some Viltrox lenses have started to come with weather sealing, this inexpensive 20Z lens does not have it. It does have a HD Nano multilayer coating with water-resistant and antifouling coating on the front element.

Here on Nikon there really aren’t a lot of rivals for this lens, so it really fills a niche. Nikon’s own closest competitor is the Nikkor Z 20mm F1.8 S, but that lens costs 6x as much, is nearly twice as long, and weighs 325g more. It’s not really a competitor at all other than having the same focal length. That makes the Viltrox an inexpensive, stripped down lens that will serve a different kind of audience. The lens is light but doesn’t feel cheap or flimsy. There are no bells and whistles here, but that’s okay at this price point.

Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 STM Autofocus

The Viltrox AF 20mm STM utilizes a stepping focus motor (STM) that makes fast, quiet focus changes. Focus felt silent unless I put my ear up next to the barrel, where I could hear some very light whirring during major focus changes. When doing focus speed tests, I could feel inertia shifting in the lens, but there wasn’t anything to hear. I had no problem locking quickly on to subjects near or far.

Unlike when I compare lenses across, say, Sony and Fuji, where there is a huge difference in autofocus performance, there really isn’t much of a difference between autofocus on my Nikon Z8 and what I would see on my Sony a7RV or Alpha 1. There wasn’t really any area that felt all that different.

I did a focus speed tests both indoors and outdoors and was generally impressed with focus speed and the confidence of focus acquisitions. Focus speed was nice and quick; not quite instant, but with no obvious lag between near and distance subjects. I did notice a bit of micropulses, so I’m not sure focus lock is always quite as confident as on Sony, but neither did I notice any issues in real world shooting.

I got accurate focus when faces were in the frame, though, to be fair, depth of field is already so large at even 6 feet that it would be hard for them to not be in focus.

The same attributes apply to video AF. Autofocus continues to be silent during video focus pulls and pulls are quick, but not always as confident as I would like. I definitely saw some of those micropulses at times as focus didn’t seem to full lock and settle, even though it had reached the proper focus point. There is a fairly small amount of focus breathing that shouldn’t prove a problem for video shooters.

My hand test where I alternately block the view of my face with my hand and then remove it went reasonably well, though the lens is set up for more smooth and controlled focus changes, so the transitions from my hand to my face and vice versa weren’t always reactive.

On a more positive note, I shot a number of video clips with the 20Z and my Z8 of my wife’s new vehicle for a review of it, and focus was stable in those shots.

This will a solid lens for either gimbal work or vlogging. It’s very lightweight, allowing for a wider variety of gimbals to be used. I did a quick vlogging test and focus had no problem staying locked on my eye as I moved along or spun around. Here’s a screenshot from a vlogging sequence:

Other than a little less confidence in some of my tests, I felt that autofocus was roughly on par with what I saw on Sony. In real world situations, focus was flawless: quick, quiet, and accurate. You really can’t ask for much more than that from such an inexpensive lens.

Image Quality Breakdown

The Viltrox AF 20mm sports an optical formula with 10 elements in 8 groups. This includes 2 ED lenses, 1 HR element, and 2 aspherical elements. The MTF chart suggests good but not exceptional center sharpness with a steady decline towards the edges wide open and with a nice uptick in sharpness when stopped down.

I felt like real world results were stronger than what the MTF suggests, though with one significant caveat that I’ll detail in just a moment. Real world results looked sharp and detailed across most of the frame with a bit of a dip in the corners.

We’ll work through the chart results by first looking at distortion and vignette. The latter tends to be the one area that varies between Sony and Nikon versions. There’s not a lot of distortion here, though what does exist is fairly complex. You essentially can’t correct it one direction without creating some distortion in another. For example, if I treat the distortion as pincushion distortion (a -2 correction in Lightroom’s Distortion slider), I can get the outside rectangle as close to straight as possible, but this comes at the cost of creating a bit of bulge in the inner lines, however. Alternatively, I can work at getting the inner lines as straight as possible by correcting for barrel distortion (a +3 correction). This has the negative effect of really exaggerating the distortion in the corners, however.

Bottom line is that the actual correction profile will work best. Thankfully the quantity of distortion is quite low, and that means that you can mostly get away with leaving it uncorrected.

So far I’ve always seen more vignette on Z-mount versions of lenses also available in E-mount. On Sony, I used a +78 to correct the vignette, whereas on Nikon I had to max out the slider. There’s at least four stops of vignette in the far corners. You are probably more likely to see uncorrected vignette than you are distortion in real world images. This image has not received correction for either:

At this point, Viltrox lenses aren’t receiving correction in camera for JPEGs or video. I mostly shoot RAW images, so I don’t think about it much, but those of you who typically rely on in-camera corrections and shoot JPEG are going to be disappointed here. My hope that is Viltrox gets to a place where they get more support and their lenses get in-camera corrections.

The 20mm F2.8 showed relatively low amounts of longitudinal chromatic aberrations. I saw very minimal amounts of fringing here.

That’s not really unusual for a wide angle lens with only a moderately large maximum aperture, but it does happen. Not having an issue with that allows you to shoot in high contrast situations without worrying about fringing.

Lateral Chromatic Aberrations usually show up along the edges of the frame as fringing on either side of high contrast areas (like bare branches framed at the edge of images), but that doesn’t seem to be an issue here. You can see a nice, neutral transition from black to white on the corners of my test chart.

That’s an area of strength, as many inexpensive wide angle lenses really suffer from fringing in the corners.

So how about resolution and contrast? All chart tests done with a Nikon Z8 (45MP) using a tripod and a two second timer. Here’s a look at my test chart:

And here are the crops (at roughly 200% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and extreme corner at F2.8:

The center looks excellent, with high acuity (a word I use to describe resolving fine details) and strong contrast. The midframe looks very good as well, and while the corners are considerably softer than the center, they don’t look as bad relatively as what I saw on Sony.

Because I saw such poor performance in the corners on Sony, I proactively did a second test where I focused in the corner on my Nikon test, and there’s a pretty obvious improvement in the corners when focused there:

This points to something called “field curvature”, where the plane of focus isn’t flat or consistent. The biggest challenge at the distance of my test chart is that if you focus in the corners, the center isn’t as sharp. In the case of the Z-mount version, however, neither shift was as extreme.

That being said, I did notice that the corners in real world images were never as sharp as the center 2/3rds of the image, and that’s a bit more exaggerated when shooting at F2.8.

Here’s a real world landscape at F2.8, and you can definitely see that the edge is a fair bit softer than the center:

You can see from this comparison that the edges do improve considerably, but are never pin sharp. Here’s an F5.6 comparison:

Real world corner sharpness is one of my least favorite aspects of the lens, though the truth of the matter is that I’ve seen much worse results from much more expensive lenses. I did see good centering with roughly equal results in all four corners of the image.

Stopping down to F4 showed an uptick in contrast and (to a lesser extent) resolution. You can see from this comparison in the midframe that contrast has significantly improved.

There’s a little bit more on tap if we stop on down to F5.6:

Peak performance for consistency across the frame on my Z8 comes at F8, which looks really strong across the frame. I would choose F8 as an optimal landscape aperture.

After F8, diffraction will start to soften the image, though the effect isn’t as pronounced as on some lenses. The lens is softest at F16 (minimum aperture), but not much more so than F2.8.

This inexpensive lens makes for a nice landscape lens. It’s a great focal length, and the light weight makes it a breeze to bring along as a compliment to something longer. I found that I tended to really like the overall “look” of images from the lens, which is surprising in a lens so inexpensive.

Color is subjective to some degree, but I didn’t notice anything unusual or off about the color rendering. It seemed reasonably neutral to me – neither garish or flat. Greens seemed very nicely saturated in these images, but that was accurate to the scene.

Skin tones seemed accurate in shots with people in them:

Overall I found that colors seemed accurate and I was generally happy with the images that I got during my review period.

Flare resistance was fairly good but not exceptionally good. At all tested apertures contrast stayed good, but there is a flare/ghosting pattern that is faint at F2.8 but becomes more defined when the lens is stopped down. Overall I would say that results are fairly good for such an inexpensive lens.

Bottom line is that the portability of the Viltrox 20Z combined with the fact that you can make some pretty great looking images with it makes this lens a great pick to bring along when hiking or traveling.

I personally find the combination of light weight, low price, and this optical performance to be a pretty compelling package. This lens feels as compelling as many lenses that I’ve reviewed costing 2-3 times as much. You can see more beautiful images by visiting the image gallery here.

Conclusion

The Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z is a surprisingly interesting lens, and I feel like it fills a real void on Nikon. The fact that Z mount has only recently opened up to third party development means that, unlike Sony, there is a lot of gaps in the lineup. There just really isn’t much other options in terms of cheap, light wide angle lenses, and the Viltrox provides a surprisingly high performing little optic.

This is a great focal length for a lot of different applications, and I found it an easy lens to throw into the bag and bring along for a wider perspective. I suspect that it will stick around in my own Nikon kit for the times I want to travel with a longer focal length but want to augment my options with a wide angle lens.

Undoubtedly we will see more alternatives in the future as more and more third party lensmakers develop for Z-mount, but at the moment the Viltrox 20Z pretty much stands alone. In many ways, however, this will be a hard lens to top, because it really is quite excellent for the $175 price tag. Happy shooting!

Pros:

Lightweight, compact design
Well executed, smooth manual focus ring
USB-C port for firmware updates
Quick and quiet autofocus
Good focus accuracy
Good center and midframe sharpness wide open
Excellent sharpness across most of the the frame when stopped down
Fairly low distortion
Good color rendering
Fantastic price to performance ratio
Fills a serious need on Nikon

Cons:

Corners always lag a bit behind the rest of the frame
Strong vignette
Distortion pattern a little complex
Some instability in video autofocus at times

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 @ Viltrox | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Pergear

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Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, Viltrox 20mm, Viltrox 20mm F2.8, 20mm, F2.8, STM, AF, #viltrox, Nikon, Nikon Z8, Z, Z-mount, Z8, Review, mirrorless, Full Frame, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 45MP, #letthelightin, #DA, #NIKON, #Z8, #NIKONZ8

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Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN ART Gallery

Dustin Abbott

September 5th, 2024

Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN | ART Review

I’ve been in the review business for about 13 years now, and over that time I’ve heard the requests from my audience for someone to produce a 24-105mm F2.8 full frame zoom. The 24-105mm F4 zoom has been ubiquitous, but always the F2.8 counterpart had a more constrained 24-70mm zoom range. That has lead to countless deliberations between the bigger zoom range of the 24-105mm or the larger maximum aperture of the 24-70mm zooms. But what people really want is, well, everything. Canon was the first to the table with their 24-105mm F2.8 L IS USM Z lens, though that lens will set you back $3000 and weighs 1.3 kilos. Not an “everyman’s lens”, for sure. But while Sigma’s newest lens is a little less ambitious – the Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN | ART lens – the price is just half of the Canon lens at $1499 USD. Does that make the 28-105 DN the new most desirable zoom out there? We’ll explore that question in either my video review below , in the text review, or just by enjoying the photos in the galleries below.

Thanks to Sigma Canada (Gentec) for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

The top competitor to the new 28-105 DN on Sony will almost certainly be the Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8 VXD. While the focal ranges are clearly not identical, both of them are traditional zoom range blurring high performance lenses. The Tamron has been my “if I only could have one lens” lens since it’s launch, and I use my copy extensively. I will draw some comparisons to the new Sigma lens, as I feel like both lenses are largely reaching for the same audience.

Sigma’s approach to keeping this lens at a reasonable size actually takes a page from the Tamron book; they’ve started at 28mm rather than 24mm. In this case, in fact, the 28mm wide end of the Sigma still trumps the 35mm wide end of the Tamron, though obviously the Tamron also happens to have an extra 45mm on the telephoto end. Which of those is more useful will probably mostly depend on your own shooting needs. That extra 20mm beyond 85mm does offer up some interesting portrait applications, allowing you a little more compression. But while Sigma is focused on portrait and landscape photographers in their marketing for the 28-105 DN, I think the most interesting market is actually event photographers (particularly wedding photographers). The Tamron 35-150mm has been my absolute go-to lens for all kinds of events because it includes the meat of both a 24-70mm and 70-200mm zoom. 35mm is very often wide enough in most venues, and being able to switch framing between wide and telephoto perspectives is incredibly useful. The Sigma allows for the same kind of approach in a slightly different way.

The Sigma 28-105 DN also adds some interesting close focus capabilities with a 0.32x magnification on the telephoto end, allowing for some “macro-ish” shots.

Build and Handling

Photos taken with the Sigma 28-105mm DN

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 ART @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Keywords: Sigma 28-105mm, DG, DN, ART, Sigma 28-105 F2.8, Sigma 28-105mm, F2.8, Sigma 28-105 Review, #SIGMAEmount, #SIGMA #SIGMA28105mmF28Art, #SIGMAArt, #SIGMADGDN, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA

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Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN | ART Review

Dustin Abbott

September 5th, 2024

Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN | ART Review

I’ve been in the review business for about 13 years now, and over that time I’ve heard the requests from my audience for someone to produce a 24-105mm F2.8 full frame zoom. The 24-105mm F4 zoom has been ubiquitous, but always the F2.8 counterpart had a more constrained 24-70mm zoom range. That has lead to countless deliberations between the bigger zoom range of the 24-105mm or the larger maximum aperture of the 24-70mm zooms. But what people really want is, well, everything. Canon was the first to the table with their 24-105mm F2.8 L IS USM Z lens, though that lens will set you back $3000 and weighs 1.3 kilos. Not an “everyman’s lens”, for sure. But while Sigma’s newest lens is a little less ambitious – the Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN | ART lens – the price is just half of the Canon lens at $1499 USD. Does that make the 28-105 DN the new most desirable zoom out there? We’ll explore that question in either my video review below or in the text review that follows.

Thanks to Sigma Canada (Gentec) for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

The top competitor to the new 28-105 DN on Sony will almost certainly be the Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8 VXD. While the focal ranges are clearly not identical, both of them are traditional zoom range blurring high performance lenses. The Tamron has been my “if I only could have one lens” lens since it’s launch, and I use my copy extensively. I will draw some comparisons to the new Sigma lens, as I feel like both lenses are largely reaching for the same audience.

Sigma’s approach to keeping this lens at a reasonable size actually takes a page from the Tamron book; they’ve started at 28mm rather than 24mm. In this case, in fact, the 28mm wide end of the Sigma still trumps the 35mm wide end of the Tamron, though obviously the Tamron also happens to have an extra 45mm on the telephoto end. Which of those is more useful will probably mostly depend on your own shooting needs. That extra 20mm beyond 85mm does offer up some interesting portrait applications, allowing you a little more compression. But while Sigma is focused on portrait and landscape photographers in their marketing for the 28-105 DN, I think the most interesting market is actually event photographers (particularly wedding photographers). The Tamron 35-150mm has been my absolute go-to lens for all kinds of events because it includes the meat of both a 24-70mm and 70-200mm zoom. 35mm is very often wide enough in most venues, and being able to switch framing between wide and telephoto perspectives is incredibly useful. The Sigma allows for the same kind of approach in a slightly different way.

The Sigma 28-105 DN also adds some interesting close focus capabilities with a 0.32x magnification on the telephoto end, allowing for some “macro-ish” shots.

So does Sigma have a hit on their hands? We’ll dive in a little further to find out.

Build and Handling

Sigma’s build standards are continually evolving, and they have been very proactive about adding new features and improvements. Many of those feature improvements have been designed around video capture, which obviously serves this new lens well. The 28-105 DN has basically all of the features currently available on modern lenses save lens-based image stabilization.

That starts with the aperture ring (something relatively new for zoom lenses, period). The aperture ring works great, giving you precise control at 1/3rd stops when in clicked mode, and gliding smoothly through the whole aperture range when declicked.

On the lower left side of the lens is the Click/Declick switch which allows you to choose between those two options.

On the right side of the lens is the iris lock. The iris lock will allow you to either lock into or out of the aperture ring. For those that want to use the aperture ring and not inadvertently switch into camera based aperture control, the lock can be engaged while you are in the aperture ring and keep you there. If you’re not an aperture ring person you can switch the lens into the A position and control it from within the camera. Engaging the iris lock while in A assures that you won’t inadvertently bump into manual aperture control.

The left side of the lens also has an AF/MF switch (always appreciated!) along with one of the two custom/function buttons.

There’s a second function button on the top of the lens for access when shooting in a vertical position.

The function of those buttons (they are redundant, not two separate functions) can be set from within the camera.

Lower down the lens barrel is a lock to prevent zoom creep. This is an externally zooming lens, though the precision in the zoom mechanism and extending barrel means that there is little chance of zoom creep unless you have something specifically rubbing on the zoom ring (like when hiking, for example). The lock will only engage at the wide (28mm) setting.

The inner barrel extends roughly 43mm when zoomed out to the 105mm position, and I’ll note that the inner barrel feels very well engineered and smooth – no wobble.

It is worth noting that Sigma lenses zoom in the opposite direction of Sony lenses (and pretty much every other brand on E-mount). It’s a little annoying, actually.

The zoom ring is the closer of the two rings, with the manual focus ring further out. The manual focus ring is well executed, with wide ribbing and good damping. It makes for a good focus emulation, though as with all mirrorless autofocusing lenses this is focus by wire. Input to the focus ring is routed through the focus motor, and there are no hard stops at minimum focus or infinity.

The overall look of the lens is very much modern Sigma, with a lot of vertical lines and a few different textures.

This flows into the lens hood, which has a lock, a rubberized section for soft touch and a ribbed section for more grip when mounting or removing. Sigma’s lens hoods are nicer than just about any other brand. A padded nylon case is also included.

While I haven’t seen a cutout diagram of the weather sealing points, I do know that Sigma touts a professional grade of weather sealing on this lens. There is a gasket at the lens mount, a water and oil repellant coating on the front element, and internal seals throughout the lens. Sigma calls this a “dust and splash resistant structure”.

The basic dimensions of the lens (in Sony E-mount, as tested) are 87.8mm (3.5″) in diameter and 159.9 (6.3″) in length. It weighs in at 990g (34.9oz) and has an 82mm front filter thread. In many ways this lens has a similar physical size to the recent 28-45mm F1.8, though that lens is an internally zooming design.

To put this in context, the Tamron 35-150mm pictured here is 89.2 x 158 mm (very similar in size) but weighs 175g more.

The Canon 24-105mm F2.8L is the behemoth, however, at 88.5 x 199 mm and weighing 310g more. Bottom line is that Sigma has done a good job of managing the size and weight of the lens, though, to be fair, it doesn’t have quite as big of zoom range as either the Canon or the Tamron, and the Canon also has image stabilization while the Tamron sports a larger maximum aperture (F2-2.8) across its zoom range.

The aperture iris is unique for a Sigma lens, in that it has has 12 blades, which helps keep the aperture iris shape circular even with the lens stopped down.

This also produces a more defined 12 bladed sunstar, as while odd bladed apertures actually produce double the sun rays (an 11-bladed aperture has a sunstar with 22 points, but a 12-bladed aperture has 12 points. I personally favor the cleaner look of these sunbursts, though Sigma reports that this is more of a one-off with this lens and they have no plans to move to aperture irises with even blade counts.

The minimum focus distance 40cm, which allows for a very useful 0.32x (1:3:1) magnification at 105mm:

At 28mm, that 40cm produces this result:

But then you can zoom into 105mm and get a very different level of magnification.

This combined with that F2.8 aperture allows for very nicely blurred backgrounds, and up close performance is quite good.

Because I review a lot of Sigma lenses, there’s a lot that is familiar here, which makes it easy to take their excellence in design for granted. Sigma is packing as many features into their top lenses as anyone out there, and that’s fantastic in a lens that is equally good for both video and stills. This is a big lens, but as we’ve seen, it is actually a bit smaller and lighter than the competition. And, at a price of $1499 USD ($2099 here in Canada), it is not exorbitantly expensive (the Tamron 35-150 VXD runs $300-400 USD more).

Autofocus and Video

This is another area where Sigma has made some key strides. Their initial offerings on Sony (and L-mount) featured STM focus motors, but Sigma has since released their more powerful, smoother HLA focus motor (High speed Linear Actuator). The HLA motor has much more torque/thrust than lenses equipped with the stepping motor, which is very important when you are talking about a lens with larger, heavier optical glass like this one. The increased thrust of the focus motor means that it is capable of moving much faster and is thus much more reactive. Real world focus changes are essentially instantaneous, making this lens capable even of keeping up with some action. I used it with success at a rodeo, and while the lighting conditions meant that I didn’t always get as fast of shutter speeds as I would like, I was able to successfully track and capture the action.

This further increases the credentials of the 28-105 DN as a great choice for things like events or weddings, as even if there is some action, the autofocus can keep up.

Focus sound is basically nonexistent. The HLA motor is essentially silent even if I put my ear next to the lens. It is quiet enough that I literally looked up at the screen to make sure the lens was actually focusing.

Focus accuracy is good, too. I don’t really recall any shots during my review having been missed due to poor focus in any reasonable situation (I had a few times during the rodeo that focus grabbed the rail in front of me rather than the subject beyond, but that’s understandable).

Eye AF was excellent, delivering very accurate results whether photographing an animal…

…or a human subject.

I also saw mostly good results for video work. Autofocus pulls were very fast and confident. No hunting or settling. Focus is fast enough that you’ll probably want to slow it down in camera if you want more cinematic focus transitions. There is some focus breathing, though not extreme.

My hand test where I alternately blocked the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it went quite well, with confident adjustments to and from my face.

I also found that in real world shots that focus changes tended to be more abrupt than what I would prefer. There’s a lot of thrust in this focus motor, but it probably would have been better to detune it a bit in video mode…particularly in a lens that will probably be highly desired for video work.

On a positive note, I used the 28-105 DN for about a half dozen of my YouTube video episodes, and focus was rock solid during those episodes.

Sigma’s HLA focus motors are great, though they are slightly limited on Sony by the fact that Sony limits bursts to 15FPS with third party lenses, so this one area where the 28-105 DN is not going to be as effective as the G Master zooms in certain applications.

Image Quality Breakdown

As I noted in my intro, this is a pretty special lens optically. The optical formula is fairly complex (18 elements in 13 groups), and that includes 2 FLD elements, 2 SLD elements, and 5 aspherical elements. A look at the MTF charts for the various lenses shows that the 28-105 DN holds up well when compared with either the 24-70mm F2.8 DN ART or older DSLR era 24-105mm F4 DG HSM lens.

At it’s best, the 28-105 DN is able to produce images with a lot of detail, contrast, and pop.

That’s not to say that the lens is flawless, however, as it does exhibit a few optical weaknesses. This is a very complex undertaking, and it becomes clear where the compromises were made. We not only maintain a constant F2.8 aperture (for full frame) in this zoom, but we go from moderately wide at 28mm to moderate telephoto at 105mm. Here’s a look at the same scene at all five marked positions on the lens (28, 35, 50, 70, and 105mm):

First, some of the good. There’s not much evidence of longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA) here, with clean results before and after the plane of focus. There’s basically no evidence of fringing anywhere.

I shot photos of sunlight dancing through the morning dew, and I found all of those bright specular highlights clean of any fringing.

I also saw zero issues with LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations), which shows up along the edges of the frame. All of the transitions here are very neutral.

While many people will certainly wish that this lens went as wide as 24mm, thus enabling photographers to more realistically use it for wide angle shots. The problem with going to 24mm (as Sigma has dealt with on their 24-70mm lenses) is that it is very difficult to control distortion, and those lenses have dealt with quite heavy barrel distortion at 24mm. The choice to only go as wide as 28mm should (in theory) allow for an easier optical design. Unfortunately the big zoom ratio of this lens has resulted in both a lot of distortion and a mildly complex distortion pattern.

I needed a very significant +26 to manually correct the distortion, though as you can see the correction isn’t linear. Getting the lines straight near the center results in the edges being pulled to a pincushion style distortion. Vignette is also very heavy, requiring a +90 to correct, which is just shy of maxing out the correction slider in Lightroom.

Sigma did provide me with a correction profile, and you can see that it essentially splits the difference on the distortion, leaving a bit of barrel distortion to avoid creating the pincushion distortion. It does clean up the vignette nicely.

There is unfortunately still a fairly significant amount of distortion (now pincushion style) on the telephoto end. Vignette is about a stop less (+61 to correct), and I needed a -10 to correct the distortion.

That’s enough distortion that I did notice it in some of my real world shots. If you look at the lines along the left side of this image you will see the curve due to the distortion. I saw this in a number of shots.

Again, the correction profile will take care of this, but it does show the area that had to give in the engineering compromises to make this lens happen.

So how about resolution and contrast? My formal tests are done on the 61MP Sony a7RV.

The MTF suggests that this is a very sharp lens in the center and mid-frame areas, with a typical corner drop-off at wide apertures. Is that what we see? Here’s a look at the test chart from which the crops come.

The MTF shows an accurate reflection of real world performance, as I find that, as suggested, the center looks amazing, mid-frame is very good, but the corners show a significant reduction in sharpness and contrast. Here are crops from across the frame at F2.8 and shown at a 200% magnification.

In most situations this probably won’t be a problem. Shooting at night or in a dimly lit venue it will be rare for this to affect things too much. I found that real world corners didn’t look terrible (this shot is 1/6th of a second, F2.8, ISO 3200).

This shot of fireworks at F2.8, 28mm looks nice and crisp.

The corners are somewhat better by F4, and reasonably good by F5.6, though they never quite rival the performance elsewhere in the frame.

It’s enough for real world shots to look good, however. Detail doesn’t jump off the page in a 100% crop of this shot, but you can see that it looks just fine, however.

Diffraction will set in at F11, and shots with apertures smaller than that will look noticeably softer. Here’s the difference between F11 and the minimum aperture of F22:

Moving on to 35mm finds the center performance largely the same, but I see some improvement in the midframe and the corners, though the corners remain softer by comparison.

Centering seems good in the lens, with consistent results in all four corners.

There’s more sharpness potential in the corners at 35mm, with corner performance looking quite good by F5.6.

If we move on 50mm, we find our strongest performance yet. Sharpness is noticeably higher in the midframe and corners (which look great!), and even the center looks a little better.

You can see that real world shots at 50mm show great detail and contrast.

70mm still looks good, though not as intensely good as 50mm.

At the end of the zoom range I find some give and take relative to 70mm. Some spots (midframe) look a little sharper, while the corners look a little softer and the center looks about the same. Overall I would say that sharpness and contrast are slightly lower at 105mm relative to other places in the zoom range.

Overall I found that sharpness was pretty good at 105mm for real world shots, though contrast isn’t top notch.

Here’s another example.

I did a few comparisons to the Tamron 35-150mm. Comparing the wide ends (28 vs 35mm) showed some give and take between the two lenses in terms of sharpness. The Tamron is sharper in the center and midframe, while the Sigma is very slightly sharper in the corners. At 105mm, the Tamron is a bit sharper all across the frame.

At least in the copies that I compared, I found that the Tamron had a little more capacity for further sharpening as you stopped it down as well. The comparison more strongly favors the Tamron at smaller apertures. The Tamron is also considerably more expensive, though it is impressive how well it holds up in this comparison three years after its release. After years of using the Tamron, I felt like the Sigma wasn’t quite as sharp and contrasty in real world applications.

So how about the bokeh? As with any zoom, that’s going to depend on the focal length. The telephoto end has the largest capacity for blurring out the background. You can see from this morning dew shot that bokeh looks fairly good.

There is some typical geometric deformation near the edges of the frame, and I also see some hints of “onion bokeh” there (concentric rings inside the specular highlights).

But while I found a slight bit of outlining in the specular highlights, I do feel like the some of the hard edges in this image are rendered fairly well. I have no real complaints here.

This casual portrait of me shows a little more busyness than what I would like in the textures of the trees beyond me.

I found the recent 28-45mm F1.8 zoom from Sigma to have some of the “special sauce” in the rendering, but I’m a little less impressed here.

Flare resistance, on the other hand, is excellent. I found very good resistance to veiling or ghosting, and I think the sunbursts look great!

This is an area of definite win over the Tamron, as it has a few issues with flare.

This allowed me to shoot right into the spotlights at the rodeo without concern that the images would be ruined.

Another plus is color rendition. I liked the overall look of images a lot. Skintones looked good, and other colors were rich.

Here’s another:

How about my truck at golden hour?

So while we don’t have a flawless performance here, we do have a very good optical showing. This is a very competent lens across all of its zoom range, which means that Sigma has pulled off something that really only one company has previously. And don’t forget that close focus ability, which allows you to pull off some unique images.

This ability could really expand the usefulness of the 28-105 DN as a wedding photographer’s primary lens, as you could grab detail shots of flowers, rings, and more without having to pull out a secondary macro lens. If you want to see more images, check out the image gallery for the lens here.

Conclusion

Genre busting lenses like the Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN | ART are rare for one simple reason: they just aren’t easy to make. There are so many constraints on the engineers, as they need to control the size, weight, and cost while also trying to engineer for optical excellence over a larger zoom range than is typical. Sigma is demonstrating their ability as a company to successfully take on exceptional challenges yet again. They were the first on Sony to do an F1.2 prime. The first to do F1.4 on a wide angle lens. The first to release a full frame F1.8 zoom. On and on the list goes, which shows just how far removed we are from the company once known for making budget alternatives to first party lenses. The 28-105 DN is yet another case in point.

Sigma’s HLA autofocus delivers excellent speed, allowing the 28-105 DN to also excel for action packed moments that lesser lenses might miss.

I can see this lens becoming a favorite for those who want a one-lens solution for events or portrait photography, allowing them to switch from wide angle to tighter framing with a twist of the zoom ring. The $1500 price tag seems a lot more reasonable when you consider that for many people it could probably replace both a 24-70 and a 70-200mm lens, particularly with the ability to switch to an APS-C crop on Sony’s higher resolution cameras. I’m not sure that it quite matches the versatility of the Tamron 35-150mm for my personal needs, but there are also several things that the Sigma does better. What a great day to be a photographer, however, when we are spoiled with one exceptional lens options upon another.

Pros:

Genre busting zoom range with a constant F2.8 aperture
Beautifully made
Feature rich
Thorough weather sealing
Ability to declick aperture
HLA focus motor is extremely quiet and has a lot of thrust
Excellent focus accuracy
Extremely sharp lens over most of the frame and zoom range
Excellent flare resistance
Near perfect control of aberrations
Beautiful colors
Excellent close focus abilities
Very versatile lens

Cons:

Distortion and vignette fairly high
Corners on the wide end a little soft
Bokeh can get a little busy

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Purchase the Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 ART @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN RF Review

Dustin Abbott

August 5th, 2024

Earlier this year I was doing my review of the Canon EOS R50 compact APS-C mirrorless camera. While I liked many things about the camera itself, I couldn’t help lament the state of the lens options for Canon’s RF-S mount. At the time of the review (two years since the release of the EOS R7, the first of Canon’s RF mount APS-C cameras), this was the sum total of the available lenses.

Yuck. I couldn’t imagine a less exciting lineup of lenses. The fastest maximum aperture in the bunch was F3.5, and that lens is F4 and smaller before you make it to 30mm. Canon clearly knew they had a problem, for between the time that I filmed my review and the time I released it, they announced that certain Sigma (and later Tamron) lenses would become available for RF-S (the APS-C version of Canon RF). Now, to be clear, this is only for APS-C lenses, but for now it seems like Canon is going to let third parties solve their APS-C lens problem. This is great news for consumers, however, because it means that lenses like the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN are now available for Canon RF. I love the Sigma 18-50mm, having first reviewed it when it released on Sony back in 2021 and then last year when it became available on Fuji X-mount. I found it useful enough on Fuji that I purchased one myself, and have happily used it since. So how well has the 18-50mm survived the transition to Canon. You can find out my thoughts in the video review below…or read on.

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Thanks to Gentec (Sigma’s Canadian Distributor), for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Canon EOS R5, which I reviewed here.

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The good news is that this is a great porting of the lens. It’s pretty clear here that this is no “reverse engineering” but rather a direct license of focus algorithms, as this is not only the best focus experience of the now three platforms that I’ve tested the lens on, but also one of the better focus experiences I’ve had on Canon in general amongst lenses priced under $1000.

This review of the 18-50mm RF is not a whole new review, but rather an update on how the 18-50mm RF translates to Canon RF. I’ve already tested the image quality at both a 24MP (Sony in 2021) and 40MP (Fuji in 2023)) level, so that covers the full gambit (and more) of what’s available on RF bodies. There are no optical surprises here, but I’m always curious to see how the lens changes in terms of its dimensions, but, most importantly, how well it autofocuses on a platform that it wasn’t originally designed for.

The 18-50mm RF is one of six lenses released by Sigma for Canon RF, and those six lenses represent all of the APS-C mirrorless lenses they’ve released over the past three years. You can see my review of the original releases on Sony here.

Sigma’s DC DN lenses have all fallen under the umbrella of their Contemporary lineup, and while Sigma has proven willing to experiment with new features and design elements within the ART and Sport lineups, the Contemporary lenses have all stuck to a fairly rigid design formula. That continues to be the case here, so this little zoom mostly looks and handles pretty similarly to other lenses in the lineup.

There’s nothing new here on the RF mount, but the lens is more of a standout on Canon due to having essentially zero quality competition. The 18-50mm RF is a genuine treat as an addition here. Why? Here’s a few reasons:

Has at least a weather sealing gasket
Better build quality than RF-S lenses
Includes a lens hood
Constant F2.8 aperture
Good up close performance
Great autofocus on RF

In essence, the poor competition makes this lens a star, though frankly I still found it one of the more compelling options on these other platforms as well.

The crop factor on Canon is different than Sony or Fuji, so the zoom range works a little different. Fuji/Sony have a crop factor of 1.5x, which means that the lens goes from a full frame equivalent of 27-75mm. Canon’s APS-C crop is 1.6x, and so that changes the effective focal range to 29-80mm. You’ll miss the extra bit of width at 18mm:

…but appreciate the extra bit of reach on the telephoto end.

Sigma 18-50mm RF-Mount Build and Handling

There’s really only one significant change to the 18-50mm on Canon, and that is that the lens mount portion of the lens has to be flared out to accommodate the much larger diameter of the RF mount. You can see that difference when compared to the Fuji X-mount version on the right.

As this is now the widest portion of the lens, the lens diameter changes from 61.6mm (2.4″) to about 68mm by my measurement. I found the RF version to be just a hair shorter than the X-mount version, measuring more like 75mm than the 76.8mm of the X-mount (3″). That extra bit of girth near the lens mount also adds a tiny bit of weight, with the RF version weighing 294g (10.37oz) on my scale, which is about 10g heavier. I haven’t seen the dimensions and weight for the RF mount published by Sigma, so I’m using my own measurements.

Other than these minor physical changes to the RF version, the build is otherwise identical to either the E-mount of X-mount versions.

The 18-50mm F2.8 is a mixture of metals and “thermal composites” (high grade engineered plastics) in construction, and the construction feels quality in the hand. It is built around a metal mount.

The overall build quality just feels much higher than any of the Canon RF-S lenses that I’ve tested so far. Some of them even have plastic lens mounts. This feels like a quality lens.

There is a weather sealing gasket at the lens mount (thicker here on the RF mount than on previous versions), but, like other Contemporary lenses, there are no internal seal points.

The only thing on the barrel is the focus and zoom rings. The closest to the lens mount is is the focus ring, which is fairly narrow (10mm), ribbed, and moves smoothly. It is has light damping and doesn’t have a lot of feel, and is actually slightly compromised here by the thicker lens mount flare, which clearly wasn’t part of the original design. It crowds the focus ring a bit, and I found my thumb slightly pushed off the ring.

The second ring is the wider (20mm) of the two, and it is the zoom ring. The zoom action is very smooth, with a single inner barrel that extends about 25mm. The inner barrel is well engineered and without any wobble.

Also included is a fairly shallow petal-shaped lens hood. It has a ribbed texture section to help you grip it for removal and will reverse for storage.

There are seven rounded aperture blades inside, and these do a reasonably good job of maintaining a circular shape with the lens stopped down.

A look at the front of the lens shows a 55mm front filter thread along with a significant amount of glass inside; this is the huge advantage over the Canon kits lenses with a much smaller maximum aperture value.

Like many recent zoom lenses, there is a separate minimum focus distance for wide angle (18mm) and telephoto (50mm), with interim focal lengths being on a sliding scale between them. The highest magnification (as per usual) is at the 18mm end, where you can focus as close as 121mm. Only one problem – when the lens is mounted on the camera, the distance from the sensor to the end of the lens (without the lens hood) is 95mm, leaving only 26mm of working distance between you and your subject. Here’s what that looks like:

It is basically unusable, as even without the lens hood it is almost impossible for the lens to not be shading your subject. If you add the lens hood, you actually exceed that minimum focus distance. So, in theory, you can achieve a maximum magnification of nearly 0.36x, but you are unlikely to ever achieve that in the field. Here’s what that looks like if you were able to achieve it:

You’ll see a lot of field curvature and a very small sweet spot of focus/sharpness. My advice: back up a little and get much nicer results with more like magnification in the high 20s instead.

The telephoto end doesn’t market as well, but is much more useful. You can focus as closely 30cm there, but the resulting magnification of 0.20x is much more easily attainable.

The wide open sharpness and contrast there is not off the charts, but is good enough to produce nice real-world results like this:

There is no optical stabilization on the lens, unfortunately. I happened to test on a camera that had in body image stabilization, so I didn’t miss it, but many of Canon’s smaller APS-C cameras don’t have IBIS.

As noted, on other platforms the Sigma is a rather plain lens in terms of features and build. Because of so little competition on Canon, however, it feels next level in terms of build and handling. It’s a nicely made little lens that follows a familiar, well-executed Sigma formula.

Autofocus and Video

Sigma continues to utilize a stepping focus motor (STM) in these smaller lenses as the elements are smaller and lighter than lenses and don’t require the higher torque that some of their large aperture full frame or sports oriented lenses. Autofocus is something that Canon does very, very well, and it is clear to me that Sigma has received access to the focus protocols and algorithms, as the 18-50mm RF definitely handles like a first party lens.

The STM motor provides fast, quiet, and accurate autofocus. Eye detection works well, and I was able to get nice “people” photos with quick and easy autofocus.

Autofocus speed was excellent, near instantaneous both indoors and outdoors, and utterly reliable and accurate.

I got well focused results when I took some photos of Nala (working hard).

Even without a trackable subject in frame I was able to get good focus. Here’s some foliage in the evening light.

I’ve got zero complaints about the autofocus for stills; I got a lot of well focused results without any drama. This is a seamless transition to Canon RF.

On the video front my findings were also excellent. My autofocus pulls tests were smooth and confident, with none of the settling or pulsing that I saw on Fuji.

On a positive note focus breathing is fairly low.

My “hand test” (where I block the view of my face with my hand and then move the hand to allow focus to pop back to the eye) also went well. Focus transitioned confidently from my hand to my test and vice versa.

Unlike on Fuji, I also saw smooth focus results when zooming in and out while recording video. There was none of the shattering effect and focus readjustments, which shows again how far behind Fuji’s autofocus is.

This is a great lens all around when it comes to autofocus; a fantastic performance on Canon.

Sigma 18-50X Optical Performance

Sigma has given the 18-50mm F2.8 DN an optical design of 13 elements in 10 groups, and this includes 1 SLD element and 3 Aspherical elements. The MTF charts show a good performance in the center of the frame, fairly strong mid-frame results, and a dip into the corners.

In this section I will be reusing my results from the 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor. It is higher resolution than anything Canon currently makes (current resolution points are between 24 – 33MP. Fuji’s images are also harder to sharpen than Canon, so you will have no problem getting beautiful results on Canon bodies. It has no problem producing beautiful images.

We’ll start by taking a look at distortion and vignette. Distortion is essentially identical to what I saw on Sony, with some strong barrel distortion at 18mm.

While Sigma lenses do receive good correction profile support on Canon, I turn off those corrections and do a manual correction so that I can see what’s being compensated for. I used a +24 to correct for the barrel distortion, but you can see that there is a mild mustache pattern left over.

Expect less vignette on Canon than what I saw on Fuji, with results more in line with what I saw on Sony. I had to use a +52 to correction vignette at 18mm on Sony. On Fuji? A whopping +92! The good news is that the profile correction does a good job with both distortion and vignette. This F2.8 image has received no addition correction, but you can see that there is no visible shading on the snow.

As you progress through the zoom range the distortion starts to invert and eventually becomes a pincushion style distortion that is more strongly pronounced at 50mm.

I needed to dial in a -11 to correct the pincushion distortion, though it was nice and linear and cleaned up well. Vignette remains heavy, however, requiring a +88 to correction (again, about +40 more than on Sony).

There are longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA), but they aren’t particularly strong. I mostly see them in the form of a blue-green fringing after the plane of focus:

You will see a light fringing around specular highlights as well:

Likewise there is a bit of lateral chromatic aberrations (LaCA) that show up near the edges of the frame. You can see them in the transitions from black to white.

The LaCA is easy to clear up by clicking the “Remove Chromatic Aberrations” button in software or in camera for JPEGs or video.

Chromatic aberrations are a little more visible at a pixel level on high resolution cameras for the simple reason that the fringing occupies more pixels and gets more highly magnified at a pixel level, but they aren’t any more obvious when viewing the image as a whole.

So how about the main event? High resolution cameras also expose any lack of contrast or a lens’ inability to resolve fine details because those flaws are more highly magnified. Here’s a look at our test chart.

Here is a closer look at roughly 180% crops from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner at 18mm, F2.8:

The center looks great, the mid-frame acceptable sharp, but the corner looks quite low contrast. Stopping down to F4 provides a little more contrast and detail, and F5.6 looks better still, but the corners never get exceptionally sharp.

Real world images look great in the center and mid-frame, but the corners don’t look as crisp.

F8 is a lateral move (not really any sharper than F5.6) due to diffraction starting to soften the image (diffraction comes very early on a high resolution body). After F8 the image will show more obvious softening, and by the minimum aperture of F22 the image looks very soft in my tests.

$27-Diffraction$

At 24mm the image shows improvement across the frame, but in particularly in the corners, which are radically sharper.

It’s easier to get sharp landscape images at 24mm due to the more consistent sharpness profile.

28mm is largely the same as 24mm, with a very consistent sharpness profile across the frame.

At 35mm there is a dip in contrast relative to the high water mark of 24-30mm.

Sharpness and contrast do improve if you stop the lens down, however, and by landscape apertures like F5.6 the results look good.

Things rebound a bit at 50mm, and, if they aren’t the peak of sharpness like 24mm, the results look quite good even at F2.8.

When stopped down the lens can produce very nice landscape images with strong contrast.

Here’s another 50mm that looks nice at F2.8, with a nice depth of field that highlights the subject. Contrast at a pixel level isn’t incredibly high, but viewed normally the image looks great.

The quality of the bokeh is mostly good. Zoom lenses like this rarely create the most creamy bokeh, and the Sigma 18-50mm is no exception. At the same time, however, I felt like images looked pretty good. The bokeh here is actually really nice, particularly in the top half of the image.

This shot shows a bit of outlining in some of the defocused textures, which does detract a bit from the bokeh.

This shot is somewhere in between, but overall I feel like it looks pretty nice.

One final example at a little further distance. In some ways this image is a little more impressive, as background isn’t quite as out of focus. The 18-50mm avoids any nervous looking textures in the transition zones, and there is a reasonable amount of 3D pop on the subject.

The look of sunbursts is nice but nothing special. The blades don’t have the distinction of straight blades, but it is nice enough to add a little extra touch to images.

Flare resistance was also fairly good, with only minimal ghosting artifacts showing up in real world images.

Contrast remained strong, however with only a bit of a flare pattern showing in some images.

I was able to test for astrophotography during my review of the E-mount version of the lens, and found a bit of coma smear in the corners along with a bit of generalized fringing on the brightest points of light.

I was able to get nice looking Milky Way images with a lot of asteroid action, too.

Before closing this section, I think it is important to put the Sigma’s overall performance into perspective. The Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 is much larger, and yet it doesn’t really hold up better on the Fuji 40MP sensor. When I compared the two on the wide end, the Sigma clearly had the sharper center of the frame along with a slightly better mid-frame, though the Tamron showed a little better in the corner.

On the telephoto end there is some give and take, with the Sigma looking slightly sharper in the center and the Tamron looking a bit sharper in the corner. The Sigma’s mid-frame is clearly better, however, with more contrast and detail visible.

The fact that the Sigma delivers slightly more sharpness on the 40MP despite being so compact is very impressive. Here’s a gallery of a few more images taken on Canon RF.

Conclusion

I was very encouraged by what I saw from the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN on Canon RF mount. It feels like a seamless port over other than the slightly odd lens shape due to the much larger RF mount. Autofocus was fantastic, image quality looks great, and the lens remains very impressive despite its small size.

This is a great little general purpose/travel lens, as it affords enough flexibility in the focal length to shoot many scenes, and the constant maximum aperture of F2.8 gives you more flexibility in different lighting situations.

It’s great to see Canon’s RF mount starting to open to these third party offerings, and very quickly we will see the amount of lenses available for RF-S (APS-C) tripled due to Canon’s move to open the protocols. This lens isn’t cheap, per se, at $599 USD, but I’d rather spend a few hundred extra bucks to buy this lens over the current Canon options any day of the week.

Pros:

Fantastic job porting to Canon
Extremely compact and lightweight
Nicely made with a weather sealing gasket
Useful focal range with constant F2.8 aperture
Great autofocus performance
Good video AF performance
Minimal focus breathing
Good sharpness across zoom range
Nice bokeh in most situations
Fairly good coma performance
Nice build and handling than RF lenses

Cons:

No optical stabilizer
Fairly strong barrel distortion at 18mm
Some ghosting in certain lighting conditions
Flare for RF lens mount slightly interferes with MF ring

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Purchase the Sigma 18-50mm RF @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Keywords: Sigma 18-50 DN Review, Sigma 18-50mm Review, Sigma 18-50mm F2.8, Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN, Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN Review, DC, DN, F2.8, Canon R50, R100, Canon R7, RF-Mount, 33MP, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Portrait, Photography, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA, Weather Sealing, #SIGMA, #SIGMA1850mmContemporary, #SIGMAContemporary, #sigmadcdn

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7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 Review

Dustin Abbott

April 25th, 2024

Just a month ago I released my first review of an autofocusing 7Artisans lens (all previous reviews had been of manual focus only lenses). The AF 50mm F1.8 was an interesting lens with a surprising number of premium elements for its relatively inexpensive price. But 7Artisans was immediately back with a new lens; in this case a radically smaller 27mm F2.8 autofocusing lens….this time for APS-C cameras. The new 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 is a surprisingly complete and competent little prime lens for a bargain price of just $129 USD. I’ve reviewed it on Sony E-mount, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see other lens mounts follow in the future. Is this a lens you should consider? Find out my thoughts in the video review below or by reading on…

Thanks to 7Artisans for sending me a review sample of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the APS-C mode (26MP) of my Sony a7RV camera.

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Designing for a smaller APS-C sensor has allowed 7Artisans to create a very different kind of lens here; one radically smaller than the 72mm (2.83″) in diameter and 104mm (4.09″) in length of the 50mm F1.8. The new lens is 64mm in diameter (2.51″) and just 48mm (1.89″) in length. It weighs just 172g (6oz), a far cry from the 421g (14.85oz) of 7Artisans last lens.

27mm is an odd focal length for full frame, but on APS-C it is one of my favorite focal lengths. This is roughly 41mm in a full frame equivalent (Sony’s APS-C crop is 1.5x), which makes it a nice compromise between a 35mm and 50mm lens. I love it as a walkaround or everyday focal length, as it captures images similar to the way that the eye sees them.

It’s really astounding how good of lenses we are getting from companies like 7Artisans at such an inexpensive price. One wouldn’t expect much from a lens costing just $129 USD, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by pretty much all aspects of this lens. It’s surprisingly sharp even at F2.8, has solid autofocus, and has a build quality that is really pretty fantastic.

So is this a lens that you should seriously consider? We’ll explore whether or not that is the case in this review.

Build and Handling

As noted, this lens has a nicely compact size. I do my Sony E-mount APS-C tests on the APS-C mode of my Sony a7RV, as its 26MP in APS-C matches Sony’s a6700 for resolution. That means that I’m doing my test on a larger camera, but the AF 27mm is clearly small enough to work nicely even on the smallest of cameras.

7Artisans included several features on the 50mm F1.8, including an aperture ring and AF/MF switch, but they’ve gone for a paired down, simpler lens here. You’ll note that the side of the lens is devoid of any switches or controls.

The lens barrel is made of metal, and it has a nice, anodized black satin finish. The lens design is very clean and elegant.

The one feature here is a USB-C port covered by a small rubber gasket. Be careful when pulling it out, as it is small and wouldn’t be hard to lose.

The USB-C port will allow for quick and easy firmware updates, which is very smart of 7Artisans considering that they are A) new to autofocus and B) a third party lens maker, so they may have to rely on firmware updates to maintain compatibility with cameras in the future. The lens does include a USB-C cable in the box in case you don’t have one.

There is a metal lens mount but no weather sealing gasket, though that is clearly not an expected feature at this price point.

There also isn’t an included lens hood, which is unfortunate, as frankly the lens could use one.

Up front we have common 52mm filter threads.

Take a closer took inside and you’ll see six straight aperture blades.

In theory that should allow for nice sunstars, but I found the sunburst effect rather aggressive with the lens stopped down a bit.

The manual focus ring is main object on the lens barrel. 7Artisans has elected to make it raised rather than flush, which does make it easy to grab. It’s reasonably wide and is made of metal with fine ribbing. The damping is medium first and the focus simulation is quite good (mirrorless lenses are “focus-by-wire”, where input from the focus ring passes through the focus motor).

The feel of the lens and focus action is premium; nothing about that feels cheep.

The minimum focus distance is 30cm. I estimate the maximum magnification figure to be roughly 0.14x, which looks like this:

That’s close enough to be useful but not exceptionally so. Here’s a real world close shot of a pineapple.

I did notice one quirk that manifests in a few ways. In Lightroom the focal length isn’t communicating correctly in the EXIF data, and I think that was a factor in communicating to the camera for setting the focal length for the camera’s stabilization system. I noticed I was getting a little more motion blur than expected in some images, so I tried manually setting the focal length instead of allowing the camera to automatically set it for Sony’s “SteadyShot”. This made a clear and obvious improvement.

So a little tip – manually set the focal length for IBIS (if your camera is so equipped), and you’ll get more stable results.

The 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 is a simple lens, in many ways, but a well executed one. It feels much nicer than its bargain price tag would suggest.

Autofocus and Video

I can already tell a welcome improvement to autofocus performance from their first AF lens that I tested. Companies like this tend to learn fast, and it helps that this lens has a narrower maximum aperture and shorter focal length, putting a little less stress on its STM (stepping) focus motor.

Autofocus speed is actually quite good here. Not GM level good, but so fast that you’ll never think about it. The focus motor works smoothly and quietly. If I put my ear right up to the barrel, I hear a light shuffling sound of the focus group moving back and forth, but nothing loud enough to be picked by the camera microphone. The quality of focus felt good, too.

I took a series of photos of Nala rolling around enjoying the spring sun, and focus was nailed (and the lens is surprisingly sharp!)

I didn’t notice any evidence of the focus drift I got with the 50mm F1.8 during bursts. Focus just seems more mature.

On the video front I found mostly good results. Focus pulls were smooth and quick with no visible steps, though there is definitely some mild focus breathing.

The 7Artisans AF 27mm did fine with my “hand test” however, where I alternately block the view to my face with my hand and then remove it. Focus transitioned nicely from my hand to my face.

I also had fairly good results with video clips where I slowly moved the camera to force change from one subject to another at varying depths of field. Focus transitions were fairly well damped, and I feel like this could be an interesting lens on a gimbal if you’re on a budget. It’s light, focuses with some confidence, and seems fairly mannerly for video AF. I shot a number of my YouTube video episodes with it and got very stable focus and a very nice looking picture.

Autofocus is definitely trending in the right direction for 7Artisans.

7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 Image Quality Breakdown

The 7Artisans AF 27mmmm F2.8 has a simple optical design of 6 elements in 5 groups. The MTF chart shows a very sharp center, some mid-frame regression, and a bit of a rebound in the corners. We’ll see if that pattern holds up in our results.

I would say that in general I was very impressed with the sharpness and contrast of the lens, though it has an interesting signature in some situations I’ll address in a moment.

I didn’t really notice any kind of issue with longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA) which show up before and after the plane of focus.

There’s also very little lateral chromatic aberrations visible in the transitions from black to white at the edges of the frame.

There is moderate amounts of barrel distortion and vignette present.

I corrected the barrel distortion with a +9 (nothing extreme) and about two stops of vignette (+61). I will note that vignette dramatically reduces by F4.

It seems like people inevitably are interested in seeing how much of the full frame sensor APS-C lenses cover. In this case, basically nothing more than what the typical APS-C crop covers. There is serious mechanical vignette if I switch to full frame.

If I compare the out of camera APS-C crop to what I cropped from the full frame image, I find that the two crops are basically identical.

Bottom line: don’t buy this lens thinking that you are getting some cheat code to a bargain full frame lens!

So how about resolution and contrast? My tests have been done on a 26MP APS-C mode of my Sony a7RV. Here’s the test chart:

Here are F1.8 crops at roughly 180% from across the frame (center, mid-frame, and lower right corner).

There’s a very strong showing in the center, and I feel like the midframe is a bit better than I expected. There’s fairly good detail entering the corner, though it fades right near the edge. Contrast in the corners is not exceptional.

Real world results composed in the rule of thirds zones look pretty great, with good detail and contrast.

Stopping down to F4 shows little improvement in the already excellent center, but there is a fairly dramatic improvement in contrast in the mid-frame and corners.

By F5.6 detail across the frame is impressively good.

That tells us that there is plenty of sharpness potential at landscape apertures, and that proves the case. Landscape images have nice detail across the frame.

Sharpness peaks around F5.6, with F8 being very close to the same. Diffraction will start to soften the image after that, with a mild amount at F11 but a more obvious amount by F16:

The 50mm F1.8 stood out for its lovely bokeh, but the 27mm isn’t quite as nice in this regard.

It’s not bad, but there is a bit more outlining than what I would like. There’s also a bit of a swirl effect due to the cat eye shape near the edges of the frame. You either like that look…or you don’t.

I did find that the subject isolation was fairly nice, as the good contrast in the center two thirds helps the subject pop.

7Artisans can use some improvement to their lens coatings, as flare is definitely an issue. Certain angles will produce pronounced flare artifacts of varying kinds. It’s not completely destructive, but there’s no question that it is very obvious.

Some of those effects can be used artistically, but it will take a little skill to ensure that they are constructive rather than destructive.

The colors from the lens were interesting. I sometimes got a slightly lower contrast look that was quite cinematic.

In other settings contrast seemed strong.

I suspect you’ll find that the look of your images will vary a fair bit depending on your shooting conditions. That may have something to do with the low element count and lack of coatings on the lens. I found that it behaved more like a vintage lens, and often I rather liked it. I felt like it had character and wasn’t the typical modern, perfectly corrected lens.

So not a flawless performance, but for a very inexpensive lens there’s a lot of positives here. If you’d like to see more image samples, check out the image gallery here.

Conclusion

I actually had a lot of fun with the inexpensive 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8. I mostly said “yes” to reviewing it because it is an autofocus lens from a company that is still very new to making autofocus lenses, but I found that I often liked the unique look of images I got from the lens, and also appreciated its very small form factor that was very easy to throw in my bag as an extra to bring along.

Though priced at just $129 USD, the AF 27mm F2.8 actually has a nice build quality, pretty decent autofocus, and, as we’ve just seen, surprisingly strong optics.

There’s no bells and whistles here, but this is actually a really good little lens for the money. If you want an inexpensive near “normal” lens for your Sony APS-C camera that is easy to bring along, the 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 is well worth your consideration.

Pros:

Nice looking lens with nice build
USB-C port for firmware updates
Good manual focus ring and experience
Autofocus motor is quiet and fast
Good sharpness wide open
Excellent sharpness stopped down
Fairly good bokeh
Interesting look to images
Good colors
Very useful focal length
Great price to performance ratio

Cons:

No lens hood
Flare issues
Focal length doesn’t seem to report properly
Sunstars a little ugly

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the 7Artisans AF 50mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

___________________________________________________________________

Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

__________________________________________________________________

Purchase the Sony a6600 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Sony a6400 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

_________________________________________________________________

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Keywords: 7Artisans, 7Artisans 27mm, AF, 27mm, F2.8, STM, 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8, Full APS-C, Review, Sony a6700, a6000, a6400, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 STM Gallery

Dustin Abbott

April 25th, 2024

Just a month ago I released my first review of an autofocusing 7Artisans lens (all previous reviews had been of manual focus only lenses). The AF 50mm F1.8 was an interesting lens with a surprising number of premium elements for its relatively inexpensive price. But 7Artisans was immediately back with a new lens; in this case a radically smaller 27mm F2.8 autofocusing lens….this time for APS-C cameras. The new 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 is a surprisingly complete and competent little prime lens for a bargain price of just $129 USD. I’ve reviewed it on Sony E-mount, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see other lens mounts follow in the future. Is this a lens you should consider? Find out my thoughts in the video review below or by reading my text review here…or just enjoy the photos below.

https://youtu.be/eOX9gvIqrNM

Thanks to 7Artisans for sending me a review sample of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the APS-C mode (26MP) of my Sony a7RV camera.

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Designing for a smaller APS-C sensor has allowed 7Artisans to create a very different kind of lens here; one radically smaller than the 72mm (2.83″) in diameter and 104mm (4.09″) in length of the 50mm F1.8. The new lens is 64mm in diameter (2.51″) and just 48mm (1.89″) in length. It weighs just 172g (6oz), a far cry from the 421g (14.85oz) of 7Artisans last lens.

27mm is an odd focal length for full frame, but on APS-C it is one of my favorite focal lengths. This is roughly 41mm in a full frame equivalent (Sony’s APS-C crop is 1.5x), which makes it a nice compromise between a 35mm and 50mm lens. I love it as a walkaround or everyday focal length, as it captures images similar to the way that the eye sees them.

It’s really astounding how good of lenses we are getting from companies like 7Artisans at such an inexpensive price. One wouldn’t expect much from a lens costing just $129 USD, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by pretty much all aspects of this lens. It’s surprisingly sharp even at F2.8, has solid autofocus, and has a build quality that is really pretty fantastic.

Photos of the 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8

Photos Taken with the 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8

_________________________________________________________________________

GEAR USED:

Purchase the 7Artisans AF 50mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

___________________________________________________________________

Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

__________________________________________________________________

Purchase the Sony a6600 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Sony a6400 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

_________________________________________________________________

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Keywords: 7Artisans, 7Artisans 27mm, AF, 27mm, F2.8, STM, 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8, Full APS-C, Review, Sony a6700, a6000, a6400, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN (Canon RF) Review

Dustin Abbott

October 21st, 2024

Sigma 10-18mm RF Optical Performance

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

GEAR USED:

Purchase the Sigma 10-18mm RF @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sigma 18-50mm RF @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Canon EOS R50 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase a Canon EOS R7 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z-Mount Gallery

Dustin Abbott

October 14th, 2024

Photos of the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z

Photos taken with the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 @ Viltrox | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Pergear

Purchase the Nikon Z8 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z Review

Dustin Abbott

October 14th, 2024

Build and Handling

Image Quality Breakdown

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

_________________________________________________________________________

GEAR USED:

Purchase the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 @ Viltrox | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Pergear

Purchase the Nikon Z8 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN ART Gallery

Dustin Abbott

September 5th, 2024

Build and Handling

Photos taken with the Sigma 28-105mm DN

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 ART @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony a7IV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DG DN | ART Review

Dustin Abbott

September 5th, 2024

Build and Handling

Autofocus and Video

Image Quality Breakdown

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

_________________________________________________________________________

GEAR USED:

Purchase the Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 ART @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sony a7IV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN RF Review

Dustin Abbott

August 5th, 2024

Sigma 18-50X Optical Performance

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

GEAR USED:

Purchase the Sigma 18-50mm RF @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Canon EOS R50 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase a Canon EOS R7 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

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