Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L USM Review

Dustin Abbott

April 4th, 2016

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Reviewing a Legend

Whenever the Canon EF 50mm f/L is mentioned photographer’s eyes light up. This lens was only made for about ten years, and only made in any kind of quantity for a few years, but has quickly attained legendary status among collectors and those that dream of owning one. After having used it for a few months, I am left to publish a review unlike no other I have ever done. This is a lens that isn’t going to be very practical for most users, but then again, who spends big money to collect practical things? Is the Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L more than just a collector’s item? Read on to find out.

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Size and Build

There is a reason that every other full frame compatible 50mm lens has a smaller maximum aperture than this lens. Compared to the lenses of its era (1989-2000) it is massive! Its optical formula is 11 elements in 9 groups and includes two expensive aspherical elements. It has 8 aperture blades, but, as we’ll see in the bokeh section, these are not curved so the round aperture shape is lost fairly quickly. It is housed in a mostly metal body that is 91.5mm around and 81.5mm long (fat rather than long). Weight is 985g (ouch!) Canon’s other 50mm option at the time, the 50mm f/1.8, weighed a paltry 190g by comparison, making the 50mm f/1.0L a full 5 times heavier! Even the 50mm f/1.2L (click for my review) that would come much later (2007) weighs an insignificant 545g by comparison. These days lenses like the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART and the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55mm have equaled and even surpassed this lens in size, but there is no question that your wrists get a bit of workout with it and it will definitely feel front heavy on lighter camera bodies. It is worth noting that there was no direct replacement of this lens; the 50mm f/1.2L didn’t come for 7 more years. The current EF 50mm f/1.4 (sadly) came a few years later (sadly because this lens – now 23 years old – is still Canon’s lame duck de facto 50mm option). Needless to say that the extreme size, weight, and price of this lens (roughly $1800 at the time, much higher when inflation is considered today) did not help it become a big seller in its day.

But the size and weight of such a lens is not the main reason why no one makes a lens like this currently. The extreme nature of designing around such a large aperture brings other huge challenges, including autofocus and optical engineering. We’ll touch on those in a moment. Still, this was an engineering tour-de-force, and was a shot across the bow of Nikon showing just what Canon could do. That engineering expertise payed off in another lens with much broader appeal (hint: it still occupies the same body as this lens).

The lens includes the ES-79II hood, one of the older styles with snap-tabs instead of bayonet style. I’m not crazy about this style myself as it always feels a bit insecure to me. One other aspect of the lens hood I’m less than crazy about is how much it flares out. It can be reversed for storage, but makes the footprint of the lens much, much wider.

The view at the back of the lens is fairly unusual. Most lenses that I test these days are rear focusing (the rear element moves forwards and back), but the rear view of the 50mm f/1.0L reveals a solid, fixed chunk of glass. I’ve never seen a lens quite like it before (the 85L II is similar). The lens is not internally focusing, and there is an inner barrel at the front of the lens that extends forward as the lens is focused down towards minimum focus. This is called a floating focus system. On a positive note, it doesn’t rotate when focusing, so use of a polarizer won’t be affected (and you are going to need filters on this lens!) It uses a 72mm filter thread (very common among Canon L series primes). Unless you are shooting in very low light, be prepared to throw a filter on the front of this lens to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor. In daylight you will be constantly exceeding even a 1/8000^th shutter speed at f/1.0.

But the tradeoff for all of this is that this lens lets in more light than just about anything else ever made for a 35mm sensor. It lets in a full stop more of light at f/1.0 than the far more common f/1.4 lenses do. In that sense it is the ultimate low light performer, allowing you to stop action in a way that slower lenses can only dream of (and f/2.8 is REALLY slow by comparison here! This lens is 3 full stops faster!!) To bring this into more familiar perspective, that is like the difference between f/2.8 and f/8!

The build of the lens is incredibly familiar (and current!) for a lens that is 27 years old. The reason that it looks so familiar is that the current 85mm f/1.2L II inherited the same physical body. The copy I’m reviewing has held up extremely well and doesn’t show its age in the least. This was (is) a well-engineered instrument. The squat frame has a distance window (with hyperfocal makings for f/4, 8, 11, and f/16 – minimum aperture for this lens).

In a somewhat unusual step for this kind of the lens there is a focus limiter. You can set the lens to focus from .6m to infinity or from 1m to infinity. Doesn’t seem like much of a difference, does it? But then you enable manual focus (select MF and the camera must be powered on) and realize that there is more focus throw between .6m and 1m on this lens than there is for the whole focus range on the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART! That incredibly tiny depth of field means that there are incredible amount of potential focus points between minimum focus and 5 or 6 feet out. The focus limiter is also the MF switch at its final setting.

The lens can only focus down to a very poor .6 meters (roughly two feet), and the resulting maximum magnification figure (.11x) is poorer than I’ve seen for any other 50mm lens (my older Zeiss Planar T* 1.7/50mm is a close second). The current class leader (in a non-macro form) is the Tamron 45mm f/1.8 VC and its .29x maximum magnification. The difference between the magnification of these two lenses is staggering. The Tamron shot is the bottom one – both of these are shot at the respective minimum focus distances for the lens.

What is unquestionable is that this is a great lens to look at! Here are few more shots of this beauty:

Autofocus Findings

First of all, it is actually somewhat incredible that a lens like this has autofocus. This is a huge engineering accomplishment. The strain put on an autofocus system by such a large aperture is incredible, as is the amount of force required to move such heavy elements. Canon managed this in a unique way, combining a focus by wire system that isn’t dissimilar in that sense to modern STM lenses, though the actual focus motor here is a ring USM (Ultrasonic Motor). Considering the challenges presented by the extreme nature of this lens, the autofocus is really quite a success. It actually probably works better today than it did at the time that it was manufactured because of better autofocus systems along with the ability to perform microadjustment to calibrate the lens to the camera body.

Overall resolution isn’t fantastic, but this f/1.0 shot is certainly nailed as far as focus.

It is interesting to calibrate such a massive aperture lens. The amount of glass in it is incredible, and knowing how shallow that depth of field is makes me leery that the lens would be able to accurately autofocus. Although the lens needed a -12 (a fairly large adjustment), it focused quite consistently at that setting in my tests.

Autofocus performance is actually fairly good, particularly at close to medium distances. The relatively low sharpness (combination of low contrast, relatively low resolution, and high chromatic aberrations) on the subject in comparison to many high resolution lenses might tempt you to think the image isn’t focused well, but I found that in the majority of my shots good focus had been achieved. You also have to focus very carefully, as depth of field is very, very thin at f/1.0 at most focus distances. Using the focus and recompose technique may not work in some instances. In one case, I took a photo of a barn and thought the AF literally couldn’t hit the side of a barn, but then I noticed that some very thin reeds sticking out of the snow about 10 feet in front of the barn were in focus. That point of contrast had obviously caught the AF’s attention, and the very thin DOF meant that the barn was not in focus at all despite my being at least thirty feet from it and over twenty from the reeds.

A lens like this doesn’t only put pressure on the AF system; it puts a lot of pressure on the photographer. Still, my feeling is that the aging AF system in the 50mm f/1.0L is still doing a pretty impressive job considering the challenge it faces – at 5 feet the depth of field is a tiny 2 inches; an f/1.8 has twice as much DOF to play with. I will admit that my expectations were lower with this lens than modern ones, but while not perfect, the AF system in the 50mm f/1.0L really does quite a decent job of accurately focusing.

Autofocus speed is not nearly as impressive. The 85mm f/1.2L II inherited the “shell” of this lens (they are physically almost identical), but it seems like they share leisurely autofocus speed as well. Minor focus changes are relatively quick, but major changes (particularly towards minimum focus) are very slow. You definitely get a sliding noise as the elements move into place, though the actual AF motor is relatively quiet.

There is full time manual override, but only if the shutter button is held down halfway while turning the focus ring. On that point, even if the lens is switched into MF the focus ring will only do something if the camera is powered on and active. The actual action of the focus ring is quite smooth, in part because the connection to the moving of the elements is electronic, not mechanical. Even in manual focus mode it is actually the USM motor that moves the elements, much like modern STM lenses. The copy that I’m reviewing is sometimes sluggish to “wake up” and accept manual input, so occasionally it can be a little exasperating.

Still, this lens is definitely unique in its ability to accurately autofocus at such a massive aperture value and in many ways behaves like any other lens.

Image Quality

This is a demanding lens…period. It is capable of producing very unique results, but it challenges you to use it the right way. If you plan to shoot outdoors, for example, know that at wide apertures you are likely to be butting up against the limits of your camera’s shutter speed all the time. My 6D’s limit is a weak 1/4000^th, but even the 1/8000^th limit of my 70D is regularly exceeded. My solution was to use a three stop ND filter (ND8), but even with that on a bright sunny day I was regularly hitting max shutter speed. The inverse of this, of course, is that you can shoot in very low lighting conditions and maintain a slow shutter speed. Just to give you an example: I was calibrating a Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 VC lens, and with the lighting on the test chart it was metering at 1/400^th second (ISO 100, f/1.8). Just for the fun of it, I aimed the 50L at the chart at f/1.0 – the camera metered at 1/2500^th of a second!!! That shows the difference between f/1.0 and f/1.8 and demonstrates just how much light this baby can suck in.

There is no other lens that I know of that can gather more light than this lens. There is a Mitakon 50mm f/.95 lens, but it is for a mirrorless and manual focus only. The difference in aperture between these lenses becomes little more than technicality. That aside, you will be unlikely to be in many situations where you can’t shoot at a relatively low ISO setting.

Clearly an area where this lens shines in its very shallow depth of field and subject isolation. A great application of this lens is not only throw backgrounds out of focus but also foregrounds. If you isolate your subject between a diffused foreground and background you maximize that huge aperture. Shoot with corners in the frame, or foreground bushes, trees, or other objects. They disappear into a defused blur and allow you to creatively frame subjects in a very unique way. I shot the shot above through a chair. The wooden slats are only a vague frame here.

I ran an Aperture Sharpness Profile on the lens. At no aperture is it as sharp as most of the modern lenses that I review, with peak sharpness coming at f/4, with consistently high results coming between f/3.2 and f/5. The lens doesn’t really reach a high level of sharpness until f/2.2. Diffraction sets in at f/10, but the lens stays as sharp through f/16 as it is at f/2.

Apparent resolution takes a hit because of some other optical defects, namely low contrast at wide apertures and strong amounts of chromatic aberrations. This tends to make the details a little hazy and mushy when viewed at a pixel level. The whole picture has a different look than what I’m familiar with; almost like a slight filter has been applied. You will either love or hate the look. I shot a few video segments with it and I was personally less than thrilled with the final product. The shot below shows this “look” at f/1.0:

The Piano that Time Forgot (Canon 50mm f/1.0L)

This “haze” makes details indistinct due to the chromatic aberrations, lack of contrast, and low resolution. I dinged the new Tamron 45mm f/1.8 VC for its chromatic aberrations, but this shot shows how stunningly different its contrast and CA control is compared to the f/1.0L:

Chromatic aberration correction is a challenge with this lens because of the width of the aberrations. Fine lines often don’t resolve with hard edges but are blurred, meaning that the chromatic aberrations can cover a wide area and don’t clean up particularly well. This shows a particularly bad example and what it looks like after extensive processing to remove the CA:

Another area where the lens fails modern standards is in its flare control. It flares strongly and uniquely when the sun is in the frame. Curved ghosting lines head out towards the edges of the frame, and a general loss of contrast (veiling) occurs.

The lens also heavily vignettes at wide apertures, but not necessarily much more than many other wide aperture lenses. There isn’t a standard profile for the lens, so you will need to find your preferred look manually if you want to correct for it. Vignette is mostly gone by f/4 (except extreme edges).

All of this aside, in real life testing sharpness is actually very adequate…with a major caveat. The lens is clearly optimized for portrait distances, and resolution isn’t very impressive at wide aperture beyond about 15 feet to infinity. This is one area where I feel modern primes have made great strides, and recent lenses like the 35L II, Zeiss Otus lenses, Sigma ART primes along with the new Tamron primes have demonstrated the ability to resolve highly at all focus distances, not just a certain “optimized” zone. In this case, however, one is hardly well served using this lens as a wide aperture landscape lens – that isn’t at all what it is about.

But for some photographers all of these flaws are welcome; they enjoy shooting with this lens because of them and the distinct look that it gives their photos. Different strokes for different folks!

Check out the image gallery for this lens to see a lot more photos.

Bokeh Monster?

I encourage you to check out this video segment where I interactively break down the bokeh and image quality from the lens:

When you hear f/, you immediately think of utterly brilliant bokeh. The lens is definitely capable of an incredible amount of blur both before and after the narrow plane of focus, but the bi-aspheric design of the lens results in some unique (positive spin) or downright funky (honest) looking bokeh.

I actually prefer the look of the bokeh on this lens on an APS-C sensor where the mirror box doesn’t cause the clipping effect on the bokeh circles. Here is a look at the bokeh at various apertures on APS-C (crop).

Here is the bokeh at various apertures on full frame:

Contrary to expectations you may not want to put out of focus highlights in the frame with this lens. The bokeh is actually better without specular highlights (bokeh circles). You can develop a lot of “cream” with this lens when you shoot at relatively close distances. Look at how diffused the ping pong net is just a little bit beyond the paddles and ball here:

Subject isolation is a strength, but bokeh highlights…not so much. Some people will love the uniqueness of the bokeh, but it definitely doesn’t suit conventional tastes. I prefer bokeh shots without highlights in them. I see some of these shots are being more artistic:

Conclusion

Without being contradictory, it is easy to see why the Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L never sold much but also easy to see why people are desperate to acquire the rare copy that shows up on the used market. The lens is far too inaccessible for the typical photographer and too optically flawed for most working professionals. The Canon 50mm f/1.2L has its own share of detractors, but in every way it is far more accessible than its venerable (and more extreme) ancestor. But it is the extreme nature of 50mm f/1.0L that also makes it so desirable as a collector’s item. People are intrigued by extremes, and even the optical flaws of the lens will be desirable to some; a challenge to overcome.

Supercars are not very practical, but they are highly desirable. Think of the Canon 50mm f/1.0L the same way. Putting a man on the moon had little practical value, but it made a Cold War statement for the United States that screamed, “Look what we can do.” The technology developed in the Apollo missions served many other more practical purposes later.

Canon didn’t make this lens (in quantity) for long, but it was a shot across the bows of Nikon, Pentax, and others that said, “Look what we can do!” The technologies (and lens body) pioneered in this lens were implemented into the far more practical (yet still extreme) EF 85mm f/1.2L, and seven years later evolved into the EF 85mm f/1.2L II lens; one of the most prized portrait lenses in the world. The burst of creativity and advanced engineering that resulted in this lens enabled Canon to create more accessible and successful autofocusing f/1.2 lenses (50mm and 85mm), a feat that no one else is replicating even in 2016. It is worth noting that still today Canon is the only one producing autofocusing lenses with an f/1.2 maximum aperture.

Was the Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L USM a success? That depends on what metric you use. Canon was clearly successful in make something so extreme work, and my review copy is still working well some 25+ years later. It is far from being the most practical optical instrument I’ve ever used, but yet I can clearly so why so many collectors long for this lens and why the price for one is likely to only continue to climb in the future.

Thanks to Craig from Canon Rumors for loaning me his personal copy of this lens for Q1 2016 so that I could thoroughly review it. I appreciate it!

Pros:

Bragging rights of having the biggest aperture in the room
f/1.0
Your neighbor won’t have one
Taking pictures of it is as fun as taking pictures with it
Fairly accurate autofocus even at f/1.0
f/1.0
Incredible subject isolation
f/1.0
Value likely to only grow

Cons:

You don’t need f/1.0, and the optics are compromised to get there
Low resolution, low contrast
Poor flare and chromatic aberration control
Funky, busy bokeh in many situations
Costs as much as a Zeiss Otus 1.4/55mm…used
Heavy
Autofocus is on the slow side

Gear Used:

Canon EOS 6D DSLR Camera (Body Only)
Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L USM
Adobe Lightroom CC Software for Mac and Windows (Boxed Version)
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Alien Skin Exposure X (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)

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Zeiss Milvus Planar T* 1.4/85mm Review

Dustin Abbott

February 16th, 2016

Zeiss certainly surprised me when in September they announced and quickly released a whole new line of lenses under the name Milvus. Yes, line. In fact, there are six new lenses that were announced and then subsequently released under the Milvus name, including a 21mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.4, 50mm f/2 Makro-Planar, 85mm f/1.5, and 100mm f/2 Makro-Planar. All of these received a handsome new design, but not all of them received major optical upgrades. There are two lenses that received major upgrades, and they are the 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4. Two lenses that could relatively easily receive some trickle down goodness from the intense development that had resulted in the Zeiss Otus 55mm f/1.4 and Otus 85mm f/1.4 (click links for my reviews of those lenses) – two of the highest resolving SLR lenses the world has ever seen. With that in mind, I was particularly excited to get my hands on the Milvus 85mm because the Otus 85mm f/1.4 stands as the one lens that has probably excited me more than any other. And so, it with great pleasure that I have spent some time with the new Zeiss Milvus Planar T* 85mm f/1.4 to critique and enjoy this newest offering from Zeiss. Here are my findings.

Build Quality

This video will give you a careful look at the design, build, and handling of the lens.

When you open the box (a presentation style case like the ones the Otus lenses come in) the Otus DNA and family resemblance is pretty strong. The Milvus 1.4/85mm is a similarly dense metal and glass construction that looks more like an Otus than any of the other Zeiss designs of the past. Zeiss has made one significant nod towards the revised priorities of modern photographers by including moisture resistance/weather sealing into the design. This is, to my knowledge, the first Zeiss line to ever include this, and I liked the uniquely Zeiss touch of having the rubber gasket near the lens mount in Zeiss blue rather than the traditional black. There is more than the gasket, though; the lens has a variety of internal seals to keep moisture out. The end result is a lens that is built to survive a lifetime and to handle real world use of every kind.

The previous Zeiss Planar T* 1.4/85mm was a relatively modest sized lens (65mm long and 670g in weight), while the Otus 1.4/85mm was by far the largest 85mm to ever hit the shelves. The Milvus 85 definitely skews towards the Otus in overall dimensions. The current trend in lens design seems to be towards ultimate resolution and optical performance rather than too much attempt at keeping lenses compact. The Milvus measures a longish 4.45” (113mm) and a thick 3.54” (90mm) in circumference. This is a bit slimmer (11mm less) and shorter (11mm again) than the Otus. What is surprising, however, is that the Milvus actually outweighs the Otus by 40g and weighs in at a very hefty 2.82 pounds (1280g). This isn’t prohibitively heavy, but also only undercuts the weight of your typical 70-200mm f/2.8 zooms by a few hundred grams. Between it and the Canon 50mm f/1.0L I was reviewing at the same time my wrists definitely got a workout!

I have come to recognize over my review period that this is an issue to some Zeiss fans. Zeiss lenses have always been dense because of their high grade construction, but they have also often been compact. The move towards ever larger and heavier lenses will turn some off. The problem is that the new camera sensors are ever more demanding, and what was optically acceptable in the past doesn’t look quite so good on a 30+ MP sensor. Expect this trend among professional grade lenses to continue for a while if my review of lenses from a number of manufacturers is any indication.

The Otus and Milvus lines share a number of design cues in their elegant, semi-gloss metal bodies, but there are a few areas where the lines are distinguished. The Otus lenses feature engraved text filled with yellow paint (a point I found a bit garish, though it serves a practical purpose). The writing on the Milvus lens is also etched, but the paint scheme is a more sedate (and elegant) white. Earlier Zeiss designs featured metal focus rings (which I liked just fine), but the Otus lenses introduced a rubberized surface on the focus ring, with the Milvus line partially embraces. The Milvus focus ring is nicely wide (3 centimeters exactly), but only about a quarter of it is all that rubberized surface. Nearly three quarters feature a hybrid of rubberized surface and etched metal with the various numbers of the focus distance scale printed on it. This ring is located fairly close to the lens mount. Unfortunately this makes it a bit less easy to find using only your fingers than the completely rubberized ring of the Otus, which is also placed a little more centrally on the lens barrel. The Milvus’ focus ring also requires a bit more effort than that of the buttery smooth Otus (which has perhaps the world’s nicest manual focus feel).

The lens has the long focus throw that you would expect from a manual focus only lens. It has about 260 degrees of travel, enough to nail focus at all focus distances. Going from one extreme to the other is going to take a bit of focusing, but most of the time you will be making more minor adjustments. Zeiss lenses do have an electronic coupling to the body, so the aperture can be controlled from the body and the camera meters as normal. You will receive full EXIF data (a big deal to me) and the only real difference in operation from other lenses is that there is no autofocus. The lens does provide a focus confirmation that will beep and/or light up the appropriate focus point (or the selected focus point) when focus has been achieved. I find that between the focus confirmation and visual confirmation via the EG-S focus screen installed on my Canon 6D body that my focus keeper rate is very high. The EG-S Matte Precision focus screen makes it much easier to visually see focus and actually makes composition a more creative process (and, I would say, more enjoyable). It is $35 well spent if you want to use manual focus lenses, and it won’t interfere with autofocus lenses in any way. I only rarely used Live View magnification during my review period, but zooming into most all of my images showed great focus (I do have some practice as this is ninth Zeiss lens I’ve reviewed or owned in the past two years along with a number of other MF only lenses from different manufacturers). Here’s a sample along with the crop:

Another distinction between the Milvus and Otus lenses is that with the hood in place on the Otus the gap between the lens barrel and the lens hood remained constant. On the Milvus lens that very tight tolerance only exists when the lens is focused towards infinity. An inner barrel extends a bit as you focus towards minimum focus and the lens hood moves with it. At minimum focus there is nearly a centimeter gap between the outer barrel and the lens hood. There isn’t any real issue with this other than the fact that it slightly diminishes the “lines” of the lens in this position.

The Milvus 85 is a bit more squat than the Otus 85, which features more curves (in part because it swoops out to accommodate a fairly massive 86mm front element. The Milvus 85 flares out quickly from the lens mount and then its girth is essentially constant. Its shape isn’t quite as elegant, though it is still a beautiful lens.

I did note one potentially significant build issue related to this, however, at least on my main test body for the lens (a Canon EOS 6D); the squat shape of the lens leaves little room between the lens barrel and the grip. I found the back of my fingers feeling just the slightest bit “squeezed” when holding my camera – something I’ve never experienced before. The Otus 85 is an even larger lens, but it was a bit more contoured so didn’t flare quite so widely that close to the lens mount. I have medium sized hands, but I would consider my fingers to be fairly slim, so the fact that I experienced this issue in a minor way means that others with thicker fingers might experience it in a more significant way…particularly if wearing gloves (something most of us here in Canada are doing in January and February). A Nikon user pointed out that there is a little more room on the Nikon mount of the lens because it includes an aperture ring in the design.

One positive change from the Otus is that the front element filter thread of the Milvus 1.4/85mm is a far more common and accessible 77mm as compared to the very uncommon 86mm filter thread on the Otus. Most photographers are likely to have a few filters in this size. On that note, I recommend that you have both a circular polarizer and a neutral density filter on hand for the lens. Wide aperture lenses like this let in a lot of light, and that’s wonderful, but on a bright day you may find yourself hitting the maximum shutter speed on your camera at wide apertures. Stopping down the aperture is always an option, but if you want to retain the shallow depth of field look a better option is to add an ND filter (I favor ND8 filters – three stops) which helps limit the amount of light that hits the sensor while still enabling you to use your lens at that wide aperture where it can produce beautifully unique images. A circular polarizer can also help with this to a slightly lesser extent and can also reduce reflections and/or enrich colors. On that note, the front element of the lens does not rotate during focus and won’t interfere with CPL use.

The Zeiss Milvus 1.4/85mm is a beautifully built lens with an attention to detail and construction that exceeds essentially all other competitors, and, with the addition of weather sealing, exceeds even its internal competitors. One final thing worth noting is that both the front and the rear caps on the lens are nice upgrades from older Zeiss lenses. Though Zeiss is a German company, the lenses are mostly manufactured in Japan.

Here’s a few more looks at this beauty:

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Image Quality

I recommend that you spend some time with this video where I interactively look at the image quality and bokeh and will give you a closer look at a variety of images.

The Milvus 85 has 11 elements in 9 groups and features Zeiss’ renowned T* coatings to help with flare resistance and improve contrast. This is a similar optical design to the Otus (also 11 elements in 9 groups), but do note that both lenses have separate optical designs.

The Milvus 85 is a definite recipient of the engineering that went into the Otus 85. It has incredible resolution at f/1.4 that is only surpassed (minutely) by the Otus 85 itself at the 85mm focal length, meaning that the Milvus 85 is one of the most highly resolving 35mm format lenses in the world. In fact, while the Otus does exceed the Milvus lens in the center of the frame, the Milvus actually resolves better in the corners. This wide open landscape shot at infinity focus shows the amazing resolving power of the Milvus even at f/1.4.

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The crops are across the frame from left to right and show an incredible amount of resolution of all of these fine details despite the wide aperture. Very, very impressive!

85mm lenses lenses are never noted for their maximum magnification or reproduction ratio, and the Milvus 85mm is no exception. It slots right between the Planar T* 1.4/85mm (.11x) and the Otus (.13x) at a very average .12x magnification. Minimum focus distance is 2.62” (80cm), though this can be improved through the use of extension tubes. The bare lens focuses down closely enough for headshots, though don’t expect to be doing anything remotely like macro work. This gives you an idea of how closely you can focus:

Those interested in a top notch portrait lens may find even more to love with the Milvus than they do with the Otus. The Otus is a bit sharper in the center, but the Milvus is slightly sharper towards the edges of the frame. On this point I will cede the advantage to the Otus (I would prefer to reduce sharpness in a portrait if necessary as trying to add sharpness is far more destructive), but the Milvus does have arguably better bokeh performance. I think that many portrait photographers will find that the Milvus 85 offers the perfect balance between resolution and bokeh. The bokeh is extremely smooth, and the Milvus excelled in my specular highlight test in a way that few lenses do. There is no busyness in the center of the circular highlights, and the transition from focus to defocus is very nice and smooth. The Otus lenses show a slight trace of “onion bokeh” (particularly as the lens is stopped down), but the Milvus retains very smooth bokeh that has no busyness. There is an inner line when stopped, but it is not strongly pronounced. Here’s a look at the aperture shape and bokeh as the lens is stopped down from f/1.4 to f/5.6:

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This is one of the best performances I have seen in this kind of test, with remarkably smooth bokeh highlight circles and awesome contrast and sharpness on the subject even wide open. This is a rare combination in my experience.

The Milvus has that unique high end Zeiss look with great color rendition and strong contrast, though I don’t think the microcontrast (at a pixel level) is quite as high as the Otus. The Otus 85 floored me optically in a way that no lens has before. The wide open resolution and the biting contrast has been the standard that I’ve judged every other lens by since. In the last two years, however, I’ve reviewed a number of new lenses from Canon, Sigma, Tamron, and even Samyang/Rokinon that have strained mightily towards the bar set by Zeiss with the Otus lenses. Lenses have gotten better, and, while the Milvus is an incredible optical tool, I’m a little less wowed simply because, well, I’ve become a bit jaded by seeing so many amazing lenses. That being said, though, the only 85mm lens that can surpass it is the Otus 85mm. Expect JPEG images to be rich with contrast and color, though. Here’s a look at an out of camera JPEG of some tulips:

This is a pretty lousy time of year for doing portraits (temperatures hit as low as -40 during my review period), but I did grab a few portrait images that help show what the lens is capable of:

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For portrait work the great blend of amazing resolution at f/1.4 combined with the ability to create very nice background blur makes it an attractive option for portrait photographers. Those that work in a studio will also value the resolution and great color reproduction.

A couple of other Milvus 85 strengths are extremely low chromatic aberrations (near imperceptible even at wide open aperture) and nearly non-existent distortion. Both of these contribute to the strengths of this lens for portraiture and for general purpose shooting. It is worth noting that this lens works very nicely for chronicling events in crowds because of the great subject isolation and nice fade to defocus.

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Thus far I have only encountered only one optical flaw to note, and that is a fairly pronounced vignette at wide apertures. At f/1.4 it is definitely noticeable and might have a real impact upon your images (particularly if you are shooting JPEGs. This vignette is slightly heavier in the corners than any of the major competitors, and the only upside is that is fairly linear. Here’s a look at the difference between an uncorrected and then corrected RAW image using the standard profile in Lightroom/ACR.

In some cases strongly vignette can be desirable, but I would definitely prefer to add it in post than have to remove it in post.

In the interest of space here, I won’t bombard you with images, but I suggest that you spend a few minutes looking through the Lens Image Gallery here for many more images.

Price and Market Positioning

Winter Pastels (Zeiss Milvus 85mm f/1.4)

The brief for the Otus lenses was simple: build the best lens possible at the focal length without engineering constraints on price or lens size. The Otus lenses have each had a gasp-worthy price, with the “cheapest” (1.4/55mm) at $4000 USD, the 85mm at $4500, and the newly announced 1.4/28mm at even more shocking $5000. These were clearly never intended to be volume sellers, but, much like high end “halo cars” for car manufacturers, they are showcases for engineering and technical excellence. The Otus lenses have each been benchmarks that others can aspire to. As for commercial success, the market demographic is mostly for discriminating professionals and/or well-heeled amateurs.

The Milvus line is different. Zeiss has distilled a good portion of the Otus excellence into a lens designed perhaps not for the masses but at least for the mainstream market. It is still a big, heavy, manual focus lens, but I think it is notable that its price at a hair under $1800 undercuts the Canon 85mm f/1.2L by a fair margin and is a good 2 ½ times cheaper than the Otus. In short, I suspect that the Milvus 85 is the volume player that will help Zeiss recoup some of the R&D costs that they sunk into the Otus lenses. I think there are a number of photographers that have lusted after the Otus 85 but couldn’t justify the expense that will take the plunge on the Milvus because they consider it an almost as good lens at a far more attainable price. I know I am certainly viewing it in that light!

Conclusion

By now you probably are familiar with the Zeiss conundrum. Amazing optics, beautiful lens designs, and the sense of a finely crafted precision instrument. But all of that goodness comes at a price, both in price (high) and weight (heavy), and, simply put, many photographers couldn’t be bothered with anything without autofocus. But chances are you already knew these things, and, if the price, size, and manual-focus-only function of the Milvus doesn’t put you off, then probably nothing else will. The Milvus 85mm is an exquisite optical instrument with a build that matches the amazing optics. Other than some vignette at wide apertures, there is nothing else to criticize here. The chromatic aberrations are near perfectly controlled, contrast is exquisite, distortion essentially non-existent, the bokeh is beautiful, and the resolution is extremely high. The single greatest challenge to the lens is that most modern cameras are not well suited to manual focus, but the use of a precision focus screen like the EG-S for my 6D helps immensely. The $1799 asking price of the lens is high when compared to the Sigma EX 85mm f/1.4, but the Milvus easily surpasses the Sigma in every metric. It undercuts the Canon 85mm f/1.2L by several hundred dollars while providing better optics and build. But probably the best argument for the Zeiss Milvus 85mm f/1.4 is that it is 95% of the Otus 85mm f/1.4 at 42% of the price. If you have longed for Otus but found it out of reach, the Milvus will probably be the lower hanging fruit that you can grab and savor for many years to come.

Pros:

Optical performance only (marginally) bested by the Otus
Includes weather sealing
Gorgeous build quality and design
Great color rendering
Beautiful bokeh (better than Otus)
Almost no chromatic aberrations
Almost no distortion
Strong contrast
95% of the Otus at 42% of the price
You might be able to afford it

Cons:

Very heavy lens – even slightly heavier than the Otus
Those with thick fingers may find little clearance between the lens and camera grip
Manual focus only
Fairly heavy vignette at wide apertures
Focus action/ergonomics not quite as good as the Otus
Relatively expensive

I want to thank Zeiss North America for loaning me this review sample. There is a great staff there that I have enjoyed communicating with!

Gear Used:

Canon EOS 6D DSLR Camera (Body Only)
Zeiss Milvus Planar T* 1.4/85mm Lens
Super Precision Matte Eg-S Interchangeable Focusing Screen
Adobe Lightroom CC Software for Mac and Windows (Boxed Version)
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Alien Skin Exposure X (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)

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Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART Review

Dustin Abbott

January 13th, 2016

I recognize that I’m a little late to the party in reviewing the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART lens. It has been on the market for more than three years, and has gotten both writer’s ink and photographer’s dollars like no Sigma lens before it. I had never reviewed the lens previously, but when the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM was released I knew a lot of people would be interested in knowing how it compared to the current benchmark in the industry, and shockingly, that benchmark was not made by Canon, Nikon, or Zeiss; it was made by Sigma. Just pause for a moment and consider just how incomprehensible that would have been four or five years ago. Four years ago most professionals sneered at the notion of owning a Sigma over a first party lens, despite the release of a fairly good EX 50mm f/1.4 and a very good EX 85mm f/1.4. But Sigma (along with Tamron) was still stuck in a third party/third world mentality, namely, that their niche was to offer budget alternatives to first party lenses that undercut them in price, offered competitive optical performance, but were usually inferior in build and autofocus performance. Then Sigma shocked the photography world at the end of 2012 by introducing this beautiful new lens that looked nothing like a Sigma. The Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART lens launched Sigma’s rebranding/coming out party with their Global Vision initiative.

Part of this was a completely new branding system for their various products. Sigma abandoned the EX designation and instead introduced a three-pronged approach of “Art”, “Contemporary”, and “Sport” lines. A few of these categories are admittedly vague (what exactly makes a lens “Contemporary”?), but there is no arguing with the direction the design team has taken with the lenses designated “Art”. Sigma not only dramatically improved upon their older design (which frankly I was not a huge fan of), but have designed some of the best looking modern lenses, period. I’ve reviewed the 50mm, 18-35mm, 24-35mm, and now this lens from the ART designation, along with the 150-600mm in both “Sport” and “Contemporary” variants, so the new Sigma look is not quite so new any longer, but I still favor it over most all other lens designs.

I decided to go ahead and do a review of the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART (35A for short henceforth) that took into account the new releases from Canon and Tamron. Sigma is no longer the de facto choice, but do these new options make it any less deserving of your consideration?

Build Quality and Design

There is a very pleasing blend of glossy, matte, and ribbed surfaces that has both a modern yet elegant design. The “flocked” finish is a thing of the past (good riddance, I say), as is the gold ring that seems almost garish now when presented with this sleek, understated new design. Yes, the lens is essentially all black with some small white print in a few points, but the blend of textures keeps the lens from being monochromatic or boring. The lens has small white text on one side that says, “Made in Japan”, an understated SIGMA brand on the top, and then the lens designation and filter thread size near the distance window of the top of the barrel. Less obvious is a very small sized serial number in a grey text that is only obvious under close examination. An elegant little silver circle with the letter A (for ART) rests next the focus distance window. On the bottom of the barrel is an 0xx number which clearly and obviously states the year of manufacture (bravo for simplicity!)

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The lens has four distinct bevels that flow into a wider section as you move towards the front element. The first bevel flares from the lens mount section into the area of the distance window and the single switch that controls focus (Auto/Manual). The HSM (Hypersonic Motor) allows for full time manual override. The next bevel moves into the slightly wider focus ring. It has a nicely ribbed, slightly rubberized texture. The movement isn’t as smooth as, say, Tamron’s new 35mm f/1.8 VC lens. I find the damping a little on the heavy/stiff side, but on the plus side it doesn’t feel “gritty” at all. Manually focusing the lens is also limited by a very short “throw” distance, particularly between about 6 feet and infinity. Making a fine manual adjustment is difficult in that range due to the very small focus throw of only about 90 degrees (the Tamron 35 VC has nearly double that!). The final flare is to the front of the lens where the lens hood bayonet attaches with a soft touch material transition to the hood that still impresses me when I encounter it even after seeing it on 5 or so other lenses. This is a very classy approach to lens design that borrows a page from Zeiss more than any other design.

If there is a shortcoming here it is that the lens does not have any kind of weather sealing. In that sense the beauty is only “skin deep”. At the time that this lens was released, that wasn’t really a big deal, as the main competitors from Canon (35L) and Nikon (35mm f/1.4G) also lacked any kind of weather sealing. But that has changed with recent releases, and while the Canon 35L II is twice the price of the Sigma (and is thoroughly weather sealed), the Tamron 35mm f/1.8 VC is not only nicely weather sealed but also undercuts the Sigma’s price by $300 (at least in the US market).

While it is not surprising that this lens lacks weather sealing, I am surprised that all new subsequent ART series releases (including the very new 20mm f/1.4 ART) continue to lack it. Sigma seems to be reserving this for their telephoto lenses at the moment. Tamron has seized this as means of differentiating its new SP series of primes, and if that line enjoys success one wonders if Sigma will persist in not adding weather sealing to the design of future ART series lenses.

This lens got a lot of publicity due to having (at the time) class leading resolution and a beautiful lens design. A great price didn’t hurt. It was introduced at $899 while the Canon 35L was closer to $1500 and Nikon 35G even more. It’s release managed to completely overshadow the release of Canon’s excellent EF 35mm f/2 IS, a lens that was quickly relegated to being one of Canon’s “underrated gems”. I actually chose that lens over the Sigma back then, and it has served me well for years, but it seems like only now is it starting to receive recognition for being a stellar lens. The larger aperture, beautiful design, and amazing resolution of the Sigma caught the attention of the public. Suddenly it was entirely acceptable for professionals and amateurs alike to own a Sigma, and the success of the 35A (Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART) helped launch a whole series of lenses in the ART line since.

But it is now 2016, and Sigma faces pressure from an excellent lens beneath it in price (the Tamron), and a new class leader above it (the 35L II). The debate about the merits of the original 35L vs. the Sigma 35A went back and forth, but there were a number of points that could not disputed: the Sigma was much, much sharper at wide apertures and had far less chromatic aberrations. The 35L might have a better drawing (global look to the images), but that is something that doesn’t show up on a test chart, and in every “chartable” category the Sigma was coming out on top.

But Canon has finally struck back, and the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM manages to raise the bar once again in almost every category…but it is also twice as much money. Here’s a look at the raw numbers:

Lens	Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART	Canon 35mm f/1.4L II	Canon 35mm f/2 IS	Tamron 35mm f/1.8 VC
Price (at time of review)	$899	$1799	$549	$599
Overall Length	94mm	105.5mm	62.6mm	81.3mm
Overall Weight	665g	760g	335g	479g
Front Filter Thread	67mm	72mm	67mm	67mm
Elements/Groups	13/11	14/11	10/8	10/9
Min Focus/Max Mag	30cm/.20x	28cm/.21x	24cm/.24x	20cm/.40x
Aperture Blades	9	9	8	9

There is one figure here where Sigma lags behind several competitors that I will note, and that is in minimum focus distance/maximum magnification. This has been and continues to be an area of strength for the 35mm focal length. 85mm lenses typically have very poor figures here (a maximum magnification figure of .11-.13x is common), and even 50mm lenses (where the standard used to be around .15x), but 35mm lenses have always bettered those figures. The Sigma’s ability to focus down to one foot/30cm and have a .20x magnification (1/5th life size) is useful, but not nearly as useful as the Canon 35 IS at .24x and is doubled by the Tamron’s .40x figure (one of the greatest strengths of that lens!).

The Sigma was a large lens upon its release, but there has been a trend towards larger and heavier lenses since its release, so the new Canon 35L II adds nearly 100g of weight and 10.5mm of length. This comparison shows that it certainly exceeds the dimensions of the Sigma in every regard.

Beyond that, however, the Sigma ART line has also seen a number of larger releases (most notably the 50mm f/1.4 and the 24-35 f/2), so the 35A is now only middle of the pack in size. It is a dense feeling lens, and is largish, but probably not so much that it will prove an impediment. Still, if low weight and small size are a priority to you, I would recommend looking at the Canon 35mm f/2 IS (Canon shooters) or the Tamron 35mm f/1.8 VC (Canon, Nikon, or Sony shooters) as those lenses offer competitive image quality and image stabilization, though at the cost of a somewhat smaller aperture (but one that is still plenty wide for most applications).

I always commend Sigma for the inclusion of a nice, padded case that offers real protection for the lens. It is much more useful than the drawstring pouch that Canon throws in with their L series lenses. I wish others would take a cue from Sigma in this nice extra touch.

Autofocus

My first act when receiving any new autofocus lens is to spend some extended time calibrating the lens to the body/bodies I intend to use it on. For this purpose I use the FoCal 2 program from Reikan. My typical process is to run the automatic calibration at least three times (I’m looking for a repeatable result) and I then follow up with a semi-automatic calibration where I take a closer look at the figure or figures that the automatic calibration produced. I will check results to either side of these figures to see if there is a better one. This allows me to both eyeball the actual focus results and ensure that I have the most consistent focus setting.

I calibrated both the Sigma and the Canon 35L II on the same day, and eventually settled on a -2 for the Sigma and a +2 for the Canon. I had a little more variability in hunting down the Sigma value, but was confident with the figure I produced. Throughout the period of my review I used the lenses in a variety of settings, from general purpose shooting to events (church, school, and family) along with some portraits. While impossible to encompass every type of shooting situation in a 4-5 week period, I feel that I used the lenses in enough of a variety of settings to be confident in my findings.

One of those events was at my children’s school. It was a “Duct Tape Fashion Show”. The 7^th and 8^th grade classes had fashioned various costumes and clothing items out of duct tape and paraded them up and down the “runway” in the gym. I used both lenses back and forth on the same camera body (the body they were calibrated to). I primarily shot in AF Servo mode, as the kids were always moving and rarely stopped long even when they were posing. As the official photographer for the event I was set up right at the end of the “runway” and kids came in from the far end of the gym, up the center aisle to me, then split to either side, quickly posed, and then retreated back the way they came. I shot 57 frames on the Sigma and 113 on the new Canon – all wide open at f/1.4. I used the lenses identically when shooting with the intent that I would compare frames at the end of the shoot and determine which lens had the higher hit rate.

I went through and counted 9 improperly focused shots from the Canon (out of 113), for a hit rate of around 92%. Most of these misses were with the subjects right on top of me and weren’t in situations where I would have expected to get good results. There were about 2-3 obvious misses where I would have expected accurate focus to be possible. This raises the keeper rate to better than 98% – very good under the circumstances I was shooting in.

The Sigma was another story altogether. I counted at least 15 missed focus shots, including almost all of those beyond 20 feet (all of which back focused beyond the main subjects). Here’s a case in point:

Reviewing the data in Lightroom via a plugin called “Show Focus Points” tells me that I was using AF Servo focus and that focus was locked with the center point square in the middle boy’s face…and yet the lens is actually focused on the far wall. By contrast the Canon 35L II shots in the same situation were all accurately focused.

My hit rate was highest when the subjects were in the range of 5-10 feet (the lens was calibrated at the recommended six-foot distance). The keeper rate with the Sigma dropped to under 64%. If you intend to shoot events, sports, or photojournalism, the Canon proved the much more reliable option in this scenario…and that might be worth the premium price in and of itself. If you need to shoot this style and can’t afford the 35L II, I might recommend considering the 35mm f/2 IS instead. It has a slower aperture, yes, but it has an image stabilizer and similar full ring USM focus that is extremely fast and accurate. I’ve used it for a couple of years and it has proven one of my most accurately focusing lenses.

Purchasing Sigma’s USB dock is one means of helping with this, as it allows you to calibrate focus at various distances, while the camera’s AFMA function only allows you to calibrate at one focus distance (the distance I calibrated at is the recommended distance). The dock also allows you to upload firmware updates to the lens that should, theoretically, help to eliminate future incompatibility issues should the camera manufacturer make some change to the autofocus process. This is one distinct advantage for Sigma lenses, though reports from a variety of subscribers indicate that it doesn’t always solve the autofocus issues. This has been, in my experience, the Achilles’ heel of Sigma’s ART series. Some photographers are very satisfied with the autofocus performance; others have given up on the lens in frustration. I find myself typically somewhere in the middle. I’ve had mixed results with a broad section of Sigma lenses, with only one bad experience (the copy I had of the 18-35 f/1.8 ART was quite inconsistent) but mostly fairly good results overall with occasional, inexplicable misses. Take, for example, this shot of a lingering oak leaf in the winter. The shot was stopped down to f/3.5, which gives the AF system more depth of field to work with, so I would not have expected this shot to have missed. I’ve included a screenshot from the software plugin for Lightroom called “Show Focus Points” that I use, and it shows from the EXIF data that the lens/camera indicated focus lock (middle focus point) and yet the photo (look at the crop) is clearly not really in focus at all.

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In many (even most) cases I got well focused results, but the misses were more frequent than what I’m accustomed to. At wide apertures I would sometimes find that the focus was acceptable but not really nailed, either, if I examined the image at a pixel level. I’ve been spoiled by the focus accuracy of the Canon 35 f/2 IS, and both the Tamron 35mm f/1.8 VC and the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II performed very well for me while reviewing them. This video breaks down autofocus among the chief competitors in detail, and will give you a good idea of how the lens performed overall.

Thus far I have not found any third party lens that focuses quite as fast as the best Canon USM lenses. Large aperture primes have to move a lot of glass, and I find that Canon not only does the best job of producing speed but also the best job of masking how much effort is involved in quickly moving those elements. Sometimes with Tamron and Sigma lenses I find that major focus shifts involve a sound and sense of “sliding” as the elements move into place. That sensation is much more muted with the Canon 35L II. The Sigma is fast, for the most part, but there is a little pause while inertia builds when going from minimum distance focus back out to infinity accompanied by a slight “shhhhtck” sound as the elements slide into place.

It’s interesting to me the very different approach that Sigma and Tamron have taken with dealing the challenge of focus with large aperture primes. The Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART has a large aperture and quite fast focus but at the expense of having a very small focus throw. It barely has 90 degrees of focus throw, and the distance between 6 feet and infinity is TINY on the focus ring. It makes manual focus very difficult and even makes me wonder if this doesn’t contribute to the lens’ somewhat poor focus accuracy in that range.

The Tamron SP 35mm f/1.8 VC takes a different route. First, it has a somewhat smaller aperture (and thus a little less glass to move), but it adds a much bigger focus range with a good 180 degrees of focus throw (basically double that of the Sigma). The Tamron takes a perception hit in its overall focus speed (which is just a tiny bit slower), but the trade off is that you can both manually focus and autofocus with a bit more precision. This is even more pronounced in the 45mm VC vs. the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART. Which approach is better? The answer will probably change from photographer to photographer.

If you lean towards shooting more video than stills, the Tamron is a good choice as it has the best manual focus ring (by a good measure), longer focus throw, and adds an effective image stabilizer to the mix.

Some people find that the Sigma 35A works just fine for them; others have given up despite its impressive optical performance. I have now spent time with the 35A, 50A, 18-35A, and 24-35A lenses, and my own experience has been a mixed bag. The 24-35A performed the best for me overall, and the 50A did well in spurts, but my own conclusion is that autofocus accuracy continues to be Sigma’s Achilles heel. I strongly want them to solve this issue as they really are designing lenses with very impressive optics.

In conclusion, if you are a professional and need the best, most accurately focusing 35mm lens, the Canon 35L II is the new top choice; the Sigma isn’t even close.

Image Quality

This has been and continues to be the area where the Sigma punches far above its price point. It is the reason why this lens is now in so many photographer’s kit; it delivers in the resolution/image quality department. In the past it was common for wide aperture primes to be a bit “dreamy” wide open. This was frequently caused by both a lack of contrast at wide apertures along with chromatic aberrations that would rob the lens of apparent sharpness and make images look somewhat hazy in the details. This isn’t the case with the Sigma 35A; it delivers at all apertures. Not only that, but while some primes are sharp in the center but get increasingly soft as you head out across the frame, the Sigma does a stellar job of extending that sharpness across most all of the frame.

While I recognize that lenses like this are going to be used at a variety of apertures by end users, I tend to test lenses like this primarily at apertures wider than f/2.8. The reason being that it is in this zone where prime lenses really need to show their worth. The reality is that a number of modern zoom lenses are already excellent at their wide open f/2.8 aperture, so a modern prime really needs to shine at even wider apertures to justify its existence. The Sigma 35A certainly does.

Even at f/1.4 images look crisp and sharp, providing a great “pop” of subjects from backgrounds. Even landscape type images look quite good at f/1.4. Resolution is crisp, contrast is strong, and image quality is generally excellent. Check out this landscape shot at f/1.4 and the crops from across the frame:

This was unprecedented resolution from a 35mm f/1.4 lens, and it is only now that this performance has been surpassed. The new Canon 35L II gets the edge in overall resolution, and I also didn’t feel that the Sigma produced the same degree of microcontrast as the Canon. What I mean by this is that when zoomed into a pixel level there is a higher amount of contrast and less chromatic aberrations in the details of the Canon’s images which results in the appearance of higher resolution. At f/1.4 the Canon is definitely resolving higher, and, as a result, the lens is just that much more special. I also feel like the Canon is transitioning to defocus more nicely. It’s rendering is more “magical”. It is also, of course, twice as expensive.

With either lens I was reminded of how much I enjoy the 35mm focal length as a walkabout lens. It seems to be “just right” for a number of things, and whether in the woods or on the city street the 35mm focal length seems wide enough for most everything without adding distortion. It is the “Goldilocks” focal length: not too close; not too far. For that matter, I also prefer the versatility of a wide aperture to that of a moderate zoom range. The ability to shoot most anything at f/1.4 (if you want that narrow a depth of field) gives you a lot of flexibility as to how you choose to frame a scene. In some instances, a shot of a scene with a narrow depth of field is interesting where it might just be busy with more depth of field. It’s nine bladed aperture also makes for nice sunstars/sunbursts when stopped down.

I used the lens as a part of documenting our Christmas celebration this year, and after sharing the images one of my sisters-in-law remarked that I always make everything look so “sparkly”. A big part of what she is referring to is that special 3D quality that high quality optics give to photographs. Wide aperture primes have the ability to make everything (even ordinary things) look just a little bit more special!

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Sigma did a good job of suppressing chromatic aberrations with the optical elements and coatings. While not nonexistent, the chromatic aberrations are well controlled and rarely objectionable in any way. You will see a little bit of green fringing in the out of focus area occasionally like this:

Canon has once again leapfrogged Sigma in this area, but I would say that the Canon advantage might be seen more in the microcontrast than in green or purple fringing in typical images. In this video segment I really break down resolution and overall image quality in detail:

Another strength of this lens is a near complete lack of distortion. I really noticed how nicely this helped when shooting handheld exposures to be combined in a panorama – everything lined up nicely. It makes it a very reasonable lens to shoot architecture with, though 35mm isn’t as wide as one might like.

The type of images that the Sigma is capable of is truly impressive. That incredibly sharp resolution on the subject at wide apertures was and is revelatory. You can view many more samples in the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART Image Gallery.

Optical Weaknesses?

The only real fly in the ointment optically is the very heavy vignette. It isn’t exceptionally bad (the 35L II is basically the same, although the new Tamron 35mm f/1.8 VC is far and away the winner in this area), but will be noticeable in a wide variety of settings. This is pretty common for wide aperture primes used at wide apertures. In some cases a vignette produces a desirable effect, but I would rather add it in post rather than have to remove it. Add to this that you won’t be able to load a profile to correct for this in JPEGs to your camera, though correction to RAW images is simple in post processing.

I was also less than amazed at the flare resistance. I had a chance to shoot in highly directional sun while visiting the Mer Bleue conservation area in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. This is one of the most studied bogs in the world, and provided some very unique shooting opportunities. The setting sun was both intense and very directional; a perfect storm for testing flare resistance. Neither the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART nor the Canon 35LII really impressed me; I’ve seen much better performance from both the Canon 35mm f/2 IS along with the Tamron SP 35mm f/1.8 VC. Neither lens has as wide an aperture, true, but both are genuine competitors that performed better in this regard. The 35L II retained somewhat better contrast (the Sigma veiled a bit more), but both showed a bit more ghosting artifacts than what I would like – and those can be very difficult to remove in post. I don’t mind a bit of veiling (it often creates a stylish effect), but ghosting artifacts can ruin an image. Here’s a quick video segment showing flare resistance from the Sigma and its chief competitors.

Still, as you can see, the list of optical objections is pretty short when compared with the numerable strengths of the lens.

Bokeh Quality

Determining a lens’ bokeh quality is somewhat challenging because bokeh is both a subjective measure (the Helios 44-2 “swirly” bokeh is either wonderful or terrible depending on your perspective) and it is also notoriously difficult to demonstrate in a controlled test. Since its introduction there has been some debate about the bokeh quality from the Sigma. I myself have referred to it as being somewhat “clinical”, and feel that the lens tipped the scales more towards sharpness than overall drawing. The reality is that while the lens is perhaps not exceptional in this regard, it is in no way objectionable either. I’ve been using the lens side by side with the Canon 35L II over the past five weeks, and while I instinctively prefer the “look” of the images from the 35L II, the reality is that the differences are subtle at most.

Bokeh is a matter of taste, but one area where I can measure it is in how a lens handles bright out of focus specular highlights. I did a controlled test to compare the quality of the bokeh highlights. The subject (an old 35mm f/3.5 Super Takumar lens) was 17” from the sensor. The bokeh highlights (Christmas tree lights) were about seven feet beyond. I lit the foreground with a Metz 64 AF-1 flash through a Lite Genius Super-Scoop II and bounced off a wall behind the camera. I used mirror lockup, 2 second timer delay, Live View 10x focus, and Rear Curtain sync to produce the smoothest light falloff result. I determined that I best liked the look of the image with a ¾ stop underexposure by the camera’s meter. For what it is worth, the Sigma needed a bit more light according to this metering method, so there is a minor variance in exposure values. I expect that DXOmark or others who measure the lenses T-stop performance will find a shade better performance for the 35L II. The 35 f/2 IS, which I also used in this comparison, had a t-stop value equal to its f-stop (f/2), while the Sigma 35A clocked in at a t-stop of f/1.6, which is actually fairly decent compared to earlier generation competition.

When comparing the Sigma 35A and Canon 35L II side by side at a wide open f/1.4 aperture it is actually surprising how similar the bokeh highlights looked. The shape of the highlights is roughly the same, and while there is just a hint of additional busyness in the Sigma’s highlights, that is only detectable at 1:1 pixel level. The Canon shows a slight bit more concentric rings while the Sigma shows more of a pattern. As you move away from the center of the frame both lenses show a tendency towards lemon shapes instead of circles – a pretty common phenomenon. At identical exposure the Canon’s image is noticeable brighter, but probably no more than a quarter stop.

Stopping down to f/2 helps correct the lemon or cat-eye shape, but also further accentuates the signature of both lenses. The Sigma is bit more “patterned”, and the concentric circles are slightly more defined on the Canon. The Sigma does a slightly better job of retaining circular shape, with the Canon showing the first hints of the shape of the aperture blades.

Little changes at f/2.8, although now both lenses show the slight shape of their aperture blades at a 1:1 level to a similar degree.

By f/4 both lenses are producing highlights looking more “nonagonal”. The shape of the aperture blades is now clear, though the result is far less objectionable than the odd shape of the old 50mm f/1.8 and its five blades. There is also far more light bleed around the edges of the shapes, but roughly at an equal level from both lenses. Ditto at f/5.6, just a step further. Here is a series from the Canon from f/1.4 to f/5.6:

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Here is the same series from the Sigma:

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The Canon 35 f/2 IS has perhaps the smoothest bokeh of any of the 35mm options, but I don’t see a major advantage in this kind of testing – and that bodes well for both these lenses. The bokeh highlights from 35IS look remarkably similar to those of the 35L II.

Here is the Canon 35 IS series:

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While I don’t have the new Tamron SP 35mm f/1.8 VC on hand for this comparison, I did a similar test a few months ago and did add the Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 VC which I had on hand to the test as another point of comparison. You can see something similar in my review of the Tamron 35mm f/1.8 VC. The longer focal length of the Tamron 45 VC here means that the size of the bokeh highlights are larger, but the bokeh highlights are also noticeably busier than any of these other contenders. Most Tamron lenses I have tested have shown a tendency towards the phenomenon often called “onion bokeh”, though the 45VC also shows the reason why its bokeh looks so nice in most other situations – the inner line of the bokeh circle is nice and soft and thus produces bokeh without hard edges.

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Both the Sigma and the Canon 35L II will produce less busy highlights than the Tamron 35 VC when bright light sources are in the scene. Where the Tamron will win over all of these is in the amount of bokeh it can create in some situations due to being to focus much closer and having a maximum magnification figure twice that of Sigma (.40x).

But as I said before, this test really only shows bokeh quality in one very specific way, and doesn’t tell the whole story. I would encourage you to judge the quality of the bokeh from any of these lenses based more on real life usage rather than any isolated test. Bokeh quality is always a subjective thing, and most all of these lenses produce very good real world results…including the Sigma. Here is a little gallery with a few bokeh examples:

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In Conclusion:

The merits of this lens are not going to be determined by my conclusions. Over the past three years this lens has received both critical and commercial success, and is, in my opinion, perhaps the most important lens that Sigma has ever made. Sigma was able to completely redefine its position in the market based primarily on the strength of this lens. It is telling that while chart tests show an advantage in resolution for the new Canon 35L II, that advantage is slight despite three additional years of development and a price point double that of the Sigma. The new Canon’s advantage in image quality is a matter of degrees, but it certainly has a stronger advantage in autofocus consistency. That remains the one area that might should give you pause when considering the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART. There is little else to strongly criticize, and some have reported having good autofocus success with their own copy. As the saying goes, “Your Mileage May Vary”. If your budget doesn’t extend to the new Canon 35L II, and you feel you need an f/1.4 aperture, then the Sigma remains the clear choice for quality optics at a reasonable price. I guess some things haven’t changed.

Pros:

Set a new standard for optical performance at the 35mm focal that has only now been mildly surpassed
Beautiful and functional build
Well controlled chromatic aberrations
Low distortion
High resolution even wide open
Fast and quiet autofocus
Includes nice padded case
Excellent value to performance ratio

Cons:

Autofocus performance can be inconsistent
Fairly heavy vignette
Flare resistance could be better
Lacks weather sealing

Alternatives:

The new Canon 35mm f/1.4L II USM is now the class leader for Canon shooters and surpasses the Sigma is most metrics. I reviewed it here. It rings in at twice the price of the Sigma.

I reviewed the new Tamron SP 35mm f/1.8 VC a few months and was very impressed by it. It has a somewhat smaller aperture value (f/1.8) but offers up a professional grade, weather sealed build quality, great optics, and adds an image stabilizer to the mix. It also retails for three hundred dollars less.

The Sigma 24-35mm f/2 ART is also an interesting alternative. It has a slower aperture but delivers similar image quality along with a small zoom range. I reviewed it here. It retails for a hundred dollars more.

The Canon 35mm f/2 IS has a slower aperture but has great focus, a wonderfully compact size, and a very effective image stabilizer. It is a bargain at $549. I reviewed it here.

Review notes: I reviewed retail copies of both the Canon 35L II and Sigma 35A provided to me by the great people at B&H Photo .

Gear Used:

Canon EOS 6D DSLR Camera (Body Only)
Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART Lens
Adobe Lightroom CC Software for Mac and Windows (Boxed Version)
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Alien Skin Exposure X (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)

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Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 VC USD Review

Dustin Abbott

October 2nd, 2015

A few years ago Sigma began to carve out a very nice niche for itself with the introduction of its ART series primes. These quickly became legitimate alternatives to some of the top first party primes and it was no longer “second rate” to have one in your lens kit. Meanwhile third party rival Tamron was accomplishing something similar with its pro quality stabilized zooms like the 24-70mm f/2.8 VC, 70-200mm f/2.8 VC, and, most recently, the superlative 15-30mm f/2.8 VC (which has rapidly become one of my favorite lenses, particularly since I got the Fotodiox WonderPana filter system for it). But it’s clear that Tamron was keeping an eye on Sigma’ success with the ART series and has been quietly working behind the scenes to create its own pro-grade prime lenses. This new line of primes has now been unveiled, and I’ve been spending some quality time with the Tamron SP 35mm f/1.8 and Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 VC lenses over the past few weeks.

It’s been a long time since Tamron has been associated with prime lenses (with the exception of some fine macro lenses like the recent 90mm f/2.8 VC). At one point, however, Tamron was making a number of quality prime lenses and had an innovative “Adaptall” mount system that allowed a user to swap mounts according to their camera’s mount system. I’m glad to see Tamron returning to the production of prime lenses, and fully anticipate that the newly released 35mm f/1.8 VC and the 45mm f/1.8 VC are only the first in a line of SP (Super Performance) prime lenses.

I will refer to Sigma’s ART series primes some during this review because I do believe that these are the most logical competitors for these new lenses. Sigma has produced some excellent prime lenses (and even a few innovative zoom lenses) in its ART series with exceptional optical performance and beautiful designs. I’ve reviewed the majority of them (see my reviews here). But Tamron has a few tricks up its sleeves as well. They have pioneered a number of their own innovations over the past several years, and most of those are being implementedcheck out my reviews here into their new primes. And fortunately for Tamron, several of these play to some of the weaknesses of the Sigma ART primes.

45mm? Yeah, I scratched my head, too. I posed the question to Tamron, and got the reasonable response that these two lenses were the opening salvo of more Tamron SP primes, and there was a certain amount of shared R&D costs between these two first lenses. They share the same front element sizes, and perhaps the move towards 50mm might have exceeded the shared design for the two lenses. I would have preferred 55mm to 45mm, myself, but that’s not what we got. Some readers have already expressed additional interest because of the 45mm focal length – so it all comes down to your own preferences. Tamron (probably wisely) elected to develop an excellent 45mm lens rather than a less excellent 50mm lens. The reality is that it doesn’t behave much differently in practice to any 50mm lens. Here’s what the difference between a 45mm and a 50mm looks like in real life:

Step back a few more feet (this is from about four feet/1.25m away) and that difference will become near imperceptible. By the way, this is also what the difference between f/1.4 and f/1.8 looks like. The 50mm f/1.4 shot is from my SMC Takumar 50mm f/1.4, which, despite its age, still has some of the nicest drawing I’ve seen from a 50mm lens. Those of you debating between a 35mm and 50mm prime may find this focal length (45mm) an acceptable compromise. And, just for fun, here’s what the difference between the 35mm and the 45mm Tamrons looks like.

Here are the raw numbers: the lens is 544g and 3.6″/91mm long. This is 270g less than the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART (815), but 254g heavier than the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 (a lens not in the class of these lenses in any way). the Sigma is also 9mm longer. The Tamron has ten elements in 8 groups, including 1 LD (Low Dispersion) element and 2 Aspherical elements. In short, the Tamron is a medium sized lens that is visibly smaller than its Sigma competition.

Tamron Technologies

If you are reading both the 35mm and the 45mm reviews, you will find some overlap as they are released simultaneously and I had them both in hand at the same time. The reviews differentiate in a variety of areas to deal with unique qualities of each lens.

One area where Tamron has been on the cutting edge is in the implementation of its image stabilization systems. Tamron’s VC (or Vibration Compensation) systems have consistently been amongst the industry’s best since their introduction, and they have been the first (and, so far, the only!) lens manufacturer to successfully implement one in a standard wide aperture zoom (the SP 24-70 f/2.8 VC) or wide angle/wide aperture zoom (the SP 15-30 f/2.8 VC). These new prime lenses will be the first with an aperture this wide to receive in lens stabilization. In a Canon system the EF 35mm f/2 IS (an excellent lens that I own) has been Canon’s widest aperture prime to receive image stabilization. Both these new Tamron primes will now become the title holder. The Sigma ART prime lenses have a “sexier” (and larger) f/1.4 aperture, and while Tamron’s VC will allow for lower minimum shutter speeds in some situations (with a static subject), I suspect that some photographers will at least initially view these lenses as being less “pro grade” because of not having an f/1.4 aperture. The actual design and build of these suggest that they are most certainly pro-grade lenses (more so than the ART series, at least in build), but many consumer grade prime lenses also have an f/1.8 aperture (including Canon’s own “nifty fifty” that costs only $125), so Tamron will have a “perception gap” to overcome.

The inclusion of VC is a feature that many photographers will perceive as very valuable, and is a matter of priority for those that shoot video. The VC performance here is very good. It is completely unobtrusive, with almost no hints of its operation beyond the steady viewfinder and the nicely stabilized images. High resolution sensors really punish camera shake, so having good stabilization makes a huge difference. The VC is almost silent and does no unseemly jumping when activated. Handholding 1/10th second images is a piece of cake, and slower shutter speeds are possible with good technique and a static subject. This image is 1/8th second and essentially perfectly sharp:

Sony mounts do not come with VC. I’m always a bit disappointed by this, for, while I know that there is the possibility of interference with the in body image stabilization (and users would have to choose between the two systems), my feeling is that the best stabilization is in the lens where the system can be tuned to the individual needs of the lens. Sony users are familiar with this pain, however, so this is nothing new.

Another area that Tamron has been developing some valuable expertise is in the development of moisture resistance/weather sealing. They have included this feature on a broader range of lenses than anyone else, and, while there are differing opinions on the value of moisture resistance, it is also a strongly desired feature by many photographers. Photographers with pro grade camera bodies (with weather sealing) want the liberty to match lenses that also have weather sealing so that they can shoot in a broader range of weather conditions. The options for a weather sealed 50mm lens have been very slim. Tamron has gone to a whole new level (for them) with the weather sealing on these lenses, with actual seals at the appropriate places (even the focus ring), a rear gasket, and expensive fluorine coating on the front element. They back up this weather sealing with an industry leading six year warranty (in North America), which suggests they are serious about the build quality of these lenses. And these lenses are beautifully built, with a premium feel that is a real joy to handle and use.

Here’s a video breakdown of the size and build quality of these new lenses:

Moisture resistance is an area where the ART series has lagged, with no lens in the series claiming moisture resistance, so this is one more area where Tamron can distinguish its new primes. The 45mm VC appears to be a seriously pro-grade lens, with one of the higher levels of build quality that I’ve seen in a while. I’ve reviewed a LOT of lenses this year (I’m somewhere near 25 for the year), but this lens is near the top of the heap when it comes to build quality. Only the Canon 100-400L II and the Zeiss lenses that I’ve reviewed this lens match the build level here (and this includes several Canon L series lenses that I’ve reviewed this year).. This is manifest in a number of ways, including a body that is primarily made of metal (including metal filter threads!!), a metal mount (obviously), and a quality feel to the switches. There is a rubber gasket around the lens mount, and Tamron has also included expensive fluorine coatings on the front elements that further help the moisture resistance and makes lenses both easier to clean and more resistant to scratching. This lens quickly becomes one of the top options for a 50(ish)mm lens for photographers that need to shoot in sometimes adverse weather conditions.

The new build design is really quite beautiful. It’s simple and clean, and faintly reminiscent of Sigma’s ART series, although the materials here are actually higher grade. I do find the texture variety on the Sigma ART series a little more appealing, but I do really like this new, clean design. The black is broken up by white lettering (etched rather than printed) here and there along with an “SP” (Super Performance) badge and a light metallic ring near the lens mount that Tamron euphemistically calls “Luminous Gold”. This deviation from the black on black is probably the design aspect that most distinguishes the lens from the ART series, however, and will help Tamron with branding. Several surfaces have a slightly rubberized/soft touch feel that has a tactile pleasing quality.

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The focus ring is extremely nice. It is very generously wide and almost perfectly damped. It glides smoothly either in MF mode or in full time manual override, and while the stops at minimum and infinity focus aren’t as definite as a true manual focus lens, they are definite enough that you don’t try to focus past them. There is also sufficient travel (nearly 180 degrees) to accurately focus manually. The focus rings on these lenses are some of best I’ve used outside of dedicated manual focus lenses, and are better than several of those, too. This becomes very important when one considers the amazing minimum focus ability of these lenses. At macro distances most photographers prefer manual focus anyway, and these lenses are joy to use in a pseudo-macro fashion. The lens has focus distance window but no hyperfocal markings (not surprising). Both lenses take a moderate, inexpensive, and easy to find 67mm filter for those nice metal filter threads that is shared with a number of other lenses.

The build quality here is a new high for Tamron, and belies the moderate price point ($599 USD). The look of the Sigma ART series is still perhaps minutely better, but the build quality of these new Tamron primes exceeds any of the four Sigma ART series lenses I’ve used.

The attention to detail in the fresh design carries over to redesigned front and rear lens caps. The front cap is both chunkier and more contoured than previous Tamron lens caps. It has a more premium feel, which was (I’m sure) the point. As lens caps go it is very nice, and the center pinch portion has a notably precise action that feels better engineered than any previous lens cap I’ve used. The rear cap is also a huge step forward. The previous Tamron rear caps have been on the (ahem) bottom of my list of favorites. I tend to trade them out with Canon caps for the Tamron lenses in my kit while the Tamron caps tend to go to the more lowly vintage lenses in my collection that don’t get used often. Those caps only screw on at distinct points and lack flare. These new caps are another matter. They are contoured, for one, flaring out towards the lens in both a stylish and functional way. They mount easier as well and certainly wouldn’t get demoted in my collection.

Tamron has even redesigned the font for its name in a more serious, contemporary style. These two lenses represent an attempt to move upscale, and my perception is that it is working.

Perhaps to deflect some criticisms over moving some of its manufacturing out of Japan on some of its less premium offerings, these lenses remind us twice that they are both designed and manufactured in Japan (and then again on the hood).

There are two switches on the body with a different look and feel than any other Tamron lens I’ve used. They resemble (wait for it…) the ART series a bit more, save these are a bit wider and flatter. They are the basic switches you would expect, with an AF (Autofocus)/MF (Manual Focus) switch (full time manual override is always available), and the second switch is an ON/OFF for the VC (Vibration Compensation). The switches placement is a little different than usual, with a more side by side look than the typical stacking. There is internal sealing around them to complete the moisture resistance.

Another effective technology that Tamron has recently developed is in its coatings. This from Tamron’s press release, “eBAND Coating deployed to thoroughly suppress ghosting and flare eBAND (Extended Bandwidth & Angular-Dependency) and BBAR (Broad-Band Anti-Reflection) coatings, both providing outstanding anti-reflection effect, are applied to critical element surfaces for maximum light transmission. Internal reflections from element surfaces which cause ghosting and flare are reduced to an absolute minimum. Flawless, crystal clear images can be obtained. eBAND Coating, a hybrid nano-structured layer with extremely low refractive index coupled with multilayered anti-reflection coating technology, efficiently minimizes reflection of extremely angulated incident light—something that cannot be achieved by conventional anti-reflection coatings alone.”

Techno-speak aside, these coatings provide an almost complete resistance to flare and ghosting. Many prime lenses are susceptible to a variety of flare defects, from veiling to ghosting to a variety of flare related artifacts., but despite thorough torture testing during my time with the lenses I found them extremely resistant to flare.

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As you read the various reviews as they start to pour in, I think you will find a general consensus that these lenses are seriously well made pieces of kit.

But Are They Super Performance?

Watch the video here to see me break down Tamron’s various claims about the “Super Performance” of these lenses.

I’m happy to announce that yes, they are definitely super performing prime lenses. Both lenses have been able to perform extremely well in my tests. They aren’t Zeiss Otus level (nothing is), but they will stand against anything else on the mere mortal level.

The New Bokeh Machine (Tamron 45mm f/1.8 VC)

Here’s an image quality breakdown from the Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 VC in bullet form:

Sharpness is strong across the image frame from wide open. I don’t see the biting resolution/contrast of the Otus series, but even wide open landscape shots show high resolution across the frame without any hint of that haziness/indistinct edges that softer lenses will show. The lens also exhibits a nicely flat focal plane. I haven’t found a situation where I would hesitate to use the lens wide open. I’ll leave the chart testing to those that excel at it, but I suspect that these lenses are resolving just about as high as the ART series lenses at equivalent apertures. Stopping down to more typical landscape apertures produces biting sharpness across the frame. I’m always happy when I zoom in to images at a pixel level and discover that images look even better then. Here is a series of images and crops that have been a bit mind blowing:

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Flare resistance is exceptional. No hazing, ghosting, or flare artifacts that I’ve seen. These lenses perform more strongly in this aspect than any ART series lens that I’ve used, though they are good performers as well. I simply could not introduce any kind of flare artifacts when putting the sun into the frame. Very nice!
Bokeh quality is very nice from the rounded nine bladed aperture iris. Bokeh quality is creamy and soft, with a nice transition to defocus. This is true of the bokeh before the plane of focus and beyond it. The nine rounded blade aperture is doing its job, too, with bokeh highlights remaining round when you stop the lens down. My own objection is a common one – towards the edge of the frame the bokeh highlights take on a somewhat “cat-eyed” quality and are less round. When putting bright defocused lights into the scene (like with the Christmas lights below) the bokeh shows a minimum of busyness.

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At a pixel level there are some very, very light concentric circles (commonly referred to as “onion bokeh”) that become a little more pronounced as the lens is stopped down. This “activity” is less pronounced than it was with the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55mm, however, and none of us are complaining about it’s bokeh. Inside many bokeh circles there is an inner line, and typically the less pronounced that is, the better. Bokeh highlights will be softer. The Tamron does a better job with this than many of the 50mm lenses I have similarly tested. The overall roundness of highlights across the frame is better than that of, say, the Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM that I recently reviewed. At close focus distances the lens creates extremely strong blur that looks a lot like a macro lens.

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The combination of nice optics and strong bokeh performance means that this is a lens capable of producing a lot of beautiful images! The ability to focus down so much closer than other 50mm lenses (more on that in a moment) opens up all kinds of new possibilities. On the other end of the aperture spectrum, stopping down the nine bladed aperture produces some delightful sunstars/sunbursts that add a lot to an image.

Vignette control is also a strength. There is a slight bit of vignette visible in the corners at wide open apertures, but far less than competing primes. The use of a slim circular polarizer did not add any obvious vignette. In most situations there isn’t enough vignetting to even be noticeable, and when you compare it side by side with other lenses you quickly get a sense of how good this performance is. The frame below (which should be white from corner to corner) shows a small amount of vignetting (roughly one stop) wide open on a full frame body. In field use I haven’t noticed enough vignette from the lens that I would feel the need to correct anything. This, combined with low native distortion (a tiny amount of barrel distortion), means that those of you concerned about not having a lens profile in camera to correct for these things shouldn’t have much to worry about.

This landscape shot was taken wide open and the primary corner (upper left) that should be light shows relatively little vignette.

Color rendition seems very good overall. Colors are natural and rich. You can judge for yourself by checking out the Lens Image Gallery.

The parade of optical goodness comes to a crashing (and surprising) halt when it comes to the chromatic aberration control. This is definitely the optical weak point. I was surprised by the amount of both purple and green fringing I saw in high contrast areas. This is one area where the Sigma ART 50mm definitely exceeds the optical performance of the lens. It seems like so many modern lenses seem to have this monster defeated, so I’m frankly disappointed by this performance. In most cases chromatic aberrations can be easily corrected in post, but it’s a stage that I personally prefer to avoid. Here is the worst example I saw during my review period.

This sample also shows off the very impressive sharpness, though. If you want to see many more image samples, including some full size images you can download, please visit the Lens Image Gallery here. I’m always happy when Roger Cicala from LensRentals weighs in on any lens. He has the unique opportunity to test large batches of lenses (unlike most of we reviewers) and can thus spot trends like sample variation. He tested the two new Tamron primes on the optical bench and found that A) they resolved very highly and B) the sample variation result was excellent on the 35mm and exceptional on the 45. That’s an encouraging report, and you can check it out here if you would like.

Close Encounters of the Magnification Kind

I’ve saved one of the best features of the lens until last. When I first saw the press release for the 45mm, I did a double take. High maximum magnification figures are not the norm for 50mm lenses. I’ve got an older Zeiss Planar T* 1.7/50mm that I really love, but I don’t use it as often as what I’d like because its minimum focus distance is two feet/60cm. Here’s what minimum focus distance looks like for my Zeiss – this is a not very impressive amount of magnification of my little SMC Takumar 55mm f/1.8.

I will often reach for the SMC Takumar 50mm f/1.4 when I’m shooting with my vintage glass primarily because it’s minimum focus distance is much better. It will focus down to 45cm (around 18 inches), resulting in a somewhat standard for 50mm .15x magnification. Here’s what that standard looks like:

Some of the new releases better that mark by a bit (the Sigma ART allows for .17x magnification). The fresh design of the Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM is much better and allows for focus down to 14″ or 35.5cm, giving a .21x magnification figure. But the new Tamron SP 45mm is in a league of its own, allowing for a minimum focus distance of 11.4’/29cm, and maximum magnification of .29x. Here’s what minimum focus distance looks like with it.

Umm, wow! I doubt that I need to tell you how impressive this performance is. Here’s a side by side visual comparison:

You can get close enough to give a very macro look to the image, with the background completely diffused. This opens up any number of creative shooting options, and just look at how high the resolution is here even at f/1.8.

I find that it can focus close enough and resolve highly enough that I can treat it much like a macro lens, right down to needing to consider closing down the aperture because the depth of field is so narrow (depth of field at minimum focus is only .18 inches or just 4.47mm – that’s tiny!). The performance is good enough that if you don’t need true 1:1 life size reproduction and mostly want to shoot flowers or similarly small objects you would probably be very satisfied with using this lens as your macro lens. The working distance isn’t terrible and that is already a lot of magnification. A bit of cropping and suddenly you have life size. Adding an extension tube would get you even closer! The fact that the focus ring works so well (most macro photographers like to use manual focus) makes this a treat to use at close focus range. This is a very, very key selling point for me. By the way, the Tamron 35mm f/1.8 is even more impressive, offering up a .40x magnification that is just incredible!

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Tamron accomplishes this through the use of a floating element (Tamron calls it their “Floating System”). They’ve done a fabulous job of its implementation, and if they manage to do something similar with an 85mm lens (magnification figures are even worse there!) it could be a pretty revolutionary lens.

This is one of the features that I’m most excited by because it fits my own shooting style so well.

AF Performance

This is an area where these lenses really need to distinguish themselves. I own the Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS, and it is a focusing standout. It’s fast, but more importantly, it is exceptionally accurate. My images from it are always well focused, so its a lens I will frequently use for professional work – from portraits to reportage. I can trust it. I won’t own a lens that I cannot trust to consistently and accurately autofocus.

The Achille’s heel for the Sigma ART series in my experience (and that of many other photographers – particularly other Canon shooters) has been sometimes inconsistent autofocus accuracy. Both Tamron and Sigma are forced to reverse engineer Canon, Nikon, and Sony’s autofocus algorithms because these companies will not license their technology to them. My experience says that Tamron has been able to more effectively accomplish this, and I get very consistent results from some of the professional grade zooms from Tamron. I use them almost exclusively for my event and wedding work and typically don’t have to discard one image out of a thousand for missed focus. Large aperture primes are very demanding for autofocus, so this is a key point for Tamron if it wants to convince photographers to choose its lenses over first party choices.

Things got off to a good start when I performed calibration. The 45mm required only a +1 AFMA adjustment while the 35mm needed a -2. I prefer small adjustments as a matter of principle; it means that those without the ability to perform microadjustment in their camera bodies can still expect reliable performance out of the box. I did notice a difference even in that +1 adjustment, however, as autofocus accuracy was improved.

The autofocus motor in the lenses is Tamron’s USD (Ultrasonic Drive). This is a true ring type AF motor similar to Canon’s USM. The AF feels a bit more snappy in the 35mm. The 35mm is roughly similar in speed to my Canon 35mm f/2 IS in most situations, although I would still give the Canon the slight nod. The 45mm is a bit slower, however, though it is marginal. I rarely find Tamron’s AF speed with its wide aperture lenses to be top of the class (the 70-200 f/2.8 VC is the best of the bunch). They are more like middle of the pack. The best USM motors from Canon focus faster, and I would also give a slight edge in speed to Sigma’s 50mm f/1.4 ART. One thing to consider is that these lenses focus closer than their competitors, so if the lens is completely defocused it will take a split second longer to achieve focus as it has a larger focus range. Less extreme focus changes come quickly, and the lens has proven able to focus confidently even in challenging situations like backlit or dimly lit environments. There is a split second feeling of momentum gathering before the elements fly into motion which is accompanied by a faint sliding sound like the elements moving along. It isn’t as quiet as Sigma’s HSM motors, nor is it as fast as the better USM motors from Canon. If you are familiar with the focus speed of Tamron’s 24-70mm f/2.8 VC lens then you have a pretty good idea of the focus speed of this lens. The 45mm lens is probably a hair quicker. I’ve used the 24-70 VC on several different continents and in many professional applications and its always gotten the job done for me, so I suspect this lens will as well. The reality is that I haven’t really seen a 50mm lens that focuses with the speed of, say, the Canon 135mm f/2L. I would say that the Tamron 45mm is a bit behind Canon 50mm f/1.2L or the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART, but these lenses advantage is marginal.

It seems like every 50mm lens has some kind of focusing quirk. The 50mm f/1.8 even in STM guise focuses at a similar speed. The EF 50mm f/1.4 has inconsistent focus and tends to break. The 50mm f/1.2L tends to backfocus, and the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART simply focuses inconsistently at times. The Tamron? I’d just love to see a bit more speed here, particularly considering that it is moving a bit less glass than its top competitors (f/1.2 and f/1.4 respectively).

Focus speed is adequate…but what about focus accuracy? This is where the rubber meets the road!

I’m happy to report that I’m getting excellent focus accuracy results. As per usual, lenses on the 6D prefer AF points closer to center (it has a super focus point in the middle and unexceptional focus points beyond). While focus takes longer on the outer points (and will hunt in poor conditions), once focus locks it does so accurately. My 70D body has more robust cross-type AF points across the frame, and the lens focuses more quickly with them. Par for the course for the 6D, but I’m very accustomed to that by now. Fortunately the 6D makes up for it in a lot of other ways!!

I’m very happy with focus accuracy; if the 45mm focused just a little more quickly I’d be ecstatic. Here’s a few other focus samples (all wide open):

[Show as slideshow]

Interestingly, however, in a Japanese language interview (it doesn’t translate perfectly) Tamron engineers intimated that they prioritized accuracy over speed. It was probably the right choice. The 45mm is fast enough…and accuracy is paramount for me.

Portrait notes: Some of you that have read my reviews in the past know that I like to try wide aperture lenses out in a portrait environment. Environmental portraiture is typically very demanding on an AF system because you are shooting at wide apertures and looking for pin point focus on eyes. This is where the focus inconsistencies of many lenses are exposed. I went out today to shoot a portrait session. The weather was not particularly cooperative; it was a very, very bright and my open window for shooting was not the best. But, I was on a deadline with these lenses, and I thought, “Why not a torture test?” I shot almost every portrait shot wide open (f/1.8), except for three frames I dialed down to f/2.2.

I took a few tools to help combat the light. I used the Lite Genius Lite-Scoop II flash modifier I reviewed a few months back for my Metz 64 AF-1 flash unit. I prefer to shoot with my flashes off camera, but did not have time nor the inclination for a complicated light setup. The flash was on the camera with the modifier in place. I also took along an ND8 filter that I happened to have in the appropriate 67mm size so that I could bring the shutter speed down in certain situations. I also went with Manual HSS mode and shot with really high shutter speeds in other situations to just overpower the ambient light. The Metz has a lot of power and enables me to do this in most circumstances. I went through the roughly 100 shots from the session at a pixel level and found that my focus consistency was very good despite the challenging conditions. I slightly prefer the 35mm’s focus speed and accuracy, but the 45mm was rock solid as well (the 35mm may be a bit sharper).

Here is a gallery of portrait shots from the sessions and crops. These were all shot at f/1.8. They will also give you a chance to evaluate bokeh and color in an environmental portrait environment. These are not conditions that I would normally like to shoot portraits in, but the lenses themselves worked very well.

[Show as slideshow]

Manual focus is actually quite nice due to the combination of the nice focus ring I mentioned previously along with the rock solid VC. I don’t usually have the luxury of an image stabilizer when I manually focus, so it makes manual focus a kinder experience than on most AF lenses. Videographers will appreciate this along with a full 180 degrees of focus throw. These are perhaps the nicest manual focusing autofocus lenses that I’ve come across.

EOS M3 notes. While these lenses are on the larger side of what I would deem natural for my smaller EOS M3 mirrorless body, the focal lengths are appealing crossover ones. I was happy to find that the lenses focused nearly as quickly and accurately as native M mount lenses, although video AF Servo shooting can be a bit slow when making major transitions. Images produced with the combination are very appealing. It’s ironic that many recent Tamron lenses behave more mannerly via the EF adapter than most of the Canon lenses. Something about the way they achieve focus seems to agree with the M3. I recognize this affects only a few of you, but just in case…

How about Canon’s DPAF? A few readers were interested in how these lenses would work with Canon’s DPAF. I have a Canon 70D body, the first to use DPAF, and one of the few DSLRs to have quality servo AF during video recording. The lenses that work best with DPAF for video are those with stepping motors like Canon’s STM, but I’m happy to report that while these lens don’t focus quite as quickly as STM motors (and are bit louder in doing it), they focus smoothly and accurately. If you are using something else to record your audio I don’t see an issue. Here’s a little sampling of videos using DPAF.

DPAF works well for stills, too, though not as fast as typical contrast AF. All in all, the autofocus doesn’t wow you with speed, but makes up for it with accuracy. My guess is that the primary reason is that the lens has a longer focus throw than many competitors, a detail that will bring a sparkle to videographer’s eyes.

Conclusions

I’ve reviewed a LOT of 50mm lenses in the past year or so. I’ve reviewed the Canon 50mm f/1.2L along with the nifty fifties (50mm f/1.8II and STM), Sigma’s 50mm f/1.4 DG and 50mm f/1.4 ART, the Rokinon 50mm f/1.4, Zeiss Planar T* 1.4/50mm, Makro-Planar 2/50mm, and the Otus 1.4/55mm. On top of that I’ve done mini-reviews of some vintage 50mm glass, including the SMC Takumar 50mm f/1.4, 55mm f/1.8, Helios 44-2, and Zeiss Planar T* 1.7/50mm. That’s thirteen, by my count, not including the lens at hand. I’ve been on a bit of a “holy grail” quest for the perfect 50mm lens. This Tamron isn’t it, but it comes closer to finding the balance that I want than most. It’s currently on my personal Christmas list.

The fact that this lens is only f/1.8 and a Tamron might cause you to think that this is not a serious, pro-grade lens. This could not be further from the truth, though. My time with these lenses (not enough!) lets me know that Tamron means business. These are lenses designed for working professionals despite the reasonable price. They are built more like Zeiss lenses than Tamrons of old, save these are weather sealed. The optical performance is stunningly good, and there are some killer apps like VC and a crazy minimum focus distance that really set this lens apart from the pack. If it was a 50mm f/1.4 VC lens the line-up to purchase would already be forming.

It’s a reasonably sized lens that wouldn’t be onerous to pack along or carry. The image quality and bokeh is as good as anything not called Otus. My only nitpicks are that I’d like a bit faster focus and a lot less CA. But these principle shortcomings (along with a smaller than f/1.4 aperture) seem positively offset by so many strengths. Unless you absolutely feel like you need f/1.4 this lens is a stunning pick and highlights just how desperately Canon’s own EF 50mm f/1.4 needs an update. Tamron has undercut the price of the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 ART by $350 in this lens, and it is a LOT of lens for $599. Remember too that these lenses come with Tamron’s 6 year North American warranty. That in itself is a great value. I’m strongly considering adding this particular lens to my own kit as it seems to be filling the void I hoped Canon would fill with an equivalent to the 35mm f/2 IS in the 50mm focal length. Canon hasn’t (yet) built that lens, but it seems like Tamron has in the Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 Di VC USD. My understanding is that these lenses are only the first in a new line of Tamron prime lenses. All I can say is, “Bring them on!”

Pros:

Exceptional build quality
Better weather sealing than any other 50mm lens
Fluorine coating
Amazing .29x maximum magnification
Excellent manual focus ring with good focus throw
Excellent resolution from wide open on
Low vignetting
Quality bokeh from nine blade aperture
Well performing VC system
Accurate autofocus

Cons:

Larger than other 50mm f/1.8 lenses
More chromatic aberrations than expected
Autofocus speed could be faster
Doesn’t include a case/pouch
Smaller maximum aperture than main competitors

A big “thank you!” to Canada’s Amplis Foto for providing these retail samples for review. I’ve bought many lenses and accessories from Amplis myself, and they are great to deal with! You can use the Coupon Code AMPLIS52014 to get 5% anything in their store, including these new lenses!

Gear Used:

Canon EOS 6D DSLR Camera (Body Only)
Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 Di VC USD (in Canada)
Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 Di VC USD (USA and World)
Adobe Lightroom CC Software for Mac and Windows (Boxed Version)
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Alien Skin Exposure 7 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. Thank you for your support.

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52014 in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

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Sigma 85mm f/1.4 EX HSM Review

Dustin Abbott

September 9th, 2015

85mm is a focal length that I really enjoy. It is long enough that creating shallow depth of field at wide apertures is very easy. It is a beautiful portrait length that avoids distortion of the features but is still short enough that shooting full body portraits is easily within reason. There are a few cheaper 85mm prime lenses for most camera systems, but those options generally have a smaller f/1.8 aperture. The top 85mm lenses, like the Zeiss Otus 1.4/85mm or the Canon 85mm f/1.2L II go from really expensive ($1700 for the Nikon/$2000 for the Canon) and insanely expensive ($4500 for the Zeiss Otus). But high end portrait photographers love the 85mm f/1.2L despite its fairly slow autofocus, and the Zeiss Otus 85mm still stands as my favorite lens I’ve ever reviewed despite being huge (in size and price!) and manual focus only. Somewhere in the middle lies a sweet spot in price for many amateurs and professionals alike…and that is exactly where Sigma’s 85mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM lies. It comes in at right under $1000, and offers up comparable image quality for much less money. Does it have any major shortcomings that make it unworthy of your hard earned money? That is the question we will set out to answer in this review. If you prefer to watch your reviews simply click on the video below:

Why now? (Speculation Alert!)

This lens was not just released – in fact, it was released four years ago. The main reason I wanted to spend time with this lens as it has been oft rumored (wishful thinking?) that Sigma was planning a new version of this lens for the ART series. Such a lens would be highly prized because of the stellar reputation that Sigma has built for image quality in the ART series. If and when such a lens came, here are a few of the things that I would expect based upon having reviewed three of the previous ART series lenses:

New build and design
Ability to customize AF functionality through Sigma’s USB dock
Reduced chromatic aberrations
Excellent sharpness
Potentially better AF performance/accuracy
Higher contrast

But this 85mm lens is a different story than some of the other lenses Sigma has released…and here’s why I don’t know that an ART version of this lens is guaranteed despite the clamor for such a lens. Most of the ART lenses have filled a niche that Sigma did not already have filled, and the one that overlapped (the 50mm f/1.4), brought a significant optical improvement along with a significantly higher price. The 85mm f/1.4 EX already has excellent optics and shares that 50mm f/1.4 ART’s higher price. It makes me question how much room Sigma has to operate to build a new lens that wouldn’t be much more expensive. Sigma has built a threshold of pricing for the (full frame) lenses that follows a pretty specific pattern between about $800-$1000 USD; they have never breached the $1000 threshold with one of these lenses. An ART series rebuild of the 85mm f/1.4 would almost certainly have to break that pattern. On the flipside, Sigma’s ART lenses have quickly garnered more credibility with professionals and amateurs alike than any of the Sigma’s lenses previously had, so it is entirely possible that Sigma could move a lot more units based on the growing strength of the ART series brand. I’ll leave the speculation behind and let Sigma’s engineers and bean counters make that call. In the meantime we have quite an excellent prime lens in hand that just may be the lens you have been looking for.

Build and Design

This lens is interesting because it came during a transitional period when Sigma was trying to “find itself” in its lens design philosophy. This lens falls between the familiar older design philosophy (“crinkle finish”) and the new Global Vision design. Sigma abandoned the “crinkle finish” that was once a hallmark of their design for a smoother, semi-gloss black finish. The black is broken up by a thin gold ring towards the front of the lens along with a gold-toned “EX Sigma” badge on the side. The design is clean and nice if not as modern looking as the new ART series design. There is a bit of lettering in white and gold at a few points. The body is essentially engineered plastics over a metal frame/mount just like the majority of other newer camera lenses. There is a ribbed section near the lens mount that mirrors a similar section on the lens hood.

The focus ring is about an inch wide with a ribbed, rubberized texture. It falls easily to hand and is damped fairly well but the action isn’t the smoothest that I have encountered. Unlike many autofocus lenses, however, there is a nice bit of rotation (roughly 45 degrees) between 4 feet and infinity, which gives you enough room to nail manual focus in the key portrait zone if necessary. The lens has a distance window as well as almost useless depth of field markings (only for f/16).

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There is one switch on the left side of the lens that enables switching between AF (autofocus) and MF (manual focus). The HSM motor (Hypersonic Motor) in the lens does allow for full time manual override – just grab the focus ring at any time. The lens is fully internally focusing, so the length remains consistent at all times. There is no issue with using a circular polarizer.

The lens design itself is quite squat, but in a handsome kind of way. It has that chunky “prime” look with a ton of glass showing at the front that looks rather great on a camera. I actually prefer the look of the lens sans the hood, although in operation I almost always keep the hood on both for the protection it provides along with the shading of the front element to help prevent stray light from hitting the rather large (77mm) front element. This is a common filter size and chances are you already have a few in this size. If not, they are readily available and the size will be shared with a number of other lenses (including Sigma’s 50mm f/1.4 lenses).

The lens hood design is somewhat unique in that included in the box is an extension to add when using a (APS-C) crop sensor body (see photo above). The effective focal length will depend on your camera body and its crop factor, but the lens comes out to an approximate 135mm focal length equivalent. This is true of any lens mounted on a crop sensor body, but Sigma apparently felt that the lens design relied enough on the lens hood to warrant the extension being included. It is essentially a two inch piece of circular plastic that attaches between the lens hood and the lens body to deepen the hood. I’m actually curious as to how often this extension actually gets used by end users. (If you use this lens with a crop, let me know in the comments below!)

One admirable philosophy that Sigma espouses is that they always include a nice, padded case for storing and transporting their lenses. These cases are genuinely useful, and a great place to store the lens when not using it or transporting it. I wish that all other lens manufacturers would include cases that were this useful.

Autofocus Observations

My calibration process was a little interesting. I had a bit of challenge using Reikan FoCal (my typical program I use in lens calibration) as the lens would focus and defocus fine for a little while, but then it would emit a faint high pitched whine, and the program would hang. This was a new phenomenon for me even after using 100 lenses or so. I finally switched to a semi-automatic process and gave it plenty of space in between focus sessions. I still had a few hiccups, but I [eventually] got the job done. That behavior during calibration was probably copy specific, and if I had purchased the lens I would have had it checked out by Sigma to assure that everything was within spec. I didn’t see any similar behavior in normal use during my month-long review period.

Focus accuracy on a lens like this is very demanding. 85mm and f/1.4 means that depth of field is often razor thin, and, while not perfect, I have been satisfied with my focus consistency even at wide apertures. I’ve had relatively few misses, and the lens has met my expectations in this regard.

I would not consider this a top tier lens when it comes to autofocus, however. I have some lenses in my kit that have exceptionally good autofocus and their consistency surpasses the Sigma 85. This is highlighted when using the lens in a portrait setting, when even a narrow miss means softer eyes or facial features. To give you anecdotal evidence, I used this lens interchangeably with Canon EF 100mm f/2.L IS Macro lens to do headshots for my staff at the church. I used the same lighting setup (fixed daylight temp high powered CFLs through softboxes) and the same aperture (for single headshots, at least) of f/3.5. The Canon returned better focus consistency (and thus sharpness) and was my preferred tool when I reviewed the results. I will say, however, that I had a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 lens that I used for several years and eventually sold because I didn’t feel the autofocus was as consistent as the rest of my kit. I am dealing with memory, mind you, but I do feel that this Sigma is at least as accurate as my Canon 85 was…and probably better. The high end Canon 85mm f/1.2L II receives good marks for accuracy from most users but is well known to focus extremely slowly. The Sigma certainly focuses more quickly in most situations, and this portrait (one of the aforementioned headshots) shows that the lens is an excellent studio option.

Focus speed isn’t blazingly fast with the Sigma, but is adequate for most applications. It only feels “leisurely” when a large adjustment is necessary (from minimum focus to longer range). The reason for this is pretty obvious when you look into the front element – there is a LOT of glass in there. Moving large, heavy glass elements takes a lot of power from the autofocus motor. I wouldn’t consider the Sigma a great lens for sports or fast action, but it should do the trick for most events (weddings, for example) or portrait work.

The Sigma isn’t crazy about Live View focus on my Canon 6D body, however, and it tends to really hunt and take its time. It also doesn’t perform well in situations when the sun is brightly in the frame, either; it spends valuable seconds hunting back and forth. In those situations, the lens will make almost a pulsing noise as the AF motor reverses back and forth as it tries to move the elements into the proper position. I noticed the same “pulse” behavior when using the lens in AF Servo mode. It definitely prefers traditional one shot focus.

One aspect that could be improved here (beyond focus speed and consistency) by an ART series redesign would be adding compatibility with the Sigma USB dock. The key advantage here is that while many camera bodies will allow for a single calibration point (AFMA), the Sigma USB dock will allow you to tweak focus for four different focus points, allowing greater accuracy at a variety of distances. That would be extremely useful in a lens like this.

But this last bit is a hypothetical musing; at the moment there is no official word for Sigma about such a redesign. In the meantime, however, I wasn’t particularly disappointed with the overall focus speed and accuracy of this lens. It isn’t top shelf, but neither was it unreliable. Most of my images came back nicely focused.

Image Quality

Here is the nitty gritty, for this is the main reason that people buy an 85mm f/1.4 lens. The beautiful image quality and great subject isolation that such a lens provides (even one famous for slow focus like the Canon 85L) is worthwhile for many photographers. It is one of my favorite focal lengths to work with, as 135mm (or more) provides even greater subject isolation but can be too long for many applications (even more true if you are using a crop sensor body), and 50mm, while more flexible for general use, just doesn’t provide the same subject isolation (look). The 85mm falls right into a sweet spot for portrait work, as it provides a very flattering perspective of features. It doesn’t distort things like noses and ears like wider focal lengths do, and it doesn’t overly compress the features like longer focal lengths (200mm+) can. It also allows for full body portraits with nice subject isolation.

Take a look at some the top environmental portrait shooters and you will probably find an 85mm prime in their regular rotation. But even your “ordinary” images (family, event, etc…) gain a very special look when using a lens like this.

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The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 delivers image quality in spades (as I hope the images shared in this review will attest to). I’ve used a number of 85mm lenses, and each has its strengths. The Sigma finds a nice balance between sharpness, bokeh, and drawing. It isn’t optically perfect (we’ll touch on those shortcomings in a moment), but those imperfections are part of what creates the nice drawing from the lens. If you were to examine images from the Canon 85mm f/1.2L II at a pixel level you would discover a number of optical imperfections. Chromatic aberrations, a lack of localized contrast in some places, and other defects are present – but if you step back and look at the images the lens produces (as a whole) they are unmistakably special. That make be slightly less true of this Sigma, but the analogy is appropriate here. The “look” of the images from this Sigma is special.

It offers nice sharpness while retaining a smooth transition to defocus. Some lenses can emphasize sharpness to the detriment of the overall look of the images. I’m very partial to the overall drawing of this lens. The images have a rich, warm look with great delineation of the subject. The bokeh is nice and soft, giving out of focus regions a nicely “creamy” look. There were a few situations, however, where I was surprised by how busy the background looked. This was at a very specific ratio of distance from camera to subject to background. Some highlights can have harder edges than what I might like. Here are a variety of “bokeh” shots for you to check out:

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A careful examination of image quality shows that chromatic aberrations are almost always present, if not extreme. Most of this is in the form of bokeh CA, however, making it often less noticeable. The test for me is whether or not CA is evident even at standard viewing sizes (as opposed to zooming in to a pixel level.) Most lenses being released in the last two years have improved their ability to control CA to the place that it is rarely evident except at a pixel level. The Sigma 85mm doesn’t have that degree of control over CA, but chromatic aberrations are reasonably well controlled for a large aperture prime like this. The problem for the lens is that the bar has moved quite a bit higher in this area in the last couple of years (and that is the standard that I’m using).

The lens seems quite resistant to flare. I’ve not had any issues that I can recall when putting the sun into the frame. I’ve primarily shot during the golden hour on either end of the day, but one day I shot into the rising sun that was getting pretty intense and didn’t have an issue with ghosting or veiling at at all. This is a nice plus for a portrait lens, because often you are going to want to put either a natural or artificial light source into the frame to backlight your subject.

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The lens has decent but not exceptional contrast at wide apertures (the Otus 85 is not threatened!). That being said, the image quality wide open overall is very useful. I shot the majority of the time between f/1,4 and f/2 and only stopped down when I needed additional depth of field. Look at the nice resolution from this medium-focus distance scene at f/2:

I find that even landscape images do work at f/1.4-f/2, and the ability to radically change your focus point and create shallow DOF even in a landscape image can be a very appealing technique. Here are a few landscape oriented samples, including a few that use shallow DOF to tell the story:

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When stopped down resolution is very high, and I feel like 85mm is actually a great focal length for shooting larger scale landscape images where a wide angle lens is just too wide. I wrote an article on the subject that helps explain the benefits of a using a telephoto’s compression to your advantage when shooting landscapes here. Distortion is quite low, and I would suggest bringing the lens along for an alternate view at some scenes when shooting landscapes.

I mentioned the Zeiss Otus 85mm f/1.4 (a lens that costs 4 ½ times as much as the Sigma). Part of what blew me away about that lens was the fact that it was able to have incredible (record setting) resolution and stunningly high contrast at wide apertures while retaining a very artful drawing/look to the images. Such an accomplishment is incredibly rare, however, and is the main reason the lens is massive in size along with being massive in price. I don’t think that this Sigma is as magical a lens as the Zeiss, but I also recognize that the Zeiss isn’t within reach (or practical) for many photographers. The Canon 85L is the standard in the field, but the Sigma is very close at less than half the price. The Sigma is offering up noticeably better image quality and more dramatic subject isolation than the cheaper f/1.8 variants and probably will hit a sweet spot in the image quality to price ratio that many photographers must consider. It is sharper at f/1.4 across the image circle than the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 is at f/1.8.

There are few better lenses for low light work than a good 85mm f/1.4 lens. It really sucks in the light, and makes producing great looking photos even in less than ideal light an easy accomplishment. While today’s DSLR bodies offer great high ISO performance, I think all of us prefer to keep ISO’s lower to allow for greater dynamic range (and smaller file sizes, too!)

One final image quality observation is the lens has a rather poor minimum focus distance of 2.79”/85cm, yielding an unimpressive .11x maximum magnification figure. This is, well, low, which means that the lens isn’t as useful as it might be for flowers or other smaller objects. While the figure is unimpressive, it is also right in line with other 85mm lenses. This just isn’t a strength for the focal length. If having better maximum magnification is more important to you, I might suggest either a macro lens between 90-100mm (I love my Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro and found the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 VC Macro a very impressive lens) or even a 135mm lens instead. All the 135mm lenses that I have reviewed (Canon, Zeiss, and Samyang) have much higher maximum magnification specs (particularly the latter two). Their maximum magnification is more like .25x, making them very useful for minimum focus shots. The Sigma has nice wide open resolution for these type shots, though, so this does help. Here’s an f/2 shot plus crop to show off the nice resolution near minimum focus.

All in all the lens is offering up a lot of image quality for the money, making it an easy lens to recommend if IQ is a priority for you.

Conclusions

The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 EX continues to occupy a unique position since its release. There are cheaper alternatives, yes, but those are mostly f/1.8 variants with image quality several steps behind this Sigma. There is a Rokinon/Samyang 85mm with good image quality (and a very low price), but it is manual everything, and many photographers simply aren’t interested in messing with such a lens. The Sigma’s true competitors are the first party 85mm lenses from Canon and Nikon, and the Nikon (85mm f/1.4G) comes in at an $800 premium at right under $1700. Canon’s own 85mm f/1.2L II has a slight aperture advantage and beautiful optics, but it comes in at a whopping $2000. That leaves the Sigma sitting at an excellent bargain position with almost as good optics, a nice design and build, and enough of a savings to add something like a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART with the price difference. And yet this lens has never been a huge hit, and the main issue may be the perceptions due to the autofocus capabilities of the lens. The lens did show a few quirks for me, and the overall focus accuracy is not top tier, but overall I feel the lens performed well during my test period and gave me some gorgeous images that I’m happy to add to my portfolio. If you are looking for a good portrait prime that will produce beautiful images with sharp details, nice, creamy bokeh, and beautiful color rendition and don’t want to break the bank, then look no further. Despite its shortcomings the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 EX will give you a lot of bang for the buck!

Pros:

Excellent image quality
Excellent price compared to first party alternatives
Nice, clean design ethos
Good flare resistance
Autofocus is reasonably fast for large aperture prime
Nice drawing/look to the images
Includes lens hood and nice, padded case

Cons:

Some autofocus quirks
Other options deliver more reliable focus accuracy
More chromatic aberrations than newer releases
Long(ish) minimum focus and low maximum magnification
No weather sealing/moisture resistance

Big thanks to B&H Photo for providing me a retail copy of the lens for review purposes. They are fantastic to work with both as a partner and as a retailer. I’d appreciate if you give them your business through the links below, which also helps keep me in business. Thanks!

Gear Used:

Canon EOS 6D DSLR Camera (Body Only)
Sigma 85mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM
Adobe Lightroom CC Software for Mac and Windows (Boxed Version)
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Alien Skin Exposure 7 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)

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Sigma 24-35mm f/2 DG ART Review

Dustin Abbott

August 31st, 2015

Sigma continues to think outside the box with many of its newly released lenses, and the one I have in hand is one of the most notable examples of that creative thinking. A few years ago Sigma awoke from their third party slumber and realized that they were capable of making better products than what they were currently building. They began to target a more premium place in the market, and their new “Global Vision” was introduced. New optical and cosmetic designs, new branding (Art, Sport, and Contemporary lenses), and a bit of attitude in going after the big players, particularly with their ART series lenses. They released the 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM ART lens a few years ago (read my review here), and after their success with a completely different kind of zoom lens, they have now addressed the full frame market with the new Sigma 24-35mm f/2 DG HSM ART. The 18-35mm f/1.8 ART lens broke the unspoken rule that zoom lenses generally have a maximum aperture of f/2.8 with a constant f/1.8 maximum aperture throughout the zoom range. The 18-35ART isn’t small or light, but neither is it exceptionally large or unwieldy.

(Prefer to watch your reviews? You’ll like this one!)

But that lens was a crop sensor specific lens, and the smaller sensor gives lens’ manufacturers more leeway to take chances. Sigma stuck to a small (less than 2x) zoom range on that lens so that they could maintain consistently excellent optical performance. Despite that limited range, however, the lens covered a number of important focal lengths like 18mm (28mm FF), 24mm (right around 35mm FF), and 35mm (50mmish FF). It’s f/1.8 aperture is 1 1/3 stops faster than any other zoom lens, and because its sharpness was excellent wide open, there was very little aperture penalty compared to primes. The more demanding nature of the full frame sensor that the 24-35 ART is designed for (even more true with so many high MP bodies being introduced) means that Sigma had to adopt more compromises, including smaller zoom range (only 12mm instead of 19mm), smaller maximum aperture (f/2 instead of f/1.8), a lens design that is both heavier (130 additional grams for a total of 941 grams…ouch!), longer (only by 1mm, though), and more expensive ($999 vs. $799). One definite plus, however, is that Sigma elected for this lens to go wider (24mm vs. 28mm equivalent), which makes it a more logical choice for landscape work…and it turns out that this is an area where the lens shines.

My concern going into this review is that the advantages of such a lens, while tangible, may be viewed as being of only marginal value compared with either options…and there are more of them when you enter the full frame lens arena. This little series from a portrait session (black and white conversion along with tone curve adjustment applied) shows that there isn’t a huge difference between 24mm and 35mm out in the real world:

Is there enough of an advantage in the limited zoom range to choose this lens over a smaller, lighter, cheaper, and potentially sharper prime like the Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS (which has the advantage of an image stabilizer)? Is there enough of an aperture advantage to choose it over a not much more expensive Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 VC which is lighter, shorter, has a more useful focal range and a very effective stabilizer to help offset the aperture advantage? I use both of these lenses in my own kit, so part of what I will attempt to do in this review is to answer these questions. I have seen photographers asking for a 24-70mm f/2 lens from Sigma; will they be as excited by this lens? Can Sigma strike gold once again by thinking outside the box? We’ll find out!

More Build Info

The 24-35mm ART has Sigma’s now familiar (but still excellent) current design ethos. I’m very partial to the look of these lenses with their black on black look with a variety of texture and gloss finishes. I love the rubberized surface of the transition to the lens hood and both the focus and zoom rings are nice and wide along with being nicely damped. The zoom ring, while not light, has a very definite, precise feel. The focus ring moves more easily, and my only (minor) criticism is that I miss the more definite feel of the stops at minimum and infinity focus like a true manual focus lens (like a Zeiss).

This is a large(ish) lens. It weighs in at a hefty 941grams (33.2 oz), which means that it outweighs all the 24-70mm f/2.8 variants save the very hefty Nikkor. I use the Tamron 24-70 VC, and despite that lens having an image stabilizer and a much greater focal range it weighs 136 grams less than the Sigma 24-35mm. The Sigma is also an additional 5mm longer (about 4.8″/122mm), but this is fairly negligible. Sigma’s own ART series 35mm f/1.4 weighs 665g (a good third less) and the Canon 35mm f/2 IS weighs a paltry 335g (only a little over a third of the weight).

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The lens features a fairly complex 18 elements in 13 groups. It has a nine rounded blade aperture iris that retains nicely circular highlights even when stopped down a bit. It has a minimum focus distance of only 11’’/27.9cm, giving a maximum magnification figure of right under .23x, which is certainly useful. The Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS has a slightly better .24x, but Sigma’s own 35mm f/1.4 and the Tamron 24-70 trail this figure at .20x. My shots near minimum focus suggest the Sigma performs very well at minimum focus distances.

The 24-35 ART has a largish but not uncommon 82mm front filter thread. There has been a trend towards this larger filter size in the past several years, and the fact that it is now shared by a number of recent lenses means that the price of 82mm filters has drifted down. I used both a circular polarizer along with an ND1000 (ten stop ND filter) that allowed me to do some long exposure landscape work with the lens. I didn’t detect any unusual vignetting caused by my filters (it helps to be stopped down – eliminating the already heavy natural vignette at wide apertures).

I continue to be somewhat surprised by the fact that Sigma is not making any weather sealing claims with the ART series. I recently reviewed a $249 Tamron zoom (18-200 VC) that made a “moisture resistance” claim (which usually the only real visual evidence of is the rubber gasket around the lens mount). You can debate how much of a difference “weather sealing” makes, but I know there are a number of working professionals and amateurs alike who prefer the peace of mind of weather sealing. Sigma definitely makes such claims about weather sealing in their telephotos, and it seems like these ART series lenses should have some attempt at some moisture resistance.

I say it in every Sigma review, but it bears repeating. Sigma always includes a nice, useful padded case for the lens. If you travel with your gear, this can be very valuable, and it saves purchasing something similar on the aftermarket. Sigma cases are the best OEM padded cases (other than high end Canon telephoto cases), and are infinitely more useful than the “suede” sock that Canon L lenses ship with.

AFMA and Autofocus Observations

Going into Sigma reviews I expect two things: some impressive optics and some kind of quirk with the autofocus. I was happy and relieved after my challenging session trying to calibrate the 18-35mm f/1.8 that while the 24-35 ART did require a significant amount of AFMA adjustment (for me the numbers were -14 on the wide end and -12 on the ‘telephoto’ end – but these numbers probably won’t work for you) the lens consistently and repeatedly showed those same numbers. I have taken to running both an automatic AFMA through Reikan FoCal and then a semi-automatic test where I spend some time both eyeballing the results (the chart as well as numbers) and making sure they are highly repeatable. By the time I finish I usually feel very confident that I have dialed in the right result. As a matter of preference I prefer numbers that are closer to zero in an AFMA (people without an AFMA function on their camera bodies need lenses that ship well calibrated), but I am encouraged by the fact these numbers were repeatable. Early focus accuracy seems pretty good.

The advantage of purchasing one of Sigma’s modern releases is the ability to use Sigma’s USB dock to fine tune focus for several specific distances. There will be a learning curve as you learn how to properly utilize the dock (an additional $60 charge), but my feeling is that it is worth the effort to get the best results from your lens. This is doubly true if you have a body that does not support AFMA – you can still calibrate the lens for the body with the USB dock. The USB dock will also enable you to load firmware updates to your lenses (helping to prevent incompatibility issues with future bodies) and will also work with most other newer lenses from Sigma. Spending some time with the dock and fine-tuning this lens will help you get the best results from it. I personally spend a fair bit of time calibrating each of my lenses; if I have invested in them, I want the confidence that I am going to get the best performance possible out of them. I don’t spend quite as much time with review lenses because I typically have them for only a month, but I am willing to invest some serious time in the equipment I personally add to my kit. Calibrating a lens properly doesn’t make the lens sharper (those optics aren’t going to change!), but it will make more of your pictures sharp as the lens AF will more reliably achieve optimum focus.

All of this being said, I noticed a big difference in the focus accuracy of this lens vs. the older 18-35 ART lens. The 24-35 still isn’t as good as my best lenses, but misses were far fewer and never completely off. The biggest challenge is in doing portrait work at wide open apertures, and particularly in that region from about 10-30 feet. Many lenses have fairly little “throw” or travel in that region. Look at it this way: this lens has a manual focus ring with a distance window and roughly 100 degrees of rotation. Of that 100 degrees, about 90 degrees of that rotation are from minimum focus to four feet. That means that there are only about ten degrees of rotation from 4 feet to infinity. Adjustments within that range are VERY finite. It is unsurprising that this is where most of the lens’ misses happen. The misses that I got during a brief portrait session were small enough to only really be apparent at pixel level examination and would still be usable for most applications. Because of this, I feel that some time spent with the USB dock would help to improve that accuracy to reliable levels. The shot and crop below shows that for the most part I was getting “nailed” focus results, and when properly focused, the lens is very sharp!

This has been the Achille’s heel of the Sigma ART series (for me and many others by internet reports), but this lens feels like progress in the right direction. The personal challenge for me is that my Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS happens to be one of my most accurately focusing lenses; it just doesn’t miss, period. I personally still favor it over this lens for that reason although this lens may just be a bit sharper. But that is just a personal anecdote, and for this review I am happy to report that I have no real concerns about autofocus accuracy.

Focus speed is good (particularly for a lens full of large glass elements like this). I sometimes find with a few of my Tamron lenses that you can perceive the force needed to move those big elements (like a bit of lag), but I don’t notice anything like that here. This lens, like many other Sigma lenses, is among the quietest focusing lenses.

Image Quality

One thing is certain – if the size and limited zoom range don’t throw you off, the image quality from the lens certainly won’t either. The amount of resolution that the Sigma is producing at each stop along the journey of its minor zoom range is impressive and certainly rivals equivalent prime lenses. That resolution extends across the frame, and I found the lens performed very well at infinity along with closer focus distances. Please note that unless specified, all images that I share in this review have received no processing. They were literally imported into Lightroom and then exported. No change to contrast, color, distortion, vignette, chromatic aberrations, etc… I used the 24-35 ART in a variety of situations, and here are a few of my observations:

The primary negative that I can find is a rather pronounced vignetting (particularly at 24mm) that is noticeable in most every shot at wide apertures. At times a natural vignette can be an attractive quality, but there are other times when it will give a “heavy” feel to your images that you won’t like. Since there isn’t a standard profile in Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw available, I did a manual adjustment and found that I needed around a +87 figure with while moving the midpoint in +27 to completely eliminate the vignetting. P.S. That’s a lot! Here’s the example that I manually fixed before and after (shot is 24mm f/2)

Chromatic aberrations are really nicely controlled. I see only the faintest bit of green fringing at wide apertures, and that only when looking at a pixel level. It wasn’t uncommon for most primes prior to just the last couple of years to have a considerable amount of chromatic aberrations, but Sigma has found a way to control those very effectively with their ART series lenses.
Flare control seems a bit better than the 18-35mm ART lens. I got a tiny bit of ghosting, but very little veiling. Contrast remained strong when I got the sun into the frame. The bit of green ghosting on the dog’s ear below is the most egregious thing I saw…and it wasn’t much.

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One very positive trait shared with the 18-35 ART is the excellent sunburst/sunstar created by the lens. This may seem like a small detail, but the quality of that sunburst can really make a landscape shot.
Distortion control is very impressive. 24mm is fairly wide, but even at 24mm the amount of distortion is nicely managed. I decided to do a comparison between the Tamron 24-70 VC at 24mm. I wanted to see directly how much distortion there was by comparison, and using a brick wall also reveals distortion patterns. The Sigma showed very low barrel distortion. There was a clear difference between it and the Tamron (which actually has less barrel distortion than Canon’s own 24-70mm f/2.8L II). Across the frame the Sigma is producing nicely straight lines. Little correction is needed. The first image below shows the comparison between the Tamron (right) and Sigma (left). The last two shots show the results from the Sigma at 24mm and 35mm respectively.

Perhaps the counterpart of this is that the Tamron is noticeably wider at 24mm. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that you would have as much image left after distortion correction due to the higher distortion of the Tamron.
Color rendition is excellent from the lens as well. Colors are rich and yet realistic, and the images remind me a lot of those I got from 50mm f/1.4 ART (and that’s a good thing!). Contrast is very strong. The combination of good contrast, good color, and great sharpness give images a very nice “professional” quality that easily justifies the price of the lens.

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The excellent image quality, very high resolution, low distortion, and ability to use traditional filters makes this a nice choice as a landscape lens. It isn’t as wide as many other options, but if 24mm is wide enough for you the lens will produce some very strongly detailed, beautifully colored images. It seems ready to be paired with some of the higher resolution bodies now on the market. If you aren’t comfortable composing at wider focal lengths and want excellent image quality in a moderately wide lens, this is a pretty compelling option as it can also function better as a general purpose/wide prime than some of the true wide angle lenses. The fact that it retains the use of traditional filters should not be overlooked, either. Finally, the excellent sunburst produced when the lens is stopped down is a great extra detail.

I should also note that the extra wide aperture (for a zoom) helps to create more options for storytelling. See the difference in perspective provided by my focus in these two 35mm f/2 shots. I prefer the one with the girl out of focus as it (to me) is more effective as a storytelling image (and would also make a great B-roll shot from a portrait session).

Although I’ve elected to share mostly images in this review without any post processing work, I should note that the images from the lens lend themselves to processing very well. They are sharp and have good contrast, and that opens up a lot of potential for playing with them. Here are a few images that I’ve added some post work to during my review period:

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What else is the lens good for?

Pretty much everything that 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm prime lenses are good for. One great application is environmental portraiture. The ability to get sharp, crisp results at wide apertures (though one stop less than a 35mm f/1.4 prime) will allow you to include full body, environmental shots while retaining a bit of the 3 dimensional “cut-out” effect that is so valuable in producing professional looking portraits. Just don’t expect the kind of subject isolation that longer focal lengths provide. Pairing a lens like this with a nice telephoto will allow you to have some great variety in your portrait sessions. Here’s an example of an environmental portrait at 35mm f/2:

I enjoy getting close to flowers or other objects and being able to blur the background but still retain some storytelling context due to the wider focal length. You can get closer than a foot with the lens and get a nice bit of magnification. Here are a few examples of what you can do with nature shooting at close distances. I’ve included a shot of a bench at both 24mm and 35mm to show you the different perspectives available.

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What is the Lens Not so Good For?

Some people enjoy this kind of focal length as a street or walk-about lens. I would suggest that a small prime might be better for this, however, as this lens is not particularly small or light. It probably isn’t the best choice for travel, either, as it is pretty large and heavy along with the fact that it isn’t weather sealed and has a confining zoom range. I still prefer a 24-70mm lens for travel; that focal length just opens up more opportunities.

The lens is also not my top choice for astraphotography. The f/2 aperture is a big advantage, as it will enable you to get a lot of light to the sensor and enable you to use lower ISO settings, and certainly the high native sharpness is another advantage. There are two disadvantages, however, and one of them is pretty big. The smaller deal is the high level of vignetting at the wide apertures you are likely to be using the lens at for this kind of work. The bigger deal is that while coma isn’t terrible (not quite flying ducks or flying saucers), light points (stars) tend to be elongated and look more like the beginning of star trails normally associated with longer exposure times. The crop here is from a 20 second exposure (too brief for actual movement of the stars), and yet when I viewed the image I had to double-check the exposure time because the star points looked like the exposure was longer (more like 40-50 seconds).

This same trait was evident in all the night shots I took that included stars, regardless of exposure length. If shooting astraphotography is a priority to you, you may want to consider Tamron’s new 15-30 f/2.8 VC lens. After extensive testing it is my new lens of choice for this kind of work. That being said, don’t be afraid to pull out the Sigma 24-35mm at night, either. It’s behavior here is far from the worse I’ve seen, and it’s lovely color rendition will make for some beautiful images. You can see one of my favorites here:

The What and the Why (Conclusions)

I seriously doubt than many people will be disappointed by the “what” of this lens. It is a beautiful optical instrument, offering superb image quality with remarkably few defects. It is beautiful made, handles well, and is generally a delight to use in the field. As these images show, it can also be pretty bokehlicious when used the right way:

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Where people may not buy into the Sigma 24-35mm f/2 ART lens is in the “why” department. The limited zoom range is going to cause a lot of people to wonder “why”, particularly when Sigma themselves have both excellent 24mm f/1.4 and a 35mm f/1.4 ART series primes. The 18-35mm f/1.8 ART has proven successful in part because there are relatively few quality alternatives specific to the APS-C market. Part of the challenge for this lens is the fact that full frame owners have a much broader choice of quality options. I called the 18-35 ART the Cadillac of crop sensor zooms. The 24-35mm f/2 ART is not only more limited in scope (slightly smaller aperture, smaller zoom range) but it faces a much stronger field of opponents. I own the Canon 35mm f/2 IS, which offers similar image quality at a lower price, much smaller size, and adds an extremely effective image stabilizer and higher focus accuracy. The tradeoff vs. many other 24mm or 35mm primes is that you lose a full stop of light to gain the small amount of zoom. You also get a larger, heavier lens.

The upside is that this lens gives up nothing in image quality to any of them and gives you the flexibility to zoom back to 24mm to provide a different perspective when things get tight. That may not seem like a big deal if you are working outdoors and it’s a matter of stepping forwards or backwards a few feet, but some of you work in tight spaces in a studio or interior spaces where stepping further back simply isn’t an option. I would consider this lens a better landscape option than 35mm lenses for this reason and better than a 24-70mm zoom because of the fact that distortion at 24mm is so well controlled (better than any of the 24-70mm options). If you view this lens as three quality primes in one, the convenience and image quality will probably be an acceptable tradeoff for the larger size and weight.

At a thousand bucks ($999 at B&H Photo), the lens isn’t cheap but is appropriately priced for its performance when one considers the number of primes that cost far more. The price is very consistent with the standard Sigma has set for the ART series…and they are selling a lot of lenses at this price point.

In conclusion, the only real thing this lens has going against it is the rather narrow terms of its existence. It is a large lens with a limited zoom range and an aperture that, while larger than competing zooms, is smaller than the primes it competes with. Sigma took a step into no man’s land with this lens, and ultimately sales success will determine whether or not it was a gamble worth taking. If you want both a 24mm prime and a 35mm prime, this lens is cheaper than purchasing the 24mm ART and the 35mm ART, although you will lose a stop of light gathering. If the terms of its existence are acceptable to you, however, the Sigma 24-35mm f/2 ART lens itself will be more than acceptable. It is very sharp, has great color, low distortion, low chromatic aberrations, and focuses more accurately than any of the ART series lenses I’ve used previously. The only optical mark against it is pronounced vignetting, and this is fixed rather easily in post-production. This optical excellence is packaged in a well-designed, well-engineered body that should serve you well for years to come. The only real question is whether this lens will be more useful to you than an equivalent prime or a standard 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom…and that is a question that only you can answer.

Pros:

Excellent sharpness at all focal lengths, even wide open
f/2 aperture is a full stop wider than other full frame zoom lenses at f/2.8
Great color rendition and nice bokeh
Chromatic aberrations well controlled
Very low distortion at 24mm – much better than 24-70mm zoom lenses
Beautiful build quality and design that functions well cosmetically and mechanically
Uses traditional filters (82mm) without apparent penalty
Comes with a nice padded case
Better focus accuracy
Ability to use USB dock (sold separately) to fine tune the lens

Cons:

Very narrow zoom range (12mm)
Large and heavy
Lacks any weather sealing
Heavy vignetting at wide apertures
AF accuracy, while improved, is still not top shelf quality
A less than amazing coma result

Big thanks to B&H Photo for providing me a retail copy of the lens for review purposes. They are fantastic to work with both as a partner and as a retailer. I’d appreciate if you give them your business through the links below, which also helps keep me in business. Thanks!

Gear Used:

Canon EOS 6D DSLR Camera (Body Only)
Sigma 24-35mm f/2 ART
Adobe Lightroom CC Software for Mac and Windows (Boxed Version)
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Alien Skin Exposure 7 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. Thank you for your support.

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52014 in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

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Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC Review

Dustin Abbott

August 26th, 2015

Tamron makes a number of professional grade zoom lenses (some of which I personally use in my own kit), but their bread and butter has been in producing consumer grade zoom lenses that often provide a broader zoom range than competitors at highly competitive prices. I was recently in New York City for a week and saw a LOT of cameras, and the majority of the times that I saw a Tamron lens mounted on a camera body the lens would invariably be one of Tamron’s popular “superzoom” lenses. According to Tamron the predecessor of this lens was introduced ten years ago. This is from Tamron’s press release a few weeks ago: “The new 18-200mm F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC (Model B018) is the successor to AF 18-200mm F/3.5-6.3 XR Di II LD Aspherical [IF] MACRO (Model A14), which has been one of Tamron’s best-selling lenses since its introduction 10 years ago. The new 18-200mm VC uses the most modern optical and mechanical design to achieve compactness and high performance. Incorporating image stabilization, the 18-200mm VC delivers superior image quality and is the lightest zoom in its class. Tamron made full use of its long experience and expertise as a pioneering force in high-power zoom lenses to create an optimal all-in-one™ lens that opens up new photographic possibilities to all DSLR camera users.”

One of my first observations when I read that announcement is that at the least Tamron has managed to slightly reduce the length of the NAME of its lenses in that ten years, so that’s a start!! The original lens (which sells for a bargain $199) is replaced by the new lens, and while the 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC is slightly more expensive ($249), it brings a number of new upgrades to the table that will surely continue its popularity. Let’s go back to that press release for a moment to highlight some of those changes, and then I will elaborate of how those improvements play out in real world use.

But first of all, if you prefer to watch your reviews, take a look at my video review of the lens:

From the Press Release

1. No need to change lenses—shoot in a wide variety of settings, from true
wideangle to telephoto, with a single lens
A zoom range of 18 to 200mm (35mm equivalent: 28-310mm) means there is no need
to change lenses even when switching from wideangle shots in tight places to long
telephoto shots of distant objects. Ideal for everything from large groups photos, family
pictures, portraits, scenery, animals and school events—even for close-up shots (less
than 0.5m / 19.7 in.) of food.

This is, in a nutshell, the primary reason why the predecessor to this lens was so popular and why this lens will be no different. In a Canon mount and its 1.6x crop factor (tested here), the focal range is a full frame equivalent of 28.8-320mm. In Nikon and Sony mounts the crop factor is 1.5x and the focal range is a full frame equivalent 28-310mm. This is obviously a very, very useful focal range that will cover the vast majority of a person’s photography needs. This is slightly over an 11.1x zoom range and allows many people who have used a superzoom/compact camera with a big zoom range to use a DSLR with a smaller penalty on their zoom range while taking advantage of the enhanced image quality of a DSLR. Most kit lenses are typically something like 18-50(ish)mm, meaning that this lens adds on a significant advantage in reach while not compromising the wide end that people are accustomed to. Many DSLR users simply don’t want to switch lenses or carry heavy gear, and this lens enables them to do just that.

The press release highlights the very nice maximum magnification due to the close focus of the lens. It allows for a 1:4 reproduction ratio, or .25x magnification – a very useful figure. As this photo shows, I was able to fill the frame with a relatively small Black-Eyed Susan blossom.

My experience says that large zoom ranges usually equal compromises in image quality, particularly in a compact lens like this. Please recognize that I am not the target audience for this lens; my own personal lens kit runs 20+ lenses and I own five camera bodies. I’ve reviewed the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55mm, the Tamron 15-30 VC, and Canon 100-400L II (a few standouts for the year) this year alone. My previous crop sensor review was the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 ART series. This lens is obviously not going to threaten any of these in the image quality department. That being said, these are clearly not the comparisons. The Otus costs 16x as much!

A more fair comparison are the kit lenses. I don’t have an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 on hand, but I do have the 55-250mm f/4-5.6 STM and the EF-M 18-55mm STM for mirrorless. While both of these lens have a slight edge in image quality, the overall image quality is very similar. I wasn’t often wowed, but every now and then an image would come out of the camera that would impress me. Here is one of them along with a crop from the point of focus:

I don’t think the typical user of this lens will be disappointed with the image quality. I was encouraged to find that images looked better on the more demanding 24MP sensor of my EOS M3 mirrorless body. That tells me that the lens is not being “outclassed” by the more demanding sensor.

I was very impressed by the image quality of the equivalent Tamron lens for mirrorless (same lens name except for Di III in the name instead of Di II). I think the mirrorless lens was perhaps a bit sharper overall, but it also costs twice as much.

In the interest of fairness, I will report that I only had about a week with the lens for this review, and so I didn’t have a chance to shoot it in as many situations as I normally might. In that time, however, I used the lens at a Men’s event I was shooting, a golf tournament, and then in some general purpose and nature shooting.

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Color rendition is nice, and overall sharpness is at times impressive for the extreme nature of the focal range and its compact size. I had no problem producing nice looking images with it and that broad focal range gives you many shooting options. Chromatic aberrations seem well controlled. This photo has plenty of transition areas from dark to very light areas, but I don’t see any apparent chromatic aberrations or fringing.

The micro-contrast of the lens isn’t amazing, however, and I see a bit of “haze” at the edges of things like leaves.

The lens is also somewhat flare prone. I played around with putting the sun in the frame and found that in some situations I got some ghosting artifacts and in other situations I got a fairly extreme veiling effect. The included lens hood helps, but I would be careful when pointing this lens towards the sun. The middle shot of this series shows the difference when I made a minor adjustment of the sun’s position.

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2. Greater portability at a weight of just 400g (14.1 oz.)—the lightest lens in its class
Covers the focal length range of 18 to 200mm and features Tamron’s VC (Vibration
Compensation)*2, but weighs a mere 400g (14.1 oz.). Tamron designed the 18-200mm
VC to be as user-friendly as possible by emphasizing portability and convenience.
Users will appreciate the incredible balance and comfortable feel of this lens—even
when used with the newest APS-C DSLR cameras.

The equivalent lenses from Canon and Nikon both weigh in at 560-590grams, or nearly a third more than the Tamron. The predecessor from Tamron weighed 398 grams, so Tamron has managed to provide a more robust build (more on that in a moment) and VC (image stabilization – “Vibration Compensation”) while only increasing the weight a paltry 2 grams. None of these lenses are backbreaking, obviously, but if you are traveling and walking all day with a camera around your neck that light weight will be very welcome. Tamron’s own 16-300mm PZD lens is also light at only 539g, but it costs more than twice as much ($629) and may not be an option for your budget. If it is in your budget, however, it should be considered, as it adds both 2mm extra width on the wide end (16 vs 18mm) and adds another 100mm to the long end (300 vs. 200mm).

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The light weight of the lens makes it an easy match for entry level DSLRs, but it doesn’t feel out of place on my more robust 70D body. The light weight also makes it an alternative to throw on a mirrorless body if you happen to have one. I used mine via adapter on my EOS M3, and it didn’t feel out of place there (more on that in a moment). One potential sacrifice to weight is found at the lens mount, which is plastic rather than metal. I rarely see plastic mounts these days, and I wasn’t thrilled to see this one. It is the one area of the lens’ design that seems, well, cheap.

The overall dimensions of the lens are 3.8”/96.6mm, although the lens adds another 65mm/2.5 inches when fully zoomed out. It has a double barrel zoom design, but I didn’t detect any wobble when the lens barrel was extended. It has a relatively small (and somewhat uncommon) 62mm front filter thread. I can only recall using or reviewing a couple of other lenses that share this filter size, but at the same time they are easy to find and relatively inexpensive. The optical formula for the lens is fairly complex, with 16 elements in 14 groups.

3. Features VC and AF, providing valuable support for DSLR camera novices
Camera vibration is magnified in telephoto shots and when a slow shutter speed is
used because of dim lighting. Even beginners can take great photos at long distances,
at night, and indoors—and avoid camera shake—thanks to Tamron’s acclaimed VC
mechanism. By incorporating a newly designed autofocus drive module with optimal DC
motor-gear train integration, the 18-200mm VC also focuses much more quickly and quietly
than models with conventional DC motors.

Both of these features are significant improvements in their own way. The Vibration Compensation (VC) is a huge asset in a lens that reaches a full frame equivalent 300+mm. Trying to handhold such a lens without stabilization at lower shutter speeds becomes nearly impossible. Thanks to an effective VC system, I was able to handhold 1/5th second shots at 200mm with fairly good results, and quite consistent results at 1/10th second. This screenshot shows the difference between the 1/10th second shot with VC on and with it off. The second shot shows the acceptably sharp VC result in more detail.

The VC also does a great job of stabilizing the viewfinder image, although I detected a consistent “shifting” of the viewfinder image down before the stabilization locked the image in place. I’ve seen this behavior before in other lenses, and, while I’m not crazy about it, I can also live with it in a lens that costs this little. Tamron makes great stabilizer systems, and this is a very welcome addition to a lens like this.

The predecessor of the lens also had AF (autofocus), but it was an earlier generation of micromotor that was somewhat “buzzy” and loud in operation. I didn’t own that lens, but I did own the slightly upscale 18-270 VC lens (first generation), and it had a similar micromotor AF system. At this stage I’m very familiar with Tamron’s modern AF systems that fall under the heading of USD (Ultrasonic Drive) and PZD (Piezo Drive). This lens employs a different system that I suspect is akin to Canon’s STM (stepping motor) AF system. The lens focuses fairly fast and quietly, and is definitely an improvement.

I recently picked up a copy of Canon’s 55-250mm STM lens as a lightweight travel telephoto option. My plan was to use it on both my 70D body and via adapter on the EOS M3 body. STM lenses seem to function better on the mirrorless body, and I hoped that it would be a decent option for the M3 (I don’t own a native telephoto lens for the M system). I was disappointed by how slow the lens autofocuses on the M3, however, despite snappy performance on my 70D. I am rethinking that plan and may spend the extra money to get Canon’s EF-M 55-200mm instead. I was pleasantly surprised when I mounted this lens on the M3, however, as while the lens didn’t focus super-fast, it focused considerably more quickly than the Canon STM lens. This behavior is part of the reason why I suspect the AF motor may work in a similar fashion to the STM system along with the actual way the lens focuses.

One negative that I encountered (and one I hadn’t encountered for a LONG time) was the fact that the focus ring spins while focusing. My standard means of supporting a lens with my left hand would sometimes interfere with that. This behavior (along with no mention otherwise by Tamron) indicates to me that full time manual override is not available with this lens’ AF motor, and this would be a deviation from stepping motor technology. STM does allow manual override, but manual focus is a focus by wire system where the AF motor still actually drives the movement of the internal elements. I found that many times I had to readjust my natural grip to allow the lens to focus properly (because my fingers were impeding the movement of the focus ring).

I calibrated the lens on the 70D body and seem to get pretty consistent focus results. I was [frankly] shocked by how good the lens performed in AF servo mode. I had my son run at his top speed towards me and I shot burst mode in AF Servo. Over 19 frames in one sequence (right under 3 seconds) the lens did not miss. The same was true for the other three sequences. I didn’t expect such a good performance (even with the “advantage” of a slow aperture with fairly deep DOF). That’s a plus for those of you who have active youngsters that you want to chronicle. Here is that 19 frame sequence:

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If you watch the background in this sequence, you will see that it slowly becomes increasingly out of focus until in the final shots it is quite diffused. This is further evidence that the lens is doing its job of focusing, as the plane of focus is moving appropriately towards the camera.

The AF is a definite improvement, and these two upgrades alone more than justify the slight ($50) price increase over the previous model.

4. Delivers enhanced imaging performance in a lightweight package
Featuring 16 elements in 14 groups, the 18-200mm VC uses an LD (Low Dispersion)
lens element to minimize chromatic aberrations. Although light and compact with VC,
Tamron’s new offering also delivers amazing overall optical performance for an allpurpose
lens. A circular, seven-blade aperture diaphragm maintains an almost perfectly
round shape even at two stops down from its maximum aperture, providing desirable and
beautiful bokeh with point light sources blurring into naturally rounded shapes.

I’ve dealt with the effective handling of chromatic aberrations (a significant improvement over the predecessor), but another nice upgrade is the improved aperture iris. The rounded seven blade aperture helps to produce fairly nice bokeh, and I can attest to the fact that the aperture stays very nicely round even when stopped down. Here are some shots that illustrate that:

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Careful examination of some of these bokeh highlights show some concentric rings with in the bokeh highlights (often called “onion bokeh”), but these lines are not pronounced.

I did notice some fairly extreme distortion on the wide end. It has a bit of the “moustache” pattern that tends to be very difficult to correct. You can see this in the ceiling line above the speaker in the image below. There isn’t a profile yet available for the lens (it’s barely on the market!), but I suspect a bit of distortion will remain after correction.

This is a “slow” lens in terms of aperture, with a maximum aperture on the long end of f/6.3. Just to allay any concerns, however, this lens will autofocus on all DSLRs with the appropriate mount. Sometimes uninformed (or unscrupulous) salesmen will try to tell potential customers that lenses with a maximum aperture of f/6.3 won’t autofocus. The lens starts on the wide at f/3.5, but that lasts only until 22mm, when the lens shifts to f/4. f/4.5 comes around 33mm, followed by f/5 around 44mm, f/5.6 at 76mm, and f/6.3 at 163mm. Put simply, this lens will thrive most when there is a good amount of available light. I had to use it at fairly high ISO’s when using it shooting an indoor event. It was quite a change from the ISO settings I typically use when shooting the same facility with my f/2.8 (and faster) lenses. Fortunately even crop sensor bodies are making good strides forward in high ISO performance, so using a lens like this has less of an impact than it used to. The slower aperture values come as part of the territory of having a large zoom range in a compact body.

5. Works great as an easy-to-use lens for day-to-day use
For added dependability and longer life, Tamron’s new lens features moisture-resistant
construction that helps prevent damage caused by accidental exposure to wetness. The lens
also comes with a Zoom Lock feature to prevent unwanted barrel extension when users carry
their lens and camera body combinations with the lens pointed toward the ground.

This final bit is an unusual inclusion on such a budget lens. “Moisture-resistance” certainly doesn’t mean “feel free to dunk this lens in a fountain”, but it should help to allay some fears if you are traveling and need to shoot in a light rain. There is a rubber gasket around the mount to prevent moisture from creeping in there, and I presume there is some light sealing around the two switches on the body (AF/MF and On/Off for the VC). This is a nice bonus from Tamron, and the lens has Tamron’s current design ethos of lightly flocked engineered plastics and the tungsten toned accent ring. The zoom ring is nice and wide, with a ribbed, rubberized grip.

The focus ring is less impressive at only a little over a quarter inch. When in MF mode the ring moves extremely easily – perhaps too easily. There isn’t quite enough damping for supremely accurate manual focus, but this isn’t a Zeiss lens – 99.5% of the users will probably never manually focus the lens [not a scientific estimation].

The inclusion of a zoom lock is always welcome, although you probably won’t need to use it very often. The front element is very light and the lens shows zero inclination towards zoom creep. Sometimes when using a chest harness or lens strap friction on the zoom ring can make a lens start to zoom out, so you might have a use for it in that kind of situation.

Once all of Tamron’s lenses were made in Japan, but in recent years some of the lower end Tamron lenses have had some of the manufacturing outsourced. This lens is produced in China, while the lens hood is produced in the Philippines. Tamrons come with an industry leading warranty. In North America that warranty is six years; certainly very welcome. If you are in Canada I recommend purchasing from Amplis Foto; they are the Tamron distributer and would be handling any potential warranty service. The price in Canadian dollars is $299, which is cheaper for Canadians when you consider the current exchange rate (you can chop an additional 5% off by using my code “AMPLIS52014”). If you are in the United States (or other countries), my partner is B&H Photo.

In conclusion, those of you who are looking for an inexpensive all-in-one lens will find little to be disappointed by. The 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC lens is a significant upgrade over its predecessor and basically offers all of the performance of the Canon/Nikon counterparts at a significantly lower price point ($599 for the Nikon; $699 for the Canon). Canon’s own 18-200 is due an update, and experience says that it is unlikely to retail for anywhere close to the Tamron’s $249 price point. I didn’t expect the 18-200 VC to offer prime-like image quality, and it doesn’t, but there were some shots that I came away impressed by. It will ably capture your family or travel photos, and the inclusion of even a bit of moisture resistance is a nice touch in such an inexpensive lens. The 11x zoom range coupled with excellent minimum focus performance and magnification opens up a very diverse range of subject matter. The lens has a few flaws (distortion and being a bit flare prone are some of those flaws), but all in all is fairly mannerly in its performance. There always compromises made in a superzoom lens, but Tamron has done a nice job in minimizing those and delivering us a tool that is both useful and inexpensive.

Pros:

Great focal range (18-200mm)
Upgraded AF motor with quiet and fast focus (and surprisingly good AF Servo tracking)
Lightest lens in its class
Has moisture resistance sealing
Impressively low price
Rounded aperture blade produces quite decent bokeh
Well controlled chromatic aberrations
Effective VC image stabilizing system

Cons:

No full time manual override
Fairly heavy barrel distortion with some mustache effect on the wide end
Flare prone
The focus ring turns while autofocusing
Some shifting of the image in the viewfinder when the VC kicks in
Not always tack sharp

If you have more of a budget (and need a bigger focal range), you might consider Tamron’s 16-300mm f/3.5-6.3 VC PZD (my review here) as another compelling option. Check out more images at a photo gallery here:

Gear Used:

Canon EOS 70D
Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC Lens (Use code AMPLIS52014 to take 5% off everything in the Amplis Store)
Adobe Lightroom CC Software for Mac and Windows (Boxed Version)
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Alien Skin Exposure 7 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. Thank you for your support.

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Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM ART Review

Dustin Abbott

August 17th, 2015

Sigma has definitely been on a roll. A few years ago they awoke from their third party slumber and realized that they were capable of making better products than what they were currently building. Clearly a decision was made to target a more premium place in the market, and so they scrapped their existing design philosophy entirely along with their marketing strategy. Whoever came up with their new “Global Vision” marketing strategy deserves a raise, and the team that came up with their new design ethos deserves an even bigger one. Sigma lenses still have their quirks (more on that in a moment), but they are building the handsomest lenses on the market. I have now reviewed lenses from all three categories of Sigma’s Global Strategy (Art, Sport, and Contemporary), and despite still not having a clue what “Contemporary” is supposed to mean in this context, I can attest that the cosmetic design and general construction of all of these lenses is excellent. But Sigma has also demonstrated the ability to think outside of the box and take a few chances. That is definitely true of the lens being reviewed here, the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM ART lens.

Yes, that isn’t a typo! This is a zoom lens with a constant maximum aperture of f/1.8, making it a completely unique lens in the current market. It has been an unspoken rule of sorts that zoom lenses generally have a maximum aperture of f/2.8 (I currently own three that follow this “rule”), and the understanding was that the physics of building a zoom lens with a larger aperture than f/2.8 would produce a lens larger, heavier, and more expensive than photographers would be willing to bear. The 18-35ART isn’t small or light, but neither is it exceptionally large or unwieldy. It is slightly longer than Sigma’s own 24-70mm f/2.8 (4.76” vs. 3.7”) and marginally heavier (811g vs. 790g). Its specs are almost identical to those of Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L II (the Sigma is 8mm longer and 5 grams heavier). This lens is a bit longer but narrower than most 24-70mm designs. It might feel a bit front heavy on smaller consumer DSLRs, but balanced nicely on my “prosumer” 70D. The same would be true for the more robust bodies from any of the camera systems that this lens is sold for (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, and Sigma).

Sigma hedged its bets with this somewhat radical design by using a fairly small zoom range and designing a crop sensor only (APS-C) lens. So no, this lens doesn’t really work on a full frame body (more on that a little later). The success of this lens has allowed Sigma to greenlight a somewhat similar full frame lens, although that lens (a 24-35mm f/2) has a smaller zoom range, a slightly smaller aperture, and is a bit heavier (+130g). The 18-35mm has a full frame (35mm) equivalent focal length of 28.8-56mm (on a Canon). The focal length equivalency will depend on what system you are using and its crop factor. Canon (reviewed here) has a 1.6x crop factor. On a Nikon, Sony, Pentax, or Sigma body the crop factor is 1.5x and the lens will have an equivalent focal length of 27-52.5mm. The two shots below give you an idea of how that zoom range looks like in real life:

There are two ways to look at these unique lenses, and how you judge them will ultimately come to down to whichever point of view you ascribe to. You can look at these zoom ranges as being so marginal that they offer little advantage over equivalent primes (zoom a few steps with your feet) or as being somewhat like getting multiple prime lenses (because of the large aperture) in one. If you take the former view, this lens will seem large and expensive (Sigma makes a very popular 30mm f/1.4 ART prime for crop sensor bodies that is half the size, weight, and price). If you take the latter view, this lens will seem like a convenient bargain…but only if it delivers in the optical department. (A clue – it does!) This lens covers important focal lengths like 18mm (28mm FF), 24mm (right around 35mm FF), and 35mm (50mmish FF), and covers them all quite effectively.

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The 18-35 ART has Sigma’s increasingly familiar (yet still excellent) new design ethos. It is black on black, but with very elegant contrasts achieved through textures and finishes. Both the focus and zoom rings are nice and wide (one advantage of the long lens barrel) and both are also beautifully damped. This is an internal focus and internal zoom design, and they typically have the smoothest zoom action in my experience. This lens has a very premium feel and I have waxed eloquent in other Sigma Global Vision reviews about the look of the lenses and the quality of the construction. All I can say is, “Great job, Sigma!”

Internally the lens is 17 elements in 12 groups and has a 72mm filter thread. This filter size is shared with a number of Canon primes and is easy to find and reasonably inexpensive. The front element does not rotate during focus, so feel free to throw a polarizing filter on there! The lens has a 11” (27.94cm) minimum focus distance with a resulting maximum magnification of .23x at 35mm, which is a useful figure that compares favorably with its various competitors.

Image Quality

Anyone who has used one of Sigma’s ART series lenses will not be surprised to me hear me say that the optical performance is exceptional. Sigma has found a way to consistently produce optical excellence with this series, and the 18-35mm is no exception. For Canon users the top EF-S zoom lens has long been the 17-55mm f/2.8. It has a robust build, constant aperture, and better optics than most other EF-S lenses. Compared side by side, however, and the Sigma destroys the Canon in sharpness and contrast. The Sigma is sharper at f/1.8 than the Canon is at f/2.8 across the image frame, and stopping the Sigma down to equivalent apertures only makes it more obvious. I recommend taking a look at The Digital Picture’s comparison tool here to get a better sense of just how clear the difference is in chart testing.

As many of you know, I don’t do chart testing, but the optical excellence of this lens was clear in field use. There is very little to criticize. Vignetting is quite low on the lens and compares favorably with most primes covering similar focal lengths. The lens is not particularly flare resistant, and will produce a bit of ghosting when the sun is directly placed in the frame. The resulting artifacts are fairly artistic, however, and this is far from the worst offender I’ve seen in this regard. This video will give you an idea of the lens’ reaction to the sun being placed in the frame.

This was shot at f/11, and so also gives you a look at a strength for the lens – the nicely defined sunstars/sunbursts that it produces. That makes me think that you will probably want to take the risk and put the sun in the frame periodically! Chromatic aberrations are quite well controlled, and while the lens has the typical barrel distortion on the wide end of the zoom range and some pincushion on the long end, neither is extreme enough to really get your attention in field use. Lens sharpness is excellent. I’ve not often been blown away for the optical performance of crop sensor zooms, but this is an exception to the rule. It is very sharp even wide open, and that sharpness extends across the vast majority of the frame. This is true throughout the focal range. It is apparent that Sigma stuck with the focal range they could do very well and went neither wider nor longer. The zoom range is limited, yes, but optical performance is not compromised at any point of it. Color rendition is also excellent. There were a number of images that just delighted me right out of the camera.

The lens is also capable of producing nice bokeh. The transition from focus to defocus is nicely smooth, and the rounded aperture iris ensures that bokeh highlight circles remain round even when the lens is stopped down multiple stops. Here are few unedited bokehlicious shots for you:

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The focal length isn’t particularly long, so you will need to be fairly close to your subject to really blow a background out, but the nice sharpness combined with good bokeh performance means that images will have a reasonable three dimensional effect. Without getting too technical, know that the depth of field is different between a full frame and a crop sensor body. The larger the sensor the more narrow the DOF at equivalent apertures. Put simply, f/1.8 produces a more shallow DOF on a full frame sensor than f/1.8 on a crop sensor. The f/1.8 aperture helps here, however, and for a crop sensor lens this is one of the better performers (in this focal range) for producing shallow DOF.

The lens also has a very useful .23x maximum magnification (nearly 1:4 life size) meaning that you can get close to things and produce reasonably pseudo-macro results (macroish?). This compares very favorable to a lot of 50mm lenses and their typical .15x magnification. Even better is the fact that the lens continues to produce very sharp images at its minimum focus, although you probably will want to stop it down a bit for maximum sharpness and appropriate depth of field to your subject (f/1.8 is very shallow at minimum focus range).

I own the newest Canon mirrorless body (the EOS M3). While it has a few clunky aspects (some of which are unique to small mirrorless bodies and some of which are unique to CANON mirorless bodies), the sensor in it is pretty spectacular (the best crop sensor that I’ve encountered personally). I used the Canon EF to EF-M adapter to mount the 18-35 ART on the M and give it a shot. The lens is obviously very large and heavy for such a body, so this is certainly not a match made in heaven. The image quality, however, was fantastic, although I found the autofocus very leisurely (more so than most of my other lens used through the adapter). Still, if you own a similar mirrorless body/adapter and you have some time on your hands, you can get some nice results like these:

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On a mirrorless body, however, a small native prime like my EF-M 22mm f/2 STM makes a lot more sense, offering similar image quality and aperture value. Again, however, if you have a body and an adapter to make it work, it is an option.

Finally, due to the nature of the Sigma’s mount, it is possible to mount the lens on a full frame body. Just know that it is only really useful at the 35mm end of the focal range. 18mm looks like this mounted on my EOS 6D body:

Yuck!

The 35mm is far more presentable, however, and other than some vignetting and additional distortion, it is very usable.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend buying this lens if you only have a full frame body, obviously, but if you happened to also have a full frame body and didn’t have a 35mm prime this might prove a useful bonus.

All in all this lens is at the top of the heap for optical performance in a crop sensor lens.

AF Concerns

Every time I review a Sigma lens I will be closely looking at the AF (autofocus) performance. I’ve rarely had a problem with HSM motors when it comes to sound or speed (they are amongst the quietest focusing lenses that I’ve encountered and generally quite fast), but I have major concerns when it comes to AF accuracy and consistency. The Sigma 150-600mm Sport was the first Sigma lens that I walked away completely satisfied from when it came to its AF performance. I’m afraid the 18-35mm ART didn’t impress out of the box. My review body is a Canon EOS 70D, and trying to use my typical AFMA program (Reikan FoCal) produced such variation that an automatic calibration simply didn’t work (the program gave up). I did a semi-automatic calibration using my own eyes, and discovered why. Just when I thought I had a value zeroed in, the results would jump around. The focus peak looked like a yo-yo. I’ve never had such a difficult time calibrating a lens before.

After wrangling with it for a while, I feel like I got the correct AFMA values. The question is whether or not those will remain the correct AFMA values. My focus accuracy certainly improved with the current settings and I intend to keep a close eye on focus accuracy throughout the review.

I was not blown away with the lens in AF Servo mode either. The 70D has a relatively robust AF system, but when I got my dog to charge towards me I felt my focus accuracy was about 25%. The lens seems to like single shot AF better.

I find that portrait shooting is perhaps the most demanding type of photography I do for autofocus accuracy, and despite feeling that I have the correct AFMA value for the lens I was still disappointed with my overall focus consistency. I mostly shot at f/2 for the portrait session, and when carefully examining my results I found that about 60% of my shots were well focused, another 20% were acceptably focused, but 20% were not focused well at all. When the lens was accurately focused, the results were quite nice (see the sharpness in the final crop!)

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I use a tool in Lightroom called “Show Focus Points”, and it shows in an overlay the information the camera recorded regarding autofocus at capture. Here are some samples that show the inconsistency I am speaking of. You will note that in every case the lens/camera reported accurate focus lock, but the actual focus is inconsistent.

In this case, the camera/lens shows accurate lock, and the image is accurately focused.

In this example the camera/lens reports accurate lock, but the image is front-focused by a fair margin (might be acceptable for some).

Finally, in this example the camera reports the same, but the image is terribly backfocused and is a wasted shot.

This is pretty hard to accept when I am accustomed to coming home from a wedding with 700-1000 shots taken with my own kit and typically won’t have to discard one shot for missed focus. Some report that their copy of the lens consistently focuses accurately, but others report similar frustrations with inconsistent focus results. Put simply, I think there is copy variation, and the fact that I reviewed a new retail copy some 2 years after the release date of the lens tells me that Sigma hasn’t been able to completely nail down this issue.

The lens seemed to do best within about 8 feet, but in the crucial portrait window of 8-15 feet (for full body shots) the focus accuracy dropped dramatically. This reveals one of the problems I (and others) have experienced with the lens. You can set an effective microadjustment value for a certain distance, but that value may not be the right one for other distances.

I should add that I am a pretty accomplished portrait photographer. I’ve shot thousands of portraits with far more wide aperture lenses (as a reviewer) than what most photographers ever have opportunity to use. I shoot portraits with autofocus lenses, manual focus lenses, and even vintage glass. I know what I’m doing, so I know that this isn’t a matter of user error.

When focus is nailed, this lens is exquisitely sharp. Live view results (particularly with the DPAF on the 70D) are better (in terms of focus consistency), but I don’t really use Live View for portrait work very often and prefer not to. My experience with Sigma lenses say that some of you will be perfectly satisfied with your copy and it will give fabulous results; others will experience inconsistent results as I did. My recommendation is to thoroughly test your copy and make sure you have one that will calibrate well on your body. I think the lens is worth the trouble.

The use of Sigma’s USB dock will help somewhat, as it enables you to tune focus for several specific distances. There will be a learning curve as you learn how to properly utilize the dock (an additional $60 charge), but my feeling is that it is worth the effort to get the best results from your lens. The USB dock will also enable you to load firmware updates to your lenses (helping to prevent incompatibility issues with future bodies) and will also work with most other newer lenses from Sigma. I’m a bit of a tech guy, so I personally think this is pretty cool. I didn’t have a Sigma dock for this review (I’ve reached out to Sigma to provide me one for future reviews), but I would have been interested to see how much of a difference tuning the lens in this way would have made.

A final footnote is that I hear far fewer complaints coming from Nikon and Sony users than I do from Canon shooters. My guess is that Sigma autofocus is probably at its worst on Canon bodies. All third party manufacturers have to reverse engineer autofocus algorithms, but my experience is (at least for Canon) that Tamron has this better figured out than Sigma.

If you can overcome this hurdle with your copy of the lens, you are golden. It has beautiful optics that are going to make you smile time after time.

Wide Open – f/1.8

Glass Half Full/Glass Half Empty

I encourage you to watch the video review of the lens for a more interactive look at my findings.

As I said earlier, there are two ways to look at this lens. Before examining those, however, let me first say that this is undoubtedly one of the finest crop specific lenses out there. APS-C has received relatively little development dollars from most manufacturers and as a result APS-C lenses tend to be budget options with variable apertures. This lens is as lovingly designed as other Sigma ART series lenses, and thus it is the Cadillac of crop sensor zooms. I’m happy that such a lens exists. It does indeed exist…should you buy it?

One argument is that the limited nature of the zoom range essentially makes this a very large prime lens. There are cheaper, smaller, and lighter alternatives. Then again, Sigma’s own 50mm f/1.4 ART is essentially the same size and weight and people LOVE it (focus issues aside). We live in a day of large primes, and the reality is that that this lens is far sharper than any crop specific prime lens in this focal range. Sigma’s own 30mm f/1.4 ART lens doesn’t hold a candle to this lens optically (surprisingly). I think the best way to rationalize this lens is to consider it more like three important prime lenses in one zoom lens. It has prime quality (better than prime?) at wide open apertures and gives you the flexibility of changing your framing (though in a somewhat limited fashion). It works nicely at wide apertures, of course, but then also becomes a very nice landscape/general purpose lens stopped down a bit.

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In conclusion, this is a groundbreaking lens no matter how you look at it, and I applaud Sigma for taking a chance and thinking outside the box. I do feel that it is has paid dividends here. The image quality from the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM ART lens is exceptional in every facet, and the fact that Sigma managed to go a full 1 1/3 stops wider than other zoom lenses while still nailing the image quality is a huge achievement in engineering. The next review on my list is the brand new full frame 24-35mm f/2 from Sigma. Sigma’s Achilles’s heel of focus accuracy persists with the 18-35mm, but I do think that many people will find the lens good enough to endure a little tweaking to get it right on your body. Pair this lens with a good telephoto and you would have an excellent kit that would offer premium image quality on the great APS-C bodies available to consumers right now. Above all, though, I commend Sigma for taking some chances and swinging for the fences. I’m reminded of the quote from Norman Vincent Peale, “Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.“

Pros:

Exceptional image quality wide open that extends to the edges of the frame
Extremely low vignetting
1 1/3 stops more light gathering at f/1.8 than other zooms at f/2.8
Beautiful lens design and build.
Internally zooming and focusing
Smooth, nicely damped focus and zoom rings
Includes nice padded case

Cons:

Large (essentially the size of a full frame 24-70mm f/2.8 lens)
One of the more expensive crop sensor lenses at $800 USD
Can exhibit inconsistent focus accuracy
Limited zoom range
Flare resistance isn’t exceptional

Alternatives

I’ve mentioned both the Sigma 30mm prime ($300 cheaper and has a slightly wider aperture at f/1.4) before along with the Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 (constant aperture [though a 1 1/3 stop slower] and a larger focal range) as alternatives. A third alternative is the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC. It has some the same advantages of the Canon but is considerably cheaper ($150 less). They both have effective image stabilization systems that help to make up for the smaller maximum aperture. If absolute image quality is your goal, however, the Sigma 18-35mm is by far the best of the bunch.

Gear Used:

Canon EOS 70D
Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM ART Lens
Adobe Lightroom CC Software for Mac and Windows (Boxed Version)
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Alien Skin Exposure 7 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)

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Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L USM Review

Dustin Abbott

April 4th, 2016

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Reviewing a Legend

Size and Build

Autofocus Findings

Image Quality

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Bokeh Monster?

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

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Price and Market Positioning

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I want to thank Zeiss North America for loaning me this review sample. There is a great staff there that I have enjoyed communicating with!

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Bokeh Quality

In Conclusion:

Pros:

Cons:

Alternatives:

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