The 50mm F/1.2 Art Proves Sigma Has Mastered Lens Making | Hacker News Reader

The 50mm F/1.2 Art Proves Sigma Has Mastered Lens Making

petapixel.com

16 pointsPaulHoule17 comments

I will say, for many years I wouldn't even consider a 3rd party lens for any system. But now I have a few for my Sony, and I had a couple Sigmas for my Nikon before I sold it off and switched completely to Sony.

Their Art line trades a little off in terms of weight for quality, but costs sometimes 50% of what the first-party brand does.

For more exotic lenses (f/1.2 or f/1.4) this is a huge price difference, and the AF is not quite perfect for some situations, but quite close in performance.

I don't think twice about testing out a Sigma nowadays. Tamron and other 3rd parties haven't been as consistent, but some of their lenses are gems too.

Curiously I have a Canon 50mm f/1.2L USM at work and a old Zeiss f/1.4 Planar T* — a Contax lwnse with a cheap EF adapter — and the old Zeiss lens knocked the new lense out of the park on anything. Pictures looked just better on it period.

The old lense has no AF, but I rarely use AF anyways.

I am a fan of this lens

https://7artisans.store/products/50mm-f1-05

and it’s APS-C counterpart. Personally I have had times I was walking around with a 50mm and not being able to frame anything up but between the extreme bokeh and ability to laugh at low light conditions I have so much fun. for certain kinds of pics the manual focus is fun and easy and with the aperture wide open nobody is going to mistake your pics for smartphone snaps.

I wondered about these too, thanks for the reminder.

I had a Canon body circa 2010 and the reports then were that Sigma lenses were hit and miss but I have one now for my Sony and it is great.

I have a Sigma 50mm 1.4 lens that's maybe 20 years old, and it's just stunning.

I've been using the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art for years now and it's consistently been my favourite lens for photographs of people - not just the sharpness which is fantastic but there's also something about the way it renders colours to my eye which seems extremely pleasing, and of course 35mm is a great focal length - not too wide so as to distort and not so long as you be difficult to frame subjects candidly. I'd thoroughly recommend trying it if you haven't.

Wait, lens can affect colours?

Yes, the quality of the glass, number of lens elements, coating on the front element, internal reflections, aberrations and so on. It won't be affecting colors like red turns to blue, but more like red goes to a slightly different muted shade of red.

To expand on this a little: there is no lens which changes the frequency of light. What happens that due to chromatic aberration structures in a given colour could be less precisely focused than others and in the blur a different mix of frequencies (different shade of colours) could appear.

Same here, definitely my favorite lens. Out of curiosity how far away from the people are you when you do portraits, and can you share examples?

The author should have just wrote "paid content" instead of devaluing his opinion by writing the "smoothest, nicest-looking bokeh I have ever seen on a lens".

In the Sonysphere, I'd have to save that for this lens

https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/lenses/full-frame-e-mou...

when I make collages I can't mix shallow DOF pictures from the lens with my 70-200mm or my G Master 135mm because the bokeh from the 90mm looks light and day better than any of them and the images just don't fit together.

Maybe there is something I'd like better but I'd have to see it to believe it.

> only two-thirds of a stop brighter

“only”? One stop is a factor of two in light sensitivity, so this is actually quite a big difference.

How is the resolution of the samples provided in this article, on the website dedicated for photographers is this low (800x500 on average), how are you supposed to appreciate or even see all the good things that the author has to say about this lens ?

Now do a cheap f/2.0 24-70 please!

I usually shoot with either a prime or a zoom which is well to one side of 50mm. I’ve been through “the kit lens sucks because it is the kit lens” to “I actually took some pictures I like with it” to “These are not so sharp and I wish the aperture had more blades.”. I don’t know if and when I can justify the expense but I am definitely thinking about a better lens in that range or maybe wider though a tele with a wider aperture would help with shooting sports.

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