Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Coming in October

[9VIII]

At 200mm and beyond AF is a big deal, at 50mm it's not a big deal for me, and at 24mm it's half as important as that.

I really, really hope Sigma can produce a decent body to go along with their new lenses. Having a complete system with the Sigma name on it would put the company in an entirely new league.
Forget about being innovative, just match the specs of the 5D3 to a T and copy as much of the controls and menu as you can.

 

[mackguyver]

dilbert, last time I checked this site is called Canonrumors, and we're all Canon users/fans here. I think some fanboy attitude is to be expected and to put Canon and "Canon shooters" down here, of all places, seems a little ridiculous. Why don't you head on over to Alpharumors and Nikonrumors if you want to trash Canon. I'm sure you'd find a lot of friends there, but your statements aren't going to be too welcome here.

 

[westr70]

Yup. Too bad it won't auto focus good enough to hit the broad side of a galaxy ;D

Must wait for the 85...

+1

 

[AcutancePhotography]

Why don't you head on over to Alpharumors and Nikonrumors if you want to trash Canon.

Except that posts on Nikonrumors don't badmouth Canon anywhere near what Canonrumor posts trash anything not Canon. I haunt both sites regularly. There is a significant difference in the attitudes of each site's members.

Hop on both sites and do a search for a third party piece of equipment Sigma, Sony, even Pentax and read the posts. You will see a signficiant difference in attitude.

It is one of the things I wish were better on Canonrumors. But I still come here for the entertainment.

 

[Random Orbits]

I don't know how TDP conducted the test other than the layman's description that he posted, but I'm highly skeptical that there are serious issues with the AF. First, we know nothing of the pre-configuration of the lens and/or camera system. Was it properly calibrated for AFMA? Was it calibrated and checked with the Sigma dock? I would not draw any conclusion about any lens, OEM or otherwise, for which I didn't do some basic configuration and calibration with my equipment that it is interfacing with.

We also know little of the lighting conditions under which the photos were taken.

What does AFMA have to do with it? AFMA might improve the accuracy (zero mean the error) but it will not affect precision. LensRentals has noted that the newest lenses and the 5D3/1DX have better accuracy/precision than other combinations. Software is software, and Sigma's reverse engineering of the software is not good enough. Until they do, this will always potentially be an issue. They can probably update the software using the dock, but who knows when that will be done.

One of the reasons why I like TDP so much is his experience in using a wide array of lenses/bodies. Using it in real world scenarios gives a better overall evaluation than shooting test charts on walls where AF is not used at all.

 

[Loswr]

[list type=decimal]
[*]The 24-105 L IS is listed twice, once at rank 13, then again at rank 25. Given that it comes as kit lens to many ff cameras, I wonder how many people buy it later on. In the used market it is sold at fire sale prices ...
[/list]

#13 is a white box version, #25 is the full retail packaging.

[list type=decimal]
[*]Even stranger is the high volume reported for the various 18-55 F/3.5-5.6 lenses. These usually come as kit lenses for crop cameras, why would anyone buy these separately?
[/list]

I suspect there are quite a few people who bought kits before the included 18-55mm lenses had IS/VC.

[list type=decimal]
[*]The 16-35 shows up higher in rank than the 17-40. Sounds bogus if you ask me.
[*]The 70-200 F/4 showing up lower in rank compared to the 70-200 F/2.8 also strikes me as odd. All people I know with a 70-200 F/2.8 have the IS version, either Mk I or Mk II.
[/list]

I don't find those to be particularly strange. The majority of lenses high on the list are relatively inexpensive (the top 10 are all under $500). The 70-300 IS non-L is pretty highly ranked, because it has more consumer appeal than the 70-200/4L (300 is bigger than 200, it must be better, and it has IS, and it's still cheaper!!!). Once you get above a certain price point, the absolute numbers are likely quite low, and people buying a 16-35 or 17-40 likely know what they are buying and why. Many wedding and event photographers use the f/2.8 versions of the ultrawide and 70-200 zooms, so it's not too surprising that they rank slightly higher than the f/4 versions.

I am in the minority here but these 'facts' do not impress me. What would impress me is that Canon uses its might and releases new lenses with better technology in less than 20 years. But that is MY thinking, the guys in commercials at Canon are way smarter than me.

I think you're in the majority as far as consumers go - you want new products with the best technology at affordable prices and you want them right now. Me too. Canon wants something else…profit.

 

[mackguyver]

Why don't you head on over to Alpharumors and Nikonrumors if you want to trash Canon.

Except that posts on Nikonrumors don't badmouth Canon anywhere near what Canonrumor posts trash anything not Canon. I haunt both sites regularly. There is a significant difference in the attitudes of each site's members.

Hop on both sites and do a search for a third party piece of equipment Sigma, Sony, even Pentax and read the posts. You will see a signficiant difference in attitude.

It is one of the things I wish were better on Canonrumors. But I still come here for the entertainment.

To be fair, I haven't visited the sites much, but do they trash their their own gear as much as the CR posters do? Also, I find the negativity on this site is restricted to a few members and a handful of topics like DR, autofocus, and 3rd party stuff, but overall it's one of the more positive forums I've seen. This is particularly true of the photo sharing threads where people are positive about photos and the vast majority of criticism is positive in terms of tips or suggestions.

 

[ashmadux]

Yup. Too bad it won't auto focus good enough to hit the broad side of a galaxy ;D

Must wait for the 85...

Have you tried canons 24 1/4? That is the worst focusing lens ive ever seen in my life. Shouldnt be hard to beat it at all. The abysmal focus was even mentioned on the review on this site, which i noticed only after i rented it. It was pathetic.

With Af like that, it might as well be manual

 

[Loswr]

...it takes two to tango or in this case autofocus (camera plus lens.)

True, but it's hard to dance with a partner that has two left feet, one of which they tried to reverse-engineer to be a right foot.

 

[BLFPhoto]

What does AFMA have to do with it? It has to do with controlling variables in a test environment to ensure the results you are receiving. And despite your protestations, there is an element of accuracy from AFMA related to the precision. We have no way of knowing which of the sample 10 photos is most representative of the most optimum focus his particular camera and lens combination is capable of producing. I can also provide you with test results .pdfs where a non or mis-calibrated lens performed more poorly on the focus consistency tests than it did once properly calibrated (AFMA). That is contrary to the idea that accuracy is unconnected to precision in this application.

I don't know the algorithms involved, so I cannot hypothesize to any degree of accuracy why that might happen. But it does...often enough to convince me there is something to it.

And I have to wonder if you read my post completely. I mentioned my experience in your vaunted "real world" conditions that not only refutes, at least in the 35mm's case, any sort of worrisome AF consistency issues, but that also corroborates what I saw in much more controlled test conditions shooting those pesky test charts.

What you're calling "real world scenarios" is what we call in my line of work "operational testing". Beware that all "real world scenarios" or "operational testing" is not equal for purposes of drawing conclusions from them. Test design and controls have a lot to do with the fidelity of data produced. And I'm saying given the paucity of information regarding test controls on TDP's "real world" shooting, we cannot faithfully put much stock in an idea that this 50mm indeed has any AF issues worth worrying about.

I'm not trying to defend Sigma, per se. I'll dump the Sigmas in a heart beat if the evidence gives me reason to doubt their performance. But I'm similarly not going to simply buy some anecdotal "evidence" as proof without ensuring the evidence is properly controlled to produce the results noted. In this case, the most glaring control missing is sample size. I believe TDP did some fairly exhaustive shooting, probably using fairly common tools, including tripod when necessary. But the results are based on a sample size of 1 lens, which is not adequate to properly draw conclusions from. It's not good enough to dress up a review and AF performance test with accounts of how much and how varied the conditions were that produced the results, even if I grant you 2 test configurations based on his mention of testing both 1DX and 5DMkIII bodies with the lens. Not for me, anyway. I need more data.

 

[sdsr]

BTW...if the 24A is optically similar to the 50A and 35A from f/1.4 to f/2.8 with reasonable coma, I'll buy one in a heartbeat.

Me too - the coma performance of the 35A is remarkable (far better than the Canon 35 IS).

 

[jdramirez]

In regards to negativity... it does seem to be within my tolerance range. Most peddle are more than decent here and those that aren't... I don't know their names so when I see their subsequent posts I don't make the connection.

I am surprised that people are throwing the 50 art under the bus before they have even used it. I use auto focus 95% of the time, but I really don't consider the art deaf on arrival nor do I believe that all subsequent arts will be rendered useless.

It seems that people are indeed jumping the gun.

I'll wait... I'll test at the store... And I'll come to my own conclusion. Reviews are nice... but I wouldn't call them all scientific. Isolating variables can be challenging and scientists don't always do an adequate job of doing so... so I won't hold reviewers to a higher standard.

And after having said all that... I jumped the gun on dismissing the 6d... And in retrospect I have a good deal of esteem for the 6d...

 

[Loswr]

We have no way of knowing which of the sample 10 photos is most representative of the most optimum focus his particular camera and lens combination is capable of producing.

There are 10 images presented, 6 of which are similarly sharp, 4 of which are not as sharp (and one of those 4 is a blurry mess). Are you suggesting that the 6 similarly sharp images are all random misses from optimum focus that happened to coincide in terms of sharpness? I think Friar William of Occam would disagree with you.

Precision and accuracy are independent, although they may certainly appear to be related, depending on the resolution of the measurement method relative to the accuracy and precision of the system being tested.

I certainly agree that it's premature to base an overall conclusion about the 50A's AF perfromance on issues found by two review sites, each testing one lens.

 

[Viggo]

people pay 4000$ for non AF lens with only marginal better image quality.
i say sigmas AF in the new lenses is pretty good for the money.

If I can't trust it, it's worthless.

+1

 

[Random Orbits]

What does AFMA have to do with it? It has to do with controlling variables in a test environment to ensure the results you are receiving. And despite your protestations, there is an element of accuracy from AFMA related to the precision. We have no way of knowing which of the sample 10 photos is most representative of the most optimum focus his particular camera and lens combination is capable of producing. I can also provide you with test results .pdfs where a non or mis-calibrated lens performed more poorly on the focus consistency tests than it did once properly calibrated (AFMA). That is contrary to the idea that accuracy is unconnected to precision in this application.

I don't know the algorithms involved, so I cannot hypothesize to any degree of accuracy why that might happen. But it does...often enough to convince me there is something to it.

And I have to wonder if you read my post completely. I mentioned my experience in your vaunted "real world" conditions that not only refutes, at least in the 35mm's case, any sort of worrisome AF consistency issues, but that also corroborates what I saw in much more controlled test conditions shooting those pesky test charts.

What you're calling "real world scenarios" is what we call in my line of work "operational testing". Beware that all "real world scenarios" or "operational testing" is not equal for purposes of drawing conclusions from them. Test design and controls have a lot to do with the fidelity of data produced. And I'm saying given the paucity of information regarding test controls on TDP's "real world" shooting, we cannot faithfully put much stock in an idea that this 50mm indeed has any AF issues worth worrying about.

I'm not trying to defend Sigma, per se. I'll dump the Sigmas in a heart beat if the evidence gives me reason to doubt their performance. But I'm similarly not going to simply buy some anecdotal "evidence" as proof without ensuring the evidence is properly controlled to produce the results noted. In this case, the most glaring control missing is sample size. I believe TDP did some fairly exhaustive shooting, probably using fairly common tools, including tripod when necessary. But the results are based on a sample size of 1 lens, which is not adequate to properly draw conclusions from. It's not good enough to dress up a review and AF performance test with accounts of how much and how varied the conditions were that produced the results, even if I grant you 2 test configurations based on his mention of testing both 1DX and 5DMkIII bodies with the lens. Not for me, anyway. I need more data.

AFMA improves accuracy but not precision, and I'm pretty sure that TDP knows to AFMA lenses before evaluating them for their reviews. If you don't trust this review, you might as well not trust ANY of TDP's reviews unless you know that the review process that they used for this lens is different than any other. And the subject distance for that series of infocus/out-of-focus shots is constant. If the degree of OOF were constant, then the dock with the multiple distance adjustments might have been of use, but they weren't. My point is this: TDP finds that the lens that Sigma sent them (not bought retail) can have balky AF. What is more likely -- that TDP's copy has a unique software build that is different from all the others or that all the ones being evaluated (pre-retail) all have the same software. Yes, it was 1 copy but it was one that Sigma chose. More reviews/user experience will be available over time, but that TDP found a difference in S35 and S50 AF performance is significant.

And yes, others in this forum have had issues with S35's AF. Eldar has had to change the AFMA amount over time. Why? Perhaps Sigma had to use a different lens ID for the S50 than the S35 and Canon's AF algorithms treat them differently... or not. Perhaps you assumed that all Sigma's new lenses will AF like the S35s you evaluated, but perhaps that is a bad assumption.

I have worked with software/hardware testing, and you can call it operational testing or whatever you want. We "test" every line of code, but there are still issues that are found once the hardware is in the field. But the problems identified in the field are just as valid as those found during the test phase in the lab. The field problems are often hard to duplicate because the environment/exact state under which the error occurred is unknown. Not everything can be duplicated in a controlled environment.

 

[mackguyver]

In regards to negativity... it does seem to be within my tolerance range. Most peddle are more than decent here and those that aren't... I don't know their names so when I see their subsequent posts I don't make the connection.

I am surprised that people are throwing the 50 art under the bus before they have even used it. I use auto focus 95% of the time, but I really don't consider the art deaf on arrival nor do I believe that all subsequent arts will be rendered useless.

It seems that people are indeed jumping the gun.

I'll wait... I'll test at the store... And I'll come to my own conclusion. Reviews are nice... but I wouldn't call them all scientific. Isolating variables can be challenging and scientists don't always do an adequate job of doing so... so I won't hold reviewers to a higher standard.

And after having said all that... I jumped the gun on dismissing the 6d... And in retrospect I have a good deal of esteem for the 6d...

I agree and don't put much stock in one review of one lens, either, even from a good reviewer. Until it ships and lots of people have the lens, I don't think we'll really know.

Have you tried canons 24 1/4? That is the worst focusing lens ive ever seen in my life. Shouldnt be hard to beat it at all. The abysmal focus was even mentioned on the review on this site, which i noticed only after i rented it. It was pathetic.

With Af like that, it might as well be manual

Mark I or Mark II? I have the Mark II and it focuses every bit as good as any other L lens, particularly once it's calibrated with AFMA. Also, have you used the lens?

 

[Random Orbits]

In regards to negativity... it does seem to be within my tolerance range. Most peddle are more than decent here and those that aren't... I don't know their names so when I see their subsequent posts I don't make the connection.

I am surprised that people are throwing the 50 art under the bus before they have even used it. I use auto focus 95% of the time, but I really don't consider the art deaf on arrival nor do I believe that all subsequent arts will be rendered useless.

It seems that people are indeed jumping the gun.

I'll wait... I'll test at the store... And I'll come to my own conclusion. Reviews are nice... but I wouldn't call them all scientific. Isolating variables can be challenging and scientists don't always do an adequate job of doing so... so I won't hold reviewers to a higher standard.

And after having said all that... I jumped the gun on dismissing the 6d... And in retrospect I have a good deal of esteem for the 6d...

I don't think it's being thrown under the bus; forums tend to focus on the details. Potential AF-issues aside, it still handily outperforms the Canon offerings in many IQ-metrics, and for many, the Sigma will win out that in segment. I too will wait to see how it does once it is widely available, but it does mean that I won't pre-order it. I haven't pre-ordered any of my camera equipment. I'll give it a year and wait for the first wave of price reductions.

 

[BLFPhoto]

... I jumped the gun on dismissing the 6d... And in retrospect I have a good deal of esteem for the 6d...

I can attest that the 6D and it's AF got a mostly ill-deserved drubbing. While it is true that it's AF sophistication lacks significantly relative to the 1DX/5DMkIII, it is really a better system than the 5DMk II's. This last weekend I ended up shooting my 6D for a portion of triathlon coverage where I was shooting wide angle on the bikes, with flash. I used both single shot and Ai Servo as well as both center and other AF points. In the application I used it, the 6D was more than adequate to the task and I did not feel I would have done better on those particular shots with either the 1DIV or 5DMkIII, which were mounted w/telephotos.

There are some well noted limitations of the 6D AF due to AF point spacing, and the sensitivity, orientation, and number of non-center points. Not everyone has multiple bodies to address different shooting conditions and needs and might find a 6D just that little bit short for their needs. But after a couple of months of shooting and studying the 6D's AF, I have no issues with it when used in appropriate applications, including some that other forum pundits would swear are outside it's service mission.

But if Canon wants to step up the AF in a follow-on model, I won't argue!

 

[CANONisOK]

With Canon lenses mounted on a Canon camera, I've watched it focus on something and lock, then I press the focus button again, it de-focuses and refocuses again. Why can't it just "know" that it has acquired focus and not move the second time?

That part of the focusing algorithm is necessary because your camera has no knowledge that it hasn't moved or whatever you are shooting hasn't moved. It may have *** in some models, but I've yet to hear of one with gyroscopes, accelerometers, and radar. ;D

You know I think I could come up with any bogus behaviour by a Canon product and one or more people would find a way to justify it.

I think people were just trying to provide helpful answers to a direct question with a pretty obvious answer.

But then if a 3rd party behaves strangely, well, it is all the fault of the 3rd party and should never happen!

You are responding to my answer about why the camera behaves the way it does. I somehow missed the part where I mentioned anything about lens brands.

The point I was making above is that if you've already focused the lens on X and press the button again, it is doubtful that the lens will end up in exactly the same position as before (and by exact, I mean exact, not some "within half a millimeter.")

If that was your intention you may want to try and think of a different way to phrase future statements, lest you be offended by people's responses. Because that is not at all what you wrote originally.

Back on topic: I am excited about Sigma's offerings across all these product lines! They give us consumers many choices and will hopefully provide Canon some incentive to a) produce improved versions of their already-good lenses, or b) be more cost-competitive after they start to lose significant business to 3rd parties. That said, I haven't seen much movement on either front yet so maybe I am just too naive.

 

[Viggo]

+1 on the 24 L II having AF issues, I had three copies, two Canon took back and agreed sucked and the third was pretty useless, but a bit more stable , worst Canon AF I've used of the 30+ Canon lenses I've owned.

People that are defending useless AF needs to know that I don't buy an AF to use it as a manual lens, I must have AF for the photography I do. What the lens cost matters NOTHING if the AF doesn't work, you can't say it's okay for a lens that price, if it doesn't work then it doesn't work and if it cost 1 dollar I still can't use it. Sigma releases it as a fully compatible lens WITH AF, when it's not it becomes a big problem for everybody.