Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG Art Coming to Photokina [CR3]

[AvTvM]

next Sigma lens incompatibility to be expected for 5D IV ... and every time Canon launches a new camera with subtle, totally undocumented changes to lens mount protocol, lens recognition and handling.

buying third party lenses for Canon remaims an unpredictable risk. i am not willing to accept it.

 

[GuyF]

...buying third party lenses for Canon remaims an unpredictable risk. i am not willing to accept it.

I see where you're coming from but would say you can have many years of happy shooting with third party lenses.

It's only now, after 4 years of using the 5D3 + Sigma 85mm, that I decide to upgrade to a 1DX2 and this "phenomenon" becomes an issue for myself. Had I chosen to stick with the 5D3, this problem would be a non-issue from my persective. At the time I could've bought the Canon f1.2 but wasn't keen on the fly-by-wire focusing and felt the Sigma gave just as pleasing results for half the price.

There might be an 85mm Art just around the corner and I would probably get one even if I still had the 5D3. The fact that I'm also getting a 1DX2 as soon as Canon UK can be bothered to send them to my dealer is just icing on a tasty cake.

 

[BobHope]

I do a lot of shooting wide open with fast primes and I have some comments......

There do not currently exist any 85mm primes that shoot at f1.4 without colour fringing.

Sigma seem to have cracked the code on how to make fast primes that are sharp wide open without colour fringing and that are apochromatic ( no red/green colour shift in out of focus areas ) which has previously been the reserve of 4k Zeiss Glass ( although they trade off contrast and flare performance to get there )

If you could shoot a full length portrait at a sharp f1.4 on a full frame 36mp+ camera, we are finally in medium format territory, and we can have back that beautiful look that we have been missing on digital.

Hence, everyone is very interested in this lens...Sigma could pull off a real master piece of a lens here.

However........ with fast primes like this, you run into a few problems optical that on the 35mm and 50mm are just not as critical - the 85mm will be harder to focus, and will be more of a portrait bokeh machine.

1st off is the bokeh - some sigma lenses have "onion ring" bokeh and this is not acceptable.

Secondly, the bokeh should not be truncated, ie it should not turn into Cats eyes at the edge of the picture.

The "smoothness" and other values are harder to quantify...Sigma 50mm prime has quite poor bokeh in this respect.

And then we get to the focussing :

DSLR's cannot accurately focus at f1.4, the autofocus system can't see down to that level and they therefore guess a midpoint. This is ( one of ) the reason why the f2.8 pro lenses are so fast and quick to focus, they are matched to the autofocus system.

Sigma lenses don't have the same accurate movement that canon lenses have largely due to canon patents and this "guessing" is therefore not as accurate :

the full story is here : https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/08/autofocus-reality-part-3b-canon-cameras/

Nikon *do not* use this system - hence Sigma lenses have less problems on Nikon bodies.

Sony bodies can use contrast detection on the sensor to accurately focus down at f1.4

So my prediction is that any f1.4 Sigma lens on a Canon body will by the very nature of its design not focus accurately. * given current Sigma tech *

So this is why the Sigma 85mm f1.4 is taking so long - Sigma need to up their autofocus accuracy game, and their bokeh game in order to really make a winning lens design.

 

[TWI by Dustin Abbott]

I do a lot of shooting wide open with fast primes and I have some comments......

There do not currently exist any 85mm primes that shoot at f1.4 without colour fringing.

Sigma seem to have cracked the code on how to make fast primes that are sharp wide open without colour fringing and that are apochromatic ( no red/green colour shift in out of focus areas ) which has previously been the reserve of 4k Zeiss Glass ( although they trade off contrast and flare performance to get there )

If you could shoot a full length portrait at a sharp f1.4 on a full frame 36mp+ camera, we are finally in medium format territory, and we can have back that beautiful look that we have been missing on digital.

Hence, everyone is very interested in this lens...Sigma could pull off a real master piece of a lens here.

However........ with fast primes like this, you run into a few problems optical that on the 35mm and 50mm are just not as critical - the 85mm will be harder to focus, and will be more of a portrait bokeh machine.

1st off is the bokeh - some sigma lenses have "onion ring" bokeh and this is not acceptable.

Secondly, the bokeh should not be truncated, ie it should not turn into Cats eyes at the edge of the picture.

The "smoothness" and other values are harder to quantify...Sigma 50mm prime has quite poor bokeh in this respect.

And then we get to the focussing :

DSLR's cannot accurately focus at f1.4, the autofocus system can't see down to that level and they therefore guess a midpoint. This is ( one of ) the reason why the f2.8 pro lenses are so fast and quick to focus, they are matched to the autofocus system.

Sigma lenses don't have the same accurate movement that canon lenses have largely due to canon patents and this "guessing" is therefore not as accurate :

the full story is here : https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/08/autofocus-reality-part-3b-canon-cameras/

Nikon *do not* use this system - hence Sigma lenses have less problems on Nikon bodies.

Sony bodies can use contrast detection on the sensor to accurately focus down at f1.4

So my prediction is that any f1.4 Sigma lens on a Canon body will by the very nature of its design not focus accurately. * given current Sigma tech *

So this is why the Sigma 85mm f1.4 is taking so long - Sigma need to up their autofocus accuracy game, and their bokeh game in order to really make a winning lens design.

I agree with a lot of what is said here, but I do want to add that it might be false hope to think that Sigma can eliminate the "cat eye" bokeh look at the edge of frame. I've only see a couple lenses out of more than a hundred that did not have that effect. I've reviewed a lot of 85mm lenses, too, and have yet to see one that didn't exhibit that phenomena.

 

[BobHope]

I do a lot of shooting wide open with fast primes and I have some comments......

There do not currently exist any 85mm primes that shoot at f1.4 without colour fringing.

Sigma seem to have cracked the code on how to make fast primes that are sharp wide open without colour fringing and that are apochromatic ( no red/green colour shift in out of focus areas ) which has previously been the reserve of 4k Zeiss Glass ( although they trade off contrast and flare performance to get there )

If you could shoot a full length portrait at a sharp f1.4 on a full frame 36mp+ camera, we are finally in medium format territory, and we can have back that beautiful look that we have been missing on digital.

Hence, everyone is very interested in this lens...Sigma could pull off a real master piece of a lens here.

However........ with fast primes like this, you run into a few problems optical that on the 35mm and 50mm are just not as critical - the 85mm will be harder to focus, and will be more of a portrait bokeh machine.

1st off is the bokeh - some sigma lenses have "onion ring" bokeh and this is not acceptable.

Secondly, the bokeh should not be truncated, ie it should not turn into Cats eyes at the edge of the picture.

The "smoothness" and other values are harder to quantify...Sigma 50mm prime has quite poor bokeh in this respect.

And then we get to the focussing :

DSLR's cannot accurately focus at f1.4, the autofocus system can't see down to that level and they therefore guess a midpoint. This is ( one of ) the reason why the f2.8 pro lenses are so fast and quick to focus, they are matched to the autofocus system.

Sigma lenses don't have the same accurate movement that canon lenses have largely due to canon patents and this "guessing" is therefore not as accurate :

the full story is here : https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/08/autofocus-reality-part-3b-canon-cameras/

Nikon *do not* use this system - hence Sigma lenses have less problems on Nikon bodies.

Sony bodies can use contrast detection on the sensor to accurately focus down at f1.4

So my prediction is that any f1.4 Sigma lens on a Canon body will by the very nature of its design not focus accurately. * given current Sigma tech *

So this is why the Sigma 85mm f1.4 is taking so long - Sigma need to up their autofocus accuracy game, and their bokeh game in order to really make a winning lens design.

I agree with a lot of what is said here, but I do want to add that it might be false hope to think that Sigma can eliminate the "cat eye" bokeh look at the edge of frame. I've only see a couple lenses out of more than a hundred that did not have that effect. I've reviewed a lot of 85mm lenses, too, and have yet to see one that didn't exhibit that phenomena.

Total elimination is probably a bit optomistic on my part, however I own the 180mm 2.8 Sigma and the Cats eye effect is bordering on objectional in that design... if its that bad in the 85mm I may pass......

 

[photojoern.de]

Please, community, can anybody explain: why should I want to own the lens?

If price was not really a factor in my decision, I would probably already have the 85mm from Canon in my bag.

If I want to make portraits handheld, the Canon 100mm 2.8 IS II Macro would give me the same low-light performance (f2.8 with 4 stops IS => equals f 1.2). Yes, not the same boquet, but f1.4 has an extremely shallow depth of field and you will have an extremely hard time to get the eyes tack sharp. Hard enough already with the f 2.8. And the image quality of the 100mm f2.8 is stunning. Alternatively, the 70-200 f2.8 IS L zooms from Tamron and Canon give you similar quality with more flexibility in focal length.

It would have made it´s way into my bag with an IS in it, giving it true uniqueness in application (handheld low light). Yes, for the cost of added weight, but hey: that´s always the price.

Any comments? Am I wrong? What piece am I missing?
Thanks, cheers,
Jörn

 

[d]

Please, community, can anybody explain: why should I want to own the lens?

If price was not really a factor in my decision, I would probably already have the 85mm from Canon in my bag.

If I want to make portraits handheld, the Canon 100mm 2.8 IS II Macro would give me the same low-light performance (f2.8 with 4 stops IS => equals f 1.2). Yes, not the same boquet, but f1.4 has an extremely shallow depth of field and you will have an extremely hard time to get the eyes tack sharp. Hard enough already with the f 2.8. And the image quality of the 100mm f2.8 is stunning. Alternatively, the 70-200 f2.8 IS L zooms from Tamron and Canon give you similar quality with more flexibility in focal length.

It would have made it´s way into my bag with an IS in it, giving it true uniqueness in application (handheld low light). Yes, for the cost of added weight, but hey: that´s always the price.

Any comments? Am I wrong? What piece am I missing?
Thanks, cheers,
Jörn

Hi Jörn!

You wrote: "(f2.8 with 4 stops IS => equals f 1.2)". That's the bit that you're not quite thinking about correctly.

The "rule-of thumb" for shooting handheld without any kind of stabilisation is that you want a shutter speed roughly 1/focal length of the lens: e.g. 1/100th second for a Canon 100mm 2.8 lens.

If that lens had 1-stop equiv. IS, you could safely shoot at 1/50th sec, with 2-stops IS @ 1/25th sec...4-stops @ 1/6th second. But at 1/6th of a second, any motion of the subject matter in the scene will be much more blurred than if you were shooting at 1/100th of a second.

So while IS helps stabilise your movements, it does nothing for the movement of your subject. A lens with a wider aperture (e.g. an 85mm 1.4) lets in more light, so the shutter speed can be higher and subject movement captured reduced.

Those two extra stops available at f/1.4 vs. f/2.8 give you a greater ability control or eliminate subject motion, as well as isolate your subject using shallower depth of field - a look that is very much de rigueur these days, to the detriment of many images IMHO. And while shooting wide open at f/1.4 is challenging, practice and good technique will allow you to achieve a high proportion of images with the focus where you want it to be.

I agree with you that the Canon 100mm L IS is a fantastic lens - I'd like to add it to my kit one day, despite already owning Canon's 85mm 1.2 - to me they serve different shooting scenarios.

Cheers,
d.