Photography is a wild ride. Sigma has a way of finding a niche. Their 35mm is an awesome example of a lens and stands shoulder to shoulder to others. My best 35 in my bag!
I had been contemplating a 35mm fast aperture lens for quite some time and being a Nikon owner I looked hard at the Nikon 35 1.4 as an option, but Nikon's over priced lens put me off from making that purchase. I do use other third party lens and for the most part at the end of the day they work very good. Hearing Sigma was about to release a new line of lens that raised the bar on 3rd party lens, I waited to see what Sigma would do. Sure enough Sigma offered a new 35mm 1.4 with a hyper sonic motor in it’s newly established art (A) category. Sigma announced recently three new lines of lens; Contemporary (C), Art (A), and Sport (S)
I am currently awaiting the 120-300mm F2.8 DG OS HSM (S) to hit the market, from early previews this lens looks to make a significant impact on this zoom range for price and performance. Not to mention the optional USB adapter you can get to tweak the lens performance.
Sigma had great ambition with this new lens and I must say I am impressed. Optically it is 13 element, 11 group construction is the most complex in its class, and includes no fewer than four Super-Low Dispersion (SLD) glass, with one formed from fluorite-like 'F' Low Dispersion (FLD) glass, and two aspheric elements. Sigma says this allows the minimization of an array of aberrations including both longitudinal and lateral chromatic aberration, astigmatism, and field curvature, and I agree it does.
Usability of this fantastic lens is quite good,its ultrasonic-type Hyper Sonic Motor is fast, quiet with a quick autofocus with a full-time manual override. Internally the lens incorporates a floating focus system, that's designed to maintain high image quality at all subject distances with aperture diaphragm that uses nine curved blades for the attractive rendition of background blur, and Super-Multi-Layer Coating is employed to minimize flare and ghosting.
My experience with this lens has been nothing put positive, Fast accurate focus, very sharp even at wide apertures and the finish is what I consider to be one of the best Sigma has offered in a lens, much better looking and feeling that the “felt” like previous lenes.
Below are some example photos shot using this lens.
Sigma says each lens is individually inspected before leaving the factory and I truly believe it, with this new line of lens Sigma has stepped up the game and now offers an even better reason to choose there product over others. Compared to the Nikon 35 1.4 the Sigma offers almost everything Nikon does at half the price. The only thing missing from Sigma is the “weather” seal. Nikon 35mm has weather seals on their pro lens at the base of the lens, where it attaches to the camera. To be honest, I have other Nikon lens without the weather seal and I get by fine, but having moister protection could be beneficial depending on your situation, but for $800.00 dollars more I can go without it.
Sigma – You have a winner!