In designing the lens with a large 85.4mm diameter, and placing the widest elements within the front group, greater peripheral brightness is more easily attained when working with larger apertures. This design also lends itself to minimizing vignetting throughout the aperture range for greater clarity and detail across the image frame. Super Multi-Layer Coating Price: The Sigma (690 EUR / 950 USD) is more expensive than the 50mm f1.4 lenses from Nikon (410 EUR/USD) and Canon (300 EUR / 350 USD w/o lens hood) or the Z-Nikkor (360 EUR / 600 USD). But the Sigma is comfortably cheaper than the Sony (1500 EUR/USD) and especially the Zeiss (3200 EUR / 3600 USD). [0] So the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art is a very good lens out-performing lenses even costing twice the price. It sets a very high bar for price/performance ratio of 50mm f1.4 lenses and easily earns our Highly Recommended award. Below I have listed the good and bad points of the lens for you.

Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art review | Cameralabs Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art review | Cameralabs

Nikon has the AF-S 50mm f1.4G (410 EUR/USD) and the AF-S 58mm f1.4G (1600 EUR/USD). See my Nikon 50mm f1.4G review and my Nikon 58mm f1.4G review. The front element features Sigma’s water and oil repellent coating, which is designed to repel water drops and provide resistance to fingerprints The EF 50mm f1.4 USM is Canon’s mid-range option out of a trio of 50mm lenses. Many Canon owners choose it as a step-up over the budget EF 50mm f1.8 II without investing the considerable cost in the flagship EF 50mm, but now the Sigma 50mm Art offers something in-between the mid-range and top-end Canon options in terms of price. As always, you can remove chromatic aberration in your favourite post-processing software. In Adobe Lightroom, for example, there is a dedicated tool that does an excellent job of removing all traces of fringing. For the SOOC JPGs, you can also enable the Chromatic Aberr. Corr. option in the Digital Lens Optimiser sub-menu. The DN lens is noticeably shorter and lighter than the Sony E and Leica L mount versions of the older DG lens. (Image credit: Sigma Imaging)Again, hard to tell right off the bat from these small web sized images. So let’s punch in on the 100% crops and you will see a big difference. Just to head off you Canonites, these shots were focused in live view, on a tripod. So “perfect” focus was confirmed prior to taking the shots. SIGMA’s floating system adjusts the distance between lens groups during focusing, thereby reducing the amount of lens movement required. The result is less aberration at different shooting distances. Thanks to this system, this lens offers a minimum focusing distance of just 40 cm, a maximum magnification ratio of 1:5.6, and superb image quality at every shooting distance. Minimized Distortion Canon offers the EF 50mm f1.4 USM at 300 EUR / 350 USD or the EF 50mm f1.2L USM at 1350 EUR/USD. See Gordon’s Canon EF 50mm f1.2L USM review. Full-frame Canon mirrorless owners can alternatively go for the native RF 50mm f1.2L at a considerable 2300 USD; see Gordon’s Canon RF 50mm f1.2L USM review. So when I first found out that Sigma had plans to update its existing Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM, I got really excited, since I knew that the new Art-series lens would not disappoint. It has been too long since both Nikon and Canon updated their 50mm f/1.4 primes. In the case with Nikon, its newer 50mm f/1.8G yields better sharpness than the bigger and heavier 50mm f/1.4G. In short, the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G is just not good enough for modern high-resolution sensors and its performance at maximum aperture is rather disappointing (and the Canon 50mm f/1.4 is quite similar in that regard). The Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art announcement was very timely because it hits a sweet spot between the sub-par 50mm f/1.4 Nikon and Canon lenses, and the exotic manual focus Zeiss Otus 55mm f/1.4. Canon EOS 6D + 50mm @ 50mm, ISO 100, 1/800, f/1.6

Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM | Art — SIGMA Canada Sigma 50mm F1.4 DG HSM | Art — SIGMA Canada

As you can see from the image above, the Sigma is significantly larger than the Canon 50mm F/1.8. Not only is it larger, it has a solid build. Where the Canon is almost all plastic, the Sigma is almost all metal. It is clear to see, as expected, that the new Sigma 50mm F/1.4DG HSM Art is, in every way, better than the Canon 50mm F/1.8. I hope that this comparison was helpful to those of you who may be considering upgrading from a Nifty Fifty. Hopefully, this helps you see how much you can improve your image quality with a higher quality lens such as this Sigma.Only standard lens that can swap mounts (at a cost) between Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony E, and Leica L-mount. Expanded Sigma 35mm f1.4 DG HSM Art Lens Key Features: Creative control using shallow depth of field There is really no comparison here. The Sigma is again better than the 50mm F/1.8. It is sharper, has less distortion, and less CA. There is literally not one thing about the Canon 50mm F/1.8 that I find to be superior to the Sigma. Compared Wide Open at F/1.4 and F/1.8

Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Review - More Image Samples Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Review - More Image Samples

Optically speaking the Sigma 50mm Art is superior to the Nikkor 50mm f1.4G in our tests. It’s sharper across the frame and suffers from fewer undesirable artefacts like bokeh outlining, vignetting or coma. But the Nikkor 50mm f1.4G is smaller and lighter, so it’s much easier to carry and looks inconspicuous mounted on any camera body.

Lens Specs

As far as sharpness, in this scene it was a bit of a wash. In my opinion anyways, maybe the Sigma was a tad sharper. But they are both pretty close. (Plus a dandelion like this is somewhat hard to focus on in the first place.) As far as sharpness is concerned, this lens puts in an excellent performance, especially in the centre of the frame. At f/1.4, sharpness in the centre is already outstanding, although clarity towards the edges of the frame lags behind somewhat. Sharpness towards the edges of the frame improves as the aperture is stopped down, reaching very good levels by f/2.8 and outstanding levels by f/4. Nikon has come out with a new standard lens for their mirrorless system, the Z 50mm f1.8 S costing 360 EUR / 600 USD. See my Nikon Z 50mm f1.8S review. Overall, with this lens Sigma have created a lens which performs well in terms of sharpness and other optical attributes, for a fairly reasonable price. This combination of price versus performance will almost certainly win many fans for this lens, even despite its large size and weight for a 50mm optic. A good example is the Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art, which is a third of the price of the RF lens. Although it is half of a stop slower and doesn’t offer quite the same level of edge-to-edge sharpness, it can still produce very satisfying results even at the fastest apertures.