Sigma 50mm F1.4 Art DG HSM Lens for Canon

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This is my favorite lens andIve used almost every canon L lens under $3000. Its crazy sharp, awesome bokeh, no distortion or vignette that a human being would notice. All lenses distort a little but any larger and this lens would be weird, its construction is better than canon L lenses its well balanced with a FF DSLR. I shoot weddings and its on my camera 90% of the time. it absolutely blows every 50mm out of the water including the 1.2. If you need more bokeh than 1.4 use a longer focal length. If you need more sharpness there isnt anything that autofocuses at 50mm that beats this.

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I photograph 40-50 weddings each year. Ive gone through a fair share of lenses. Heres my opinion on the Sigma ART 50mm: I bought the Canon 50mm 1.2mm & the Sigma ART 50mm 1.4 at the same time and used them at a wedding before I made a decision on which one Id keep. I ended up returning the Canon 1.4 and it wasnt because the ART was cheaper. When I went to edit the images - the ART 50mm was more pleasing to my eye. There was a clear difference between the two and the ART was superior for the style I tend too shoot. Ive used the 50mm ART for 8 months now... The 50mm automatic focus on my Canon 5D Mark IV is the absolute best I own. Its very reliable. I will use the 50mm for family portraits at weddings (if I have enough room to backup) because I am confident to the image will be tack sharp when I go to edit. I tend to not go below 1.8-1.6 on the 50mm because not enough of the foreground is in focus. The base of the lens came lose to my 50mm about 6 months into its life and I had to watch a Youtube video on how to fix it... (It really want that hard to do). Ive attached a few images to show how great this lens works for me. Despite the design flaw that came with it - I love it and I would buy it again over the Canon 1.2 if I was given the chance again. Highly Recommend! *****UPDATED REVIEW - 06.11.19***** I have been shooting with the Canon EOS R for the past four months. This lens never skipped a beat when I moved it from the 5D Mark IV to the mirrorless EOS R. Attach this lens with the provided canon adaptor and youre set. Ive used this lens on the EOS R for 15 weddings now and its been extremely reliable... Dare I say that its even better than when it was on my Mark IV!?

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First Impressions: When I received the product, I was very impressed with the weight, the build quality, the smooth manual focus with just the right amount of resistance to make it easy to be precise. The weight was both impressive and at the same time, a little annoying - but theres a lot of glass in this lens, and for a 50mm, its HUGE. One thing that I knew about in advance (but didnt care for) was that the mounting ring isnt sealed. On the other hand, the mount is steel, so its going to be much more durable than those plastic mounts we see on some lenses. Of course, just like you would expect, I popped it on my D750 and took it out for a spin. Also like you would expect, I started shooting at F/1.4 - of course! The images were... ok. No-where near as sharp as my images from my Nikon DX F/1.8 35mm... or my Tokina DX F/4 12-28mm... or my Tamron F/2.8 70-200mm. Nor was it as sharp (at the long end) as my Nikon kit DX 55-200mm. While I found this disturbing, I started shooting at smaller F-stops... 6.3, 8, 9, etc. As you would expect, the quality improved quite a bit. At the time, I figured I was facing an auto-focus fine tuning issue... and I was right. Id gone through some similar issues with my Nikon kit lens, as well as my Tokina 100mm macro lens (when using it as a telephoto). However... now I was faced with an interesting problem. Sigma sells a USB dock (about $59), but I usually used the on-camera auto-focus fine tuning settings to fix issues. The (free) software that uses the dock allows you to make auto-focus fine-tuning changes at - on a prime lens - four different distances. I decided to use my Google-Fu to see if this was a worthwhile investment or not... and I came to the conclusion that it was after reading tons of reviews and forum commentary. Given the cost of the lens, I figured it was a minor investment if it really gave me what I was looking for. So I bought the dock, and rather than using my traditional auto-focus tuning chart, I decided to just take shots at the different ranges at F/1.4 (to make focus issues VERY apparent) and adjust accordingly. This took me about an hour... It was the best $59 and 60 minute investment Ive ever made. :) Once Id tuned the lens based on my pictures, I took it out for a real-world spin... and it was EXACTLY as good as Id read it to be. :) Sharpness was incredible... not that sharpness is really the only criteria for lens choice, but its certainly something you have to consider, along with bokeh, focus speed, focus accuracy, F-stop range and so forth. (All of which this lens handles wonderfully well!) Summing it up... once you fine-tune this lens, it lives up to its hype 100%. :) Having said that... if youre not up for doing AF fine-tuning yourself, you can buy one and have Sigma do it for you. Youll just have to ship it back to them to get it done. (If theres a local authorized Sigma dealer near you, they might do it for you... or not.) Just so were clear, not ALL the writings I found about this lens required AF fine-tuning. Some were perfect right out of the box, so your mileage may vary. Having said that... if you havent learned to use your cameras AF fine-tuning (pretty much all DSLR makers have this in their cameras), then you really, really, REALLY should learn how. Chances are youll find that some of your lenses arent performing quite as well as they could. :) So, some general pros and cons: Pros === Sharpness Bokeh Focus accuracy (single-point) Focus speed (single-point) Zero distortion Excellent contrast Excellent color transmission Professional build quality Wonderful manual focus ring Amazing picture quality overall Very nice carrying case Excellent lens cap, doesnt pop off, etc. Cons ==== Weight Lack of dock seal Need to purchase USB dock (perhaps) Storage dock-cap on lens is a bit loose (can use a Nikon cap instead.) ============== Update 8/17/2015 ============== This lens - after AF tuning - is absolutely amazing. I have to say that while Ive spent more for a lens, Ive never spent my money better. ============== Final Update 9/5/2015 ============== A word about the auto-focus fine-tuning on this lens. First - doing auto-focus tuning at F/1.4 is very, very difficult at close ranges. Finding the focus (forward or back) can be very challenging - it gets easier at more distance (5 feet and up), but at 16 and 28 inches... seeing where the actual focus is can be tough no matter what chart you use. Stick with it, though - and read below, because theres some very important information specific to Sigma Art lenses that youll need. :) I had bought (via Amazon) a Datacolor SpyderLensCal SLC100, thinking it was time for me to finally move off my old free paper-printed focusing chart. This focusing aid (the SypderLensCal) was and is good for LONG- DISTANCE auto-focus fine tuning. Do NOT use it for ranges of less than 3 feet - all my lenses on both my cameras (D750 and D7100) had a lot of trouble focusing on the target... something I found out later on after spending much time being frustrated by my tuning efforts on this 50mm Sigma Art. Setting aside target problems, I had used the Sigma manual to do tuning for each of the ranges on the lens... while I was initially very pleased with the result, I found inconsistencies over time. After spending many hours re-doing and re-re-doing the settings on the lens with WILDLY varying settings according to each fine-tuning session, I finally called Sigma and asked them what (if anything) I was doing wrong. I had followed their online PDF documentation to the letter - testing and adjusting focus on the closest setting first, followed by the next closest, etc. Turns out their documentation left out one tiny detail, which the tech support guy provided within a minute of our discussion. You have to reset all the settings to the default of ZERO before moving on to the NEXT RANGE. If you leave the closer range (or ranges) in place, it will skew the results of your front/back focus issue. Worse, (as I found out) if the numbers are big enough, you dont really get a change in the adjustments of later settings - I had some of them up to +20 (the max) at one point! Once I changed out the target and followed the proper procedure, I got some fantastic results. The adjustments on my lens copy were small: +1 at 16 inches, 0 at 28 inches, +6 at 60 inches, and +7 at Infinity. (All with a zero auto-focus fine-tuning on my camera settings.) (Although I used a chart to set up infinity, I ended up increasing it from +6 to +7 when I did my real-world tests. My chart testing was inside, and even though I was beyond the 11 feet indicated by the lens, truly distant objects required a little more refining.) Now the sharpness is outstanding and consistent at all ranges - no anomalies - and Im 100% happy with my lens. :) As stated, this is the last update... hope this helps!

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Ive owned this lens, the Canon 50mm 1.4 L series, and the older Sigma 50mm 1.4 -- This is the best out of the 3, without a doubt. There are 2 main points in each of the Pro and Con categories: Pros: 1. The lens is tack sharp, sharper than any of the half dozen L lenses Ive used. Seriously, its very sharp. 2. The chromatic aberration is lower than any L series lens Ive used as well. The Canon 50mm 1.4 L has major chromatic aberration issues. But this thing barely ever gives me anything. I pretty much never see anything on the outer edges. But of course reflective surfaces or direct sun hitting the sensor can def give you some chromatic aberration, its nothing like other lenses Ive used. Very happy with the low chromatic aberration in this lens. Cons: 1. This thing is a brick. Its larger and heavier than any 50mm Ive ever seen. 2. It doesnt have weather sealing and doesnt seem to have the most durable build. Dont get me wrong, the construction feels really good. Nothing rattles or makes noise, and the focus is as fast as you could reasonably expect. But because of its heavy weight, I get the feeling if I ever drop this on from waist level on cement, it might shatter the glass. But again, it doesnt feel cheap or specifically breakable. Ive heard other people say they had focusing issues. I had a minor issue, but my Canon 5D Miii has lens calibration. I adjusted it one single notch and now its fine. I dont have any problem with the focus unless there is really low light, just like nay other lens. What else.. the distortion is very low, although thats probably most 50mms. The bokeh, if youre super picky, is nice-- its smooth and doesnt feel chunky. I recently bought the companion Sigma 70-300mm and am quickly gaining an appreciation for the Art Lens series. Overall the image looks fantastic. My final ruling is that while the build leaves a bit to be desired, it makes up for it and then some in excellent image quality. I really do love this thing.

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I have spent a lot of times with 50mm lenses. From the 50 f/2 on my film SLR, to the Canon 50mm f/1.8, then the Canon 50mm f/1.4. I love the versatility of 50mm, and the shallow depth of field that can be had with the wide apertures. So when I read reviews on this lens, I knew it had to replace my Canon 50mm 1.4. The Canon is good. Not great, but good. Sharp. Fast. Terrible at f/1.4. Ok at f/1.6. Starts to get good at f/2.0. Its noisy when focusing, and the minimum focus distance isnt great. The Sigma improves on all of these things, a tremendous amount. Super sharp, even at f/1.4. I have never used a sharper lens. Its crazy. Even the corners are sharper than the canon was at the center! And this is on a full frame camera. The focus is fast and quiet. It did need a few adjustments to be spot on. The Sigma dock and about a half hour dialed everything in nicely. I really like the ability to set different focal adjustments at different subject differences. I needed that, as everything but the closest distance was off, and by differing amounts. I also like that it has a pretty close minimum focusing distance. Still not macro, of course, but an extra 4 inches over the Canon makes a huge difference when trying to compose up close. The only knock is how big and heavy this is for a 50mm f/1.4. Its about twice as big as the canon, and over twice as heavy. Makes walking around with it definitely more noticeable. But Im a big guy. I sometimes walk around with the sigma 150-600. So this is a cake walk compared to that. I will certainly be buying more into Sigmas art line after this. Update: I have been using this lens more than any other lens in my bag, and I wish I could give it 6 stars. Its easily my go to lens for walking around. Normally I go with a zoom lens for the versatility while walking, but its hard to pass on the sharpness of this amazing piece of glass. I have attached a few photos that show off this lens.

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I just got my copy today and used it on a photo shoot with my Canon 5D Mk III. Theres only one word to say. WOW! The sharpness is on a whole different level than anything Ive ever used, the in focus areas practically pop off of the photo. The color rendition is really good as well. Chromatic aberrations are almost non-existent compared to other lenses in this category. Sigma said they wanted to challenge the Zeiss Otus and it looks like the have! Overall I would highly recommend this lens to anybody who wants a really professional quality lens on a bit of a budget. I will update this when I have had more experience with the lens. UPDATE: 7/3/2014 After having used the lens for the past few months I thought Id make a few more points about it and upload some pictures to the user image gallery. The lens construction is really nice, the thermally stable composite material feels extremely stable and more like a metal than a polycarbonate. The focus ring is really thick, its wider than any of my fingers. The focus ring is also very grippy and nicely damped, which makes it easier to nail your focus evertime. Overall manual focus is a very pleasing experience. The lens did not need a single bit of AFMA, it was dead on with all of my tests right out of the box. Vignetting is minimal and completely gone by f2. Chromatic aberrations are hardl there, if the are its usually less than one or two pixels of fringing. Autofocus is incredibly fast, near instant in some cases. In focus areas are tack sharp, even at f/1.4 The bokeh is super blurry and very pleasing. While the depth of field is very narrow at f/1.4, you can easily stop it down and not have to worry about the out of focus areas getting jagged since the 9 aperture blades keep things smooth.

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The quality and feel are second to none. Just wanted to share my experience regarding the auto-focus "issues" reported by some reviewers. My lens focused absolutely perfectly and repeatedly with no issues whatever. I made a simple jig to test that. See photo below. The squares are spaced 1 cm apart. F was 1.4. The lens was set at infinity, aimed at the middle square and allowed to auto-focus. As for sharpness, the second photo compares a NIKKOR 24-120 ED VR to SIGMA F1.4 ART DG HSM. The SIGMA image is at the bottom. The third photo is a just an example of the lenss gorgeous bokeh. (All photos are reduced in size to help with uploading.) I hope this helps.

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Wow. I really, really love the Sigma Art line. I have both this and the 35, and they are my go to lens if I can possibly get away with using them. They are super sharp (much sharper than my 24-70 or 70-200) and have such pleasing bokeh. Sure, you cant expect zooms to be as sharp as primes, but these lenses are so good that I actually carry them along with my zooms because if I am shooting any focal length close to 50 or 35, I will switch out the zooms for the Sigma ARTs. They really are wonderful lenses. The only downside is their heft (which can also be an upside if you believe weight equals durability). They really are heavy, with a ton of glass and a lot of metal. I think this 50 weighs almost as much as my 24-70! As such, you really have to commit to carrying it around. This can be especially annoying if youre used to those "nifty-fifty" 1.8s that weigh nothing and can fit easily in a pocket. The ART 50 weighs so much that on small day outings (family stuff or little trips to a new town) I have to decide whether I use this lens or take the 24-70. Amazingly, this lens wins most of the time! It really is that good. (I justify this to myself by saying that I am going to stretch my photographic muscles by only having the ability to shoot 50 all day... I turn it into a challenge!) Of course, on a commercial job, I dont often find myself shooting at 50. It is a shame because I dont get to use this lens on my professional work.

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Frankly, I was never a big fan of normal lenses. This lens completely changed my mind. I have used this 50mm 1.4 Art lens extensively for 5+ years and it is on my camera most of the time. It was the first small format lens for my Nikon that offered me the kind of resolution I was used to as a long time large format or view camera photographer. It is also remarkably sharp. Check out the benchmark tests for the very top lenses at DXOMARK. I use mine on an aging D850e like in the ratings. That is also the same coupling used for my Sigma 85mm 1.4 Art lens which still stands at the time of this writing as that sites #1 rated lens overall. This is not just puffery. I mention this because I was initially very skeptical of Sigmas dramatic transformation into the league of the highest performance lens manufacturers. I was a reluctant convert. Nothing in SIgma’s history made me anticipate that, which I suppose makes its success all the more noteworthy. Some reviewers have not been able to drop their historical bias against the brand. But the evidence is overwhelming for Art Series lenses. It is also an easily testable proposition. Every lens manufacturers glass color is different and today we have many choices in third party well as Nikon lenses. Nikon lenses tend to be relatively neutral so Sigma Art lenses are close cousins. I need neutral in my workflow. Other people prefer the warmth of other brands’ color. In post production this issue is easily managed either way. Every lens has its own individual look in rendering the world whether that is inside your studio or in the field, sometimes literally in the field. I happen to need high resolution and optical sharpness. My living is based on getting my work reproduced in books and as an artist I make very large prints for galleries and museum exhibitions. Other photographers might not need those characteristics in order to print large but will use them to make high quality prints from cropped images that still hold up very well. This lens performs very well for all those demands and excels when coupled with high resolution sensors and careful use. As you know any lens will appear better or worse depending on the performance capabilities of specific digital cameras and sensors. If you want to see this lens’ full potential you will need to invest in a high resolution camera. That is now all about the coupling of optics and electronics. [And I add with emphasis, the more you know about pragmatic issues like focussing your camera, manually and with auto focus, the more you will ensure that you are getting the most from what this sophisticated gear has to offer. Skills and knowledge still count and will transform your images as you acquire more. Moreover, courses offering higher levels of decision making can help refine your ideas and compositions. Subjects like art history, design, and aesthetics are some of the things that help take you to the next levels and are good investments when you want to get to the next levels regardless of your gear. You will get more out of your equipment applying what you learn across the board.] It is a fast lens. This one is literally as good as they can get today. You may not need a lens that is sharp at f1.4 very often but when you do you will be very happy. Too many fast lenses are not useable until you stop them down including Nikon’s 50mm 1.4G, but not this one. I can recommend the image quality of the recent, refined but much more expensive Nikon 58mm 1.4G lens, which I consider a specialty lens compared to the "good for everything" Sigma 50 mm Art lens. Fast lenses are effective for separation of an object from a background as well as for low light situations when using a flash fill is not appropriate or will not provide what you want. The Sigmas bokeh is everything I need. It is such a subjective matter that I can’t predict your response but many folks tend to have very strong opinions about this subject making for many contentious debates. But I have not noticed much consensus over the decades. That is not a criticism, just an observation. I don’t use terms like dreamy or creamy. They are limited in what I can convey to you using them and there can be a number of nuanced aesthetic phenomena going on simultaneously in any specific bokeh that deserves a more substantial treatment. Examples include shapes change by lens, distance and f stop. What happens in the highlights, midtowns and shadows also vary from lens to lens. Tonal and color transitions can widely vary and just can’t be adequately reduced to words like blur. There are obviously no metrics for dreamy. Of course, there are many other aspects of optical rendering that are challenging and next to impossible to comprehensively describe using words or describe their effect on viewers. Every lens has its own characteristics for better and worse. But everyone seems to know what they want after they see it so please try out the lens first to see if it gives you what you are looking for. In my lens f4.5 and on both sides of it offer the very best range for sharpness but frankly this lens outperforms the competition at virtually every f stop. Few lenses can make me this happy at so many different apertures. Most lenses are much more clearly optimized and less flexible. Don’t worry if you need more depth of field. All lenses are NOT created equal at lower f stops any more than they are at other settings. Once again, this is a clearly demonstrable and testable matter. Find out all of your lenses’ strengths. Remember there are also lens to lens variations even within the same model. Get specific. It can be well worth the time in the long run for some folks. You will know who you are. As a cautionary tale, be wary of some astonishingly foolish reviews online. You know that already but some are not simply worse in degree but cross over into kind—utter nonsense. I was surprised, shocked and amused by some ridiculous sham reviews. Try and find what actual shooters, not bloggers, have to say first. One wannabe pro claimed we should avoid the sharpest lenses because they are only intended for amateurs, not professionals. This person is not a professional, let alone an expert but unfortunately pretends to be. That is one kind of deception, an appeal to authority. Be skeptical. Be discriminating and let common sense prevail. There is a lot of your money at stake. All 50mm lenses are part of the "normal" focal length range that proves to be very flexible in a variety of uses. They prove easiest when composing since what you see in the viewfinder will be what you get in terms of scale and perspective. Also the unusual lack of flaws and weaknesses in this Sigma Art lens include its corner to corner sharpness that is especially appropriate when making panoramas. There is also reliable uniformity in each files color, contrast, tonal distribution, lack of distortion and unbeatable clarity. You will have few problems to clean up in post production after stitching. IMO, the world looks very different through great glass. Once you experience that, relatively ordinary lenses will likely disappoint you thereafter. I was hooked decades ago and my discriminating clients appreciated the difference. There are caveats. First, the auto focus strains in many low light situations although that can be as much about the camera as the lens. Low light severely reduces contrast upon which most auto focus relies. It is not a huge issue in my particular case because in those situations I prefer to use a tripod and manual focus anyway. I probably use manual focus more than the majority of people in all situations but I can usually rely on the auto focus when there is enough contrast. Since it is about reverse engineering Nikons proprietary technology, Sigma offers an inexpensive tool to assist you in fine tuning auto focus if you need it, their dock. It works with all Sigma Art Series lenses and some other Sigma lenses. Focus speed is very good but I do not make big demands on it by often shooting high speed moving objects. I have lenses that are faster but most of the rest are slower. Possibly your biggest reservation is about size and weight. I understand although I gladly accept its weight, 1.8 pounds, in return for consistently outstanding performance, resolution and sharpness. I also have too kits, one for list weight travel. That too is about personal preferences and needs as well as budgets. There are always trade offs. In terms of subject matter, it is not my first choice for portraiture because of distortion from moving in closer than conventional portrait focal lengths require. But if you want distortion then it is the answer, not a problem. Similarly if you want to play with “normal” distribution of space and scale you will need to either go wider or into telephoto lenses to achieve results like intentional distortion and compression. But note that I am describing the trade offs of any normal focal length lens in general. For example, it you wanted the same image quality as this lens but in a focal length are appropriate for most portrait work, you might consider the Sigma 85mm 1.4 Art lens. It is even a bit sharper. It is close to be an astonishing lens in my estimation. But they are close in performance. Lastly, this 50mm lens has no VR equivalent, image stabilization. That could be a deal breaker for some of us. It will matter most in low light situations or if hand holding has been a problem for you. Again, in what I do, a tripod offers one solution but it can’t always take the place of VR in every situation. You simply might not have that option in the kind of shooting you do. Overall, I consider the $950 I paid to have been a steal and the best quality I had ever paid for such a reasonable amount of money although I must add the Sigma 85mm 1.4 Art is tied for value. It is being sold much cheaper today. I am conservative in my buying advice. Know your sellers credentials and policies ahead of time in case anything goes wrong. Amazon charges more but you are always completely protected. And yes, long ago I found that out the hard way. It was a lasting lesson. In summary, this lens is pure pleasure to use, flexible in purpose, affordable and reliable. Test it out for yourself.

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This is the sharpest lens I have ever used in my life, hands down. I shoot Nikon FX only and own Nikkors "Holy Trinity" 17-35mm f/2.8, a 24-70mm f/2.8, and Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VRII. I have used countless prime lenses in 1.8 and 1.4 and this lens is not just the sharpest, it has the best overall IQ, and contrast of anything I have used. I never would have believed that something from Sigma could be of such eye-poppingly high quality, but it is. Buy one or rent one from borrowlenses.com if you dont believe me. This thing is a total game changer. The last thing I will say is that this lens is never soft when used properly, unlike Nikon 1.4 lenses I have owned. This is a worthy investment for any serious photographer.

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