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

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Second and last Sigma Ill buy. 35mm ART was defective, or just really terrible. Now the 50mm, it just goes to show me that great optical specs dont always translate into beautiful images. Up against my buddies Nikkor 50mm 1.4G the Simga is the clear loser. It has zero character, no contrast, no life. I shot RAW only, have no idea what jpgs look like, and side by side the Nikkor kills it. In studio I dont have do a single adjustment, the Sigma took 7-8 minutes to get back skin tones. This is my first and second purchase of third party lenses out of 14-15 lenses... Never again

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This is a very common problem with this new larger design The lens will begin to loosen at the base and will become unusable. Google something like "Repair loose Sigma Art lens" and you will see. Now I can either risk repairing it myself or pay and wait for a repair. I loved the old Sigma 50mm but this one is poorly designed and I wish we never bought it. I would absolutely avoid this lens.

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Man, super disappointing. I shoot 40+ weddings a year. (Both photo and video) I was so giddy and excited opening this box when it arrived and couldnt wait to test it out based on what I have heard from most review sites. My old canon 50 1.4 is on its last leg after 4 years of abuse so I decided to check this one out. Overall, Id say this lens is a great performer MOST of the time. It is however far from perfect. These are my thoughts. •The images are beautiful from this lens, significantly less distortion then most and the color is fantastic. • Yes this lens is incredibly sharp but so are most 50s. The bokeh is very disappointing and just not pleasing in my opinion. • For a heavy and large lens like this (which I prefer) it still feels kind of cheap. The metal base is the highlight and is by far the best portion of the lens. The rest of the barrel, including the AF/MF switch and focus ring is made of some very cheap feeling plastic which seems like it would crack if I squeezed it hard enough. Even just putting a little pressure below the focus ring and I can feel the barrel give. One drop and this thing would be a goner. • The AF while obviously better than the extremely loud Tamrons and past Sigmas I have used is by no means quiet and is extremely jumpy. When shooting stills this lens (while pretty fast) will adjust about 6 times. You hear the barrel spin to the approximate distance and then "click,click,click,click,click,click." Very quickly, all of these micro adjustments while you are waiting for the shutter to release. This wouldnt be such a big deal if it nailed the focus every shot. But it does not.(more on this later) • Occasionally if trying to focus on something small in the frame. The lens will search a bit and then give up . I have to release the shutter button and repress to get it to search for focus again. Yuck. • The AF is not accurate on my 5D MKIII nor my older camera. In my test, I went out and shot 300 pictures to test the AF. 200 with the new Sigma, and 100 with my Canon 50mm 1.4 (which is literally broken and doesnt respond all the time) I took my time and when I got back to my computer to check out the images I was loving the detail in the Sigma. It really is a stunner. However the lens blew focus far too often. Of the 200 sigma images, it missed focus (just by a bit but nonetheless missed) 38 times out of 200. My broken cheapo canon missed 3 images. As a professional, this is absolutely unexceptable. I cant have the lens blowing focus when the bride is walking down the aisle, during the first kiss, or capturing any little once in a lifetime moment. It needs to nail the focus. It must. If you are not shooting important events and are just using this for personal projects then Im sure you could live with it just fine. I pretty much look to my canon 135mm f/2 as the lens I compare all others to in terms of AF prowess. At around the same price as this sigma the 135s AF is instantaneous, nearly silent, spot on accurate and leaves absolutely nothing to be desired. Comparing the AF of these lenses one after another just really shows how far off the sigma is. I can buy another Canon 50 (for stills) and a Rokinon 50 cine (for my video days) for less then this lens and never have to worry about the focus being an issue. I saw many people write about the lack of any chromatic aberrations and color fringing. It is pretty minimal in most cases. (mostly with the in focus bits) But sometimes I am seeing lots and lots of it. (see the image of the tree against the sky) I know that image is a pretty extreme high contrast situation but the sheer amount of green and purple color fringing in this image is unusable. Its easily removed in stills but not so much in video which I will primarily will be using this lens for. Speaking of shooting video...Though the focus ring is mostly very smooth. During my time with this lens shooting video I noticed some slight slipping of the ring when racking focus and some minor stickiness at times. Nothing major but certainly not ideal. Id go as far to say that it seems like it can be a bit inaccurate when I was pulling focus. Definitely better then the Canon 50 1.4 but again that lens in a third of the price. But this is just another example of times that Ive realized most of the people out there reviewing and posting their thoughts on gear, dont actually use gear on a daily basis for hundreds of jobs a year. How have only hand full of the hundreds of people that have provided feedback on this lens mentioned these problems that are so clearly obvious .Anyone giving this lens a 5 star rating is clearly not testing or using other brands of gear to compare this against. If this lens was $400 I would totally get it. But this is marketed and priced as a pro lens. Sadly however, this is not a pro lens.

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if you own a D750, be prepared to have this lens macro adjusted to that body. it seems to focus fine on my D600. kind of disappointed that I have to take it in for calibration before I can use it.

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Ive been shooting with SLRs for 15+ years. The Sigma ART 50, in terms of sharpness even at 1.4, plus its generally great low-light ability, is really impressive, and significantly better than Nikons own 50 1.4 G. (I also think its way better than Sigmas non-ART 50, which I found worse than Nikons 1.4G in terms of its low light autofocus ability as well). Is the ART 50 worth around $1k to you, new? Like almost every answer about a lot of lenses, it depends. I shoot with a d600, and perhaps the newer Nikon bodies have improved in terms of low-light autofocus ability, regardless of the lens bottleneck presented by your glass of choice, making this Sigma less necessary for say, your concert-photography needs in craptastic bar lighting. Certainly some of it must be in X and the rest in Y.. Either way, this Sigma is pretty damn good. Im not 100% into the crazy dof you get from this lens wide open. You can look online of course for samples, or, rent one from somewhere like Borrow Lenses . com. (Super useful!) to see if you do. I also notice that sometimes the autofocus doesnt entirely seem to lock onto my target, even using the single focus point that I always use. (Having the camera calibrated at my local authorized Nikon dealer with the lens didnt make a difference that I can tell). Perhaps if I got Sigmas lens dock? which lets you do firmware upgrades yourself, and tweak the autofocus somewhat, that would put this guy at a 5 star. Great work, Sigma! Some people dont like the different filter thread size on this guy compared to what theyre used to in a 50, or the weight, but it doesnt bother me. As I said earlier, though, this lens is pretty great, and Im a picky picky person. But if you dont shoot in the most challenging conditions a photographer faces (fast moving objects in low light), and dont need to shoot wide open for big dof in a small space, you might be perfectly a-ok with a lens that is new or used for half this price or less.

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(this should be more like 3.5 stars) I got this for my Nikon D810, and, like many others, I had lots of autofocusing problems; specially at f1.4. My camera seemed to always focus on something a bit closer than that I was telling it to 9 out of 10 times. This problem seemed to be less frequent at lower apertures (higher F-stop numbers), but still enough to be a problem. However, this can be fixed so that the lens focuses properly MOST of the time, but NOT ALL the time. To fix this on the Nikon D810 (sorry, thats the only camera I have), do the following: -Make sure the lens is connected to the camera and turn it on -Set the aperture to f1.4 -Press the menu button -Go to Setup Menu > AF-Fine Tune -Turn on AF fine-tune (on/off) -Experiment with the "Saved value" setting: Increment the number by 10, focus on a subject, take multiple pictures, see if that improves or reduces the quality. Increase/decrease the value and try again until you get consistent results. -In my case, I had to set the value to +20, and even then, the lens wont focus fine 100% of the time, so, always review your pictures. See the attached images for a "before and after". Both pictures were taken focusing on the dolls face; notice how in one of them the face is out of focus while the hand seems to be very well focused (thats the complete opposite of what we want!) while in the other one, the face is in focus while the hand is blurred as expected. You can download the original RAW files for the attached pictures here: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/rT5VUaiUwgyXT0mJtPEyyhsBwnudGWfR2PPWTa1pp1Z?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy *IMPORTANT*: After you are happy with how frequent your autofocus works fine, be sure to test OTHER apertures to make sure you are getting good results consistently. I had to return the first lens that I got because changing the AF fine tuning value fixed the issue for f1.4, but made it worse for f2.8 and above. The replacement I got from Amazon did not have this problem. ------------------ Once the autofocus problem is fixed, I have to say, this lens is very nice. It does both very sharp pictures (at f2.8) but also has a very nice buquè effect (specially at f1.4). Keep in mind that at any f-stop value lower than 2.8, you are going to get a lot less sharpness on the edges. I dont think I can add anything else that hasnt been said here: the lens is super sharp, produces very nice results, but requires a lot of trial and error before getting used to it.

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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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