Sigma announces 24-35mm F2 DG HSM Art for full frame camera

snow patrol · 28 Jun 2015 at 09:42

the thing about my L lenses is that they just seem to nail focus every time...they don't have back or front or erratic focus issues. I own a sigma 50 art and yes it's lovely and almost all the time gets spot on results but it's just not quite up there - reliabilty wise - with say my 35L or 85L OR 24-70 ii...

a1ex2001 · 28 Jun 2015 at 18:00

snow patrol said:
the thing about my L lenses is that they just seem to nail focus every time...they don't have back or front or erratic focus issues. I own a sigma 50 art and yes it's lovely and almost all the time gets spot on results but it's just not quite up there - reliabilty wise - with say my 35L or 85L OR 24-70 ii...

It really is a shame they have to reverse engineer the af be interesting if the EU decided keeping the algorithms secret was anti competitive!

Raymond Lin · 28 Jun 2015 at 18:05

a1ex2001 said:
It really is a shame they have to reverse engineer the af be interesting if the EU decided keeping the algorithms secret was anti competitive!

I'd argue the AF blueprint is akin to the source code to any programme or OS.

You are free to develop apps or plugins to use within it, you can't force them to tell you the source code. It's nothing to do with anti competitive.

Not to mention there are many systems on the market, it's not even close to the 90% share off the world's PC at one point that MS had so how could they convince the court canon's 40 or so percent market share.

An Exception · 28 Jun 2015 at 18:13

Focus with the Sigma 85 was basically on par with the Nikon 85 tbh once I dialled in the AF fine tune. That's where sigma could improve imo as too many of their lenses need focus tuning. Quite Sigma's USB dock though for firmware updates and focus tuning.

a1ex2001 · 2 Jul 2015 at 12:56

Raymond Lin said:
I'd argue the AF blueprint is akin to the source code to any programme or OS.

You are free to develop apps or plugins to use within it, you can't force them to tell you the source code. It's nothing to do with anti competitive.

Not to mention there are many systems on the market, it's not even close to the 90% share off the world's PC at one point that MS had so how could they convince the court canon's 40 or so percent market share.

Was a tongue in cheek comment, the market would certainly be more interesting though even if it will never happen!

Phal · 2 Jul 2015 at 13:44

I was thinking about the whole AF thing... I wonder if Canon could license the AF to other manufacturers? It would mean a cut of any other lenses sold using that AF.

Not sure whether it would be possible though!

An Exception · 2 Jul 2015 at 14:29

^
I don't think it's needed. Sigma seems just as good to me.

Phal · 2 Jul 2015 at 15:24

An Exception said:
^
I don't think it's needed. Sigma seems just as good to me.

Maybe it's just me then! Definitely doesn't seem the same but then again I haven't tried a massive amount of them. I only had the 120-300 for a short period of time but the 18-35mm seems a bit random sometimes.

An Exception · 2 Jul 2015 at 15:40

My Sigma 85mm 1.4 was great but I've had a couple of crappy focusing Canon lenses.
No system yet get's you perfect focus. Sometimes it's the body itself that's **** and lenses with a shallow DOF highlight the inconstancy.

The other day my Nikon 85mm kept miss focusing with one AF point. Lifted the mirror, gave it a blow and problem solved. I'm assuming it was an unfortunately positioned piece of dust on the AF sensor.
Of course if I was using a 24-70, I wouldn't even have known there was an issue.

Phal · 2 Jul 2015 at 16:56

Yeah my 18-35mm has been random when used with my old 70d and my 7d2.

I've had focus that seems out even at something like F2.8 which shouldn't really be an issue.

I did run through it with Focal a while ago to adjust it but that did the centre point only so perhaps it's other points that are less accurate but I can never be bothered to sit down and test it properly. Something to do eventually!

It's rare I use this lens on moving targets so poor AF isn't generally an issue but I can't say I have a lot of faith in it.

D.P. · 2 Jul 2015 at 19:43

Energize said:
The optical quality of the Sigma Art lenses is unequivocally superior to the comparable Canikon lenses, so all signs point to it.

Not really.

You can only compare lenses released at similar times with similar size/weight/price parameters. Comparing the Sigma 50ART to the ancient canon 50mm is fairly pointless.

A more valid comparison would be the nikon 58mm f/1.4. What you then find is that absolute sharpness goes to the sigma because Nikon purposely balanced sharpness for out of focus rendering quality (e..g bokeh). Therefore they had different design goals in mind so it is still not a test of each others abilities.

Sigma have a habit of concentrating on sharpness above all other optical characteristics, that is fine for many uses but not all.

Furthermore look at the sigma 24-70mm and 70-200mm offerings compared to Canon and Nikon.

D.P. · 2 Jul 2015 at 19:50

Phal said:
I was thinking about the whole AF thing... I wonder if Canon could license the AF to other manufacturers? It would mean a cut of any other lenses sold using that AF.

Not sure whether it would be possible though!

They could but Canon would rather have you buying their own lenses and so would tend to set licensing prices quite high. Sigma operate with very small margins so would ave t charge a lot more to use the license and then they would be left with the choice of a slightly less than ideal reverse engineered solution that is way cheaper, or a more expensive official canon version.

Maye they could use the canon license on ART and Sport series lenses and charge a higher premium, but then they risk loosing sales because the cost differential to canon would be much smaller. Furthermore, such arrangements are incredibly tricky to make legal since it would be difficult to stop sigma incorporating what they know about Canon's AF from the official licensing agreement into their reverse engineered designs.

However, it is known that Nikon do have agreements with tokina and Tamron. Several Tokina and Tamon lenses are optically identical to a Nikon
lens so some cross licenisng must already exist there. I think I read once that Tokina does or did have access to Nikon's AF spec.

Phal · 2 Jul 2015 at 22:54

D.P. said:
Furthermore, such arrangements are incredibly tricky to make legal since it would be difficult to stop sigma incorporating what they know about Canon's AF from the official licensing agreement into their reverse engineered designs.

Yeah this was the issue I was running in to in my head. It's a Pandoras box kinda thing where you can't undo giving away details like that.

Unless there's a way to patent the way the AF works and then later prove that your AF is being used then the whole licensing thing wouldn't work without Canon buying Sigma and using the Sigma brand as their 'budget' range or something.

Energize · 3 Jul 2015 at 00:08

D.P. said:
Not really.

You can only compare lenses released at similar times with similar size/weight/price parameters. Comparing the Sigma 50ART to the ancient canon 50mm is fairly pointless.

A more valid comparison would be the nikon 58mm f/1.4. What you then find is that absolute sharpness goes to the sigma because Nikon purposely balanced sharpness for out of focus rendering quality (e..g bokeh). Therefore they had different design goals in mind so it is still not a test of each others abilities.

The nikon 58mm costs £1400 so the Sigma annihilates it at £600.

I disagree that comparing it to old designs is pointless, what matters at the end of the day is what's on the market.

Phal · 3 Jul 2015 at 13:27

Energize said:
The nikon 58mm costs £1400 so the Sigma annihilates it at £600.

I disagree that comparing it to old designs is pointless, what matters at the end of the day is what's on the market.

You can compare it to whatever you like as long as you do so reasonably.

You expect new thing to be better than old things but it's nice to know how they compare.

a1ex2001 · 3 Jul 2015 at 14:17

Energize said:
The price difference between some of these lenses is shocking as well. Sigma are able to offer their 35mm design for less than half the price of Nikon's product, could say a lot about their design and manufacturing abilities.

Slight wire crossing the Sigma 30mm f1.4's direct competitor is the Nikon 35mm f1.8 and other than the slightly faster aperture isn't a huge step up and unusually is more expensive than the Nikon lens.

Energize said:
The nikon 58mm costs £1400 so the Sigma annihilates it at £600.

I disagree that comparing it to old designs is pointless, what matters at the end of the day is what's on the market.

See it's fare to say it 'annihilates it' on a price per performance basis but on image quality the two are much of a muchness and ignoring money the decision comes down to whether you put ultimate sharpness above what many believe to be a more pleasing image.

Nobody in this thread is knocking Sigma's achievements I for one have been amazed by their recent improvements it's only about 6-7 years ago I got interested in photography and that point sigma really were a budget alternative with offerings like the 70-300mm APO being the cheap choice for years the only real market leader they had was the 17-70mm f2.8-4.5 on canon cameras purely because the original Canon kit lens was so bad. Fast forward and they have really up'd the anti and are now selling some genuine market leaders but to extrapolate that to make them the number 1 lens manufacture and to assume that every lens they release under the new branding will automatically be amazing is a little silly.