Customer Reviews

Sigma 14mm f/2.8 EX HSM RF Aspherical Ultra Wide Angle Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To echo what is said about the new release SIGMA lenses - WOW.

Canon look out. I was shopping for a new toy for XMAS and settled on the CANON 14mm F2.8L lens. It was very nice but for the price hard to justify. I asked for an eval of the Canon and this, the Sigma alternative at 1/3rd the price. Head to head testing of the lenses on my Canon EOS 50 (ELAN) using ISO 200 film resulted in the Sigma producing a crisper image with better definition and colour saturation. Both lenses have a little "flattening" of the image at the edges as they try to compensate for curvature but the Sigma in my opinion is closer to true. Neither lens had any trouble Auto-Focusing during the day (Canon felt a little faster). The Sigma was a little unsure of itself on when I went for a night/bulb exposure of the starscape. Switched to Manual, set for infinity and away we went. My only other issue with the Sigma is the lens hood is not quite big enough where the Canon is spot on. Still you have to be looking really hard for faults to find them.

Tooling around with the lens has been lots of fun. I had never considered using the lens for indoors shots but it is magic. Architecture photography is going to be a new thing for me I think.

The Sigma 14mm f2.8 is a great lens. It does a good job of keeping line straight. As others have stated you need to stop down (5.6 or higher) to keep sharp focus. That's the case with most very wide angle lenses. It is difficult to focus as others as said. That's just the nature of very wide angle lenses. If you shooting something up close then let the auto-focus do it for you. It you want to make certain it's in focus then measure (the old fashioned way). I've shot numerous projects with this lens and find to be major player in the very wide angle lens field. I've shot home exteriors, home interiors, art gallery interiors and even food with this lens.

My only issue with this lens is that it does not handle blowout hot spots well. It tends to shift the color on the fringes of the hot spot to the yellow. You just need to be careful not blowout hot spots which why I gave 4 stars instead of 5 stars.

As another reviewer said earlier, sometimes the QA from Sigma is hit or miss. I have had the same experience in the past. The last 2 Sigmas I have tried have been fine (14 and 150 macro) My copy of this lens for Nikon is pretty nice (sharp, decent contrast if you keep light off the front element, fast accurate focus) on digital bodies. The HSM on mine is just as quiet as any of the AF-S Nikon lenses I have. I still prefer Nikon in general, but for the limited use I have for this lens, it has worked nicely.

My copy of this lens gives good image quality, though it does have slight barrel distortion (things near the edge of the field of view bulge out very slightly). This is typical for this wide of a lens, and isn't noticeable unless viewing something with lots of straight lines near and parallel to the edge of the frame.
I like the lens, but do make sure you really want a lens with a field of view THIS WIDE. It's nice for landscapes, but they will all have everything but the kitchen sink in each shot. You can't use this lens to isolate a particular feature of interest like you can with a standard or a telephoto lens.
One feature nobody seems to pay much attention to on this lens is that it can focus very close! You can do a sort of wide-angle macro work with this lens, if the light is good.
I recommend it as a relatively affordable alternative to the Canon or Tamron equivalents, if you are sure a 14mm lens is something you really want. I like mine, but occasionally have second thoughts about needing a lens this wide. Finally, I should mention that I use a digital SLR which only uses the central 2/3 of the lens. I've seen reports from others saying that edge distortion on this lens is unacceptable with a full-frame film camera.

Just got this lens as a Christams gift, and I'm really impressed with it. It's a little soft at the edges wide open, but if you stop it down a bit, you get most of the corner sharpness back. It's also a little heavier than I'm used to, and I was suprized by how large it is. Nonetheless, it's a great lens for the landscapes I like shooting.

Definitely one of the better sigma lenses. Sigma has always been hit or miss for me. This lens is a hit. Very sharp and very wide. Barely under fisheye. oh did I mention it is very, very wide? I love it.

I bought this lens for the Canon mount. The seller listed it under the Nikon mount because there is no listing on Amazon for the Canon version. But Amazon combines all the reviews together anyway so I will write my review here.

I've had a full day to test the lens and even used it at a photo shoot last evening. There are so many things about this lens that I love:

1. Ultra Wide Angle. This is the widest rectilinear prime focal length made. Canon has one, of course, and the Mark II version costs over $2000. I picked my Sigma up used here on Amazon for only $450, I consider it a great deal since this lens is becoming rare.

2. Close focusing range. It focuses closer than the expensive Canon L lens. This lens focuses SO close, just 7.1 inches from the focal plane. This is actually a Macro lens! I already took some really cool shots at the close distance.

3. Sharpness. Soft wide open but sharpens up nicely at f/4. At the center of the frame, this lens is sharper at f/4 than my Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM UD Wide Angle Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras lens is at f/5.6 @ 15mm. And I always considered that a sharp lens.

4. Flexibility. On my full-frame Canon 5D Mark II this gives an ultrawide field of view of 114 degrees. Fun, but perhaps too wide for many uses. If you're not careful your subject gets lost. But on my 60D it gives a very useful field of view equivalent to 22mm, while utilizing the sharpest part of the image.

5. Autofocus. Works like a champ, is fast and dead on. Not like my experience with some other Sigma lenses that I had to send in for calibration. Focuses well in low light too.

6. Built like a tank. Solid. I'm used to using telephoto lenses, so to me it doesn't seem heavy at all.

There is really only one thing I don't like about this lens and that is the poor performance in the corners. The distortion and vignetting can be corrected in software, but the corners are smeared so badly wide open and never fully clear up even when stopped down. The center reaches optimal sharpness at f/5.6 and the corners do sharpen up somewhat, reaching optimal sharpness at f/11. But even at f/11 the smearing is still there and it's not just the far corners, it's a fair amount of the outer edge that is smeared looking. In small photos for the web it's not really apparent and if your background is out of focus it won't matter, but if you're a professional landscape photographer this may be an issue.

The good news is that if you're using this lens on an APS-C camera to get a 22mm "equivalent focal length", your camera's sensor crops out the offending edges. You only capture the center "sweet spot" of the image and although you can still tell that the far left and right sides of the image are not as sharp as the center, it's not bad at all. Still, I can't give 5 stars to a lens that is not acceptably sharp from corner to corner.

So why did Sigma discontinue this lens in 2007? By all counts it was a popular, lower cost alternative to the Canon L glass with even better image quality than the first Canon version. Perhaps there is a revision in the works? Let's hope so. Sigma has been coming out with some great lenses lately.

I am using 2 Sigma 14mm lenses for time-lapse photography in our earthquake test lab. They provide a view of the entire lab without fisheye distortion. The quality of the images, using Canon 450D cameras is good.

I had problems finding 2 of these lenses to purchase, ending up buying the second several months after the first.