Sigma 35mm F/1.2 Art For Sony FE – Sigma’s Fastest Lens Ever For Sale
By Smart Home System
Back in early July, Sigma declared the developement of 3 brand new mirrorless lenses which were designed for use with Sony and Panasonic full frame mirrorless cameras in the beginning, unlike their previous E-mount Art Primes, which seemed like they had an MC-11 grafted on them. Among the lenses which was announced was that the 35mm f/1.2 Art. Not only can it be Sigma’s fastest prime lens, but it’s also among the quickest lenses for Sony FE which has autofocus.
The most obvious thing about this lens would be the layout of it. While it has the normal Sigma Art build, badging, and complete – the design appears to borrow out of Sony’s GM series lenses as well.
Both most noticeable design features that resemble Sony’s GM line are the aperture ring, and focus . It also has a switch that enables you to de-click the aperture ring to easily adjust the aperture without clicks each 1/3 of a halt. While the AF/MF switch and focus hold button can be found on a panel that is raised from the rest of the barrel, the Click button is well flush with the barrel, which makes it easy to feel for the different switches without getting them mixed up.
While the 35mm f/1.2 Art does not have a focus space scale, the manual attention throw from close focus to infinity was rather long, nearly 1 1/2 turns. While it will allow for smooth focus transitions when shooting video, in addition, it demands a lot of rotation when adjusting focus and it may be too long for some. That being said, the immunity of the focus ring is very fine, and for me , it has a nicer feel than some of Sony’s GM and Zeiss primes. The 1 downside of the lens is its size. It’s both big, and heavy. Most people could carry around a 35mm f/1.4 daily on a camera body pretty easily, but using this lens, it’s a bit of a different story.
Sigma also chose to use their newer design lens hood for the 35mm f/1.2 – it has a softer rubber setting base, and locks when attached, and to unlock it you push the match.
The lens is totally compaitble with Sony’s Eye-AF, though using a lens this wide, you are more likely to get the face monitoring box, unless you are shooting tight portraits. Using the 35mm f/1.2 for an assortment of portraits, the autofocus was speedy and true. Even if monitoring a topic running towards the camera, the attention kept up and over the duration of 5 or 6 different bursts, the miss rate was minimal.
Wide open, the lens will not have any vignetting, though it is hardly noticeable when you reach f/2.8. The lens will have some cats-eye bokeh towards the corners, but when you move away in the corners, the bokeh-balls are fine, smooth bands – thanks to the 11 blade aperture layout (the 35mm f/1.4 Art had 9 aperture blades). 1 huge improvement on the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 is that the bokeh doesn’t show nearly as much”onion-ring” bokeh as the 35mm f/1.4 Art or the Sony 35mm f/1.4 ZA. Even if shooting at f/1.2, the lens is very sharp, unlike many other f/1.2 lenses for FE and other mounts. Even the corners are fairly sharp wide open compared to other similar lenses. Chromatic abberation is really minimal and wasn’t noticeable in any of those photos I took while using the lens. The lens does exhibit some sharpness, but using Adobe’s current Lightroom upgrade, it corrects it with just a click of a button.