Jared Polin: Right before we jump into this video, if you haven’t signed up for the
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Jared Polin Fro Knows Photo dot com here and Allens camera with a fifty millimeter F one
point four DG SIGMA Art Lens, this is at nine hundred and fifty dollar, fifty one point
four that everybody is talking about because they are saying it’s sharp as a tack or
I like to say maybe, well let’s see what the Sniff Test tells us.
But everybody is telling this is a tremendously sharp lens that matches up uh against some
of the more expensive lenses or some of the better companies, not better companies, but
bigger companies that are out there and SIGMA over the past three, well about two years
has really taken, and ah taken their lens and jumped to the next level.
So what I am going to do here is do an unboxing or do a Sniff Test, maybe a Wind-Tunnel Test,
and then I am going to do some sample images and let you download the raw files so you
could decide for yourself if this is a lens for you and at a later date, I’ll probably
pit it up against some of the fifty one point fours that are out there on the market.
So first thing is first, it comes in a nice white box.
And it does have that new nice smell, alright, so as SIGMA gives you this pouch, boom, what
else do we have, we have got the lens, hood, so get rid out of the pouch, boom, this is
a heavy professional feeling lens.
Doesn’t feel like a piece of plastic is in this thing at all, lens cap seventy seven
millimeters, beautiful looking glass, look at that really nice ah, smells like, smells
like some hypodermic needles, some used ones, not new ones, used hypodermic because it is
so sharp.
Looks good, smells good, on the side you have an AF to manual focus switch and that looks
to be the only switch that you have and it’s not a bad feeling switch.
It’s a very ahh tight, not tight like it’s hard to to switch it, it just doesn’t feel
like it’s a plastic switch, it’s gonna fall off at some point with some of the cheaper,
less expensive lenses.
So we have got the lens cap here, here’s the back metal mount, very nice, front, nice,
really, it just comes down to how’s it going to shoot, is it worth nine hundred and fifty
dollars and a lot of people think it is, but let’s give you some test shots that we are
going to do here and let you decide for yourself.
You’ve got your lens hood, you’ve got your lens, we don’t need to Wind-Tunnel
Test it because it’s going to be pretty big, but so far so good, feels good in the
hands, looks good, smells good, and we’ll see how it works, so let’s get some sample
images and we’ll be back in a second.
Alright, so I just got back from Allens Camera and I’ve taken the files that I took with
a NIKON D four S and put them into the computer, captured with the fifty millimeter one point
four Art Lens from SIGMA.
Now before we jump into the images, I just want to let you know that this is not my favorite
way to test a lens.
This is like shooting a chart and I don’t shoot charts, but a lot of people want to
see quality or they want to see sample images, test images.
Now there’s no way to fully do a review of this lens until you actually live with
it, so I am trying to get a hold of one from SIGMA or borrow lenses or from somebody just
so that I could go and shoot in real world situations and not secure an over analyze
test images, but with that said, let’s look at some of these test images and a bunch of
them, you can download, click up on the screen right now, it’s going to take you over to
the website where you can download the raw files or save them as DNGs so you can pretty
much open them in any live room program, any version that you have, even though it was
taken with the D four S. So this is a one point four, no corrections done to this image.
This is as it was out of the camera, some of the future images I did make corrections.
Now, yeah, one point four is extremely shallow, but you could see that you have got your nice
sharpness here, I was focussed somewhere around here, but this is in focus, it’s in the
same plane.
I would like to get, when you get to two point eight, and all these four Ss, they are up
on the website as well as the four S JPEG exports.
But let’s look at this, now we are at two point two, look how sharp this is at two point
two, right.
That is extremely sharp.
Now two five, and then watch what happens at two eight, it is like boom, so you have
got this amazing sharpness at two point eight through the lens.
I did this so that you guys could see the boca, a lot of people like to look at the
boca and see how smooth and whatever it looks like that’s, that’s for your Pixel Peepers
that like doing that stuff, but everything looks pretty darned good from this lens.
Again, it’s a nine hundred and fifty dollar lens umm, looks fine to me, I don’t know
how quick it focuses because I mean it was silent when it came to focus, but I didn’t
shoot any moving subjects.
I didn’t shoot action, I didn’t take it out and run it through its paces, I’m just
giving you guys the test images, but shoot fine, just because you have the ability to
shoot at one point four, doesn’t mean that you should do it.
Just the, the point of doing with these one point four lens is yes, you buy the one four
so you can let a lot more light in, you can get that shallow depth of field, but when
you are shooting at one point four, a lot of people are like I can’t get it in focus.
It’s not the lens’ fault, it’s not the camera’s fault, it’s one point four, it’s
so freakin’ shallow that it’s not even funny, so that’s why you’re gonna miss
quite often at one four.
So this thing at two, around two point two, two point five, but definitely two point eight,
you can see that it is masterfully sharpy, make sharpers in.
Alright, so we are going to skip past these because well, you can watch the background
start to come into into play here.
I should really make a jiff file, that’s a eleven ah, what to go to nine, I guess so,
nine, ten, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, and sixteen.
So this is F sixteen, I mean everything is going to be tack freakin’ sharp, front to
back almost, but still pretty nice amount of boca going on in the background there.
I got close focusing on some of them, so this was I believe the closest I could get to this.
You see some purple fringing, but I don’t know if that’s purple fringing, or more
so a reflection from the terrible lights that were up above because when you look at the
next one, it’s gone, you don’t see it.
So for people that look for purple fringing, I don’t see any of it at all in here, it
is clean as clean can be.
This is just showing you one point four, it’s obviously very hard to get sharp.
You can see somewhere around here, it’s focusing, I don’t know, but then I went
outside, you can take a look at these.
This just runs it through one point four all the way up to sixteen zero corrections, this
is where you have corrections.
I had Brandon Stanton here for me, this is at one point four, focused in on this eye,
it’s pretty darned close, maybe we can go in even further.
Let’s see, yeah, it’s so hard to tell right, one to one $ oh that is four to one,
but yeah, this is, this is what we have got.
Don’t worry about the colors from Allens because it is the fluorescent tubelight and
I had some F and V LEDs on, but this is what you are looking at, looks pretty good to me.
Background looks good, this is close focus.
I believe this is as closest as I could get to the close focus that I could do, so this
is at one point four also.
Not bad at all.
And then I did one at what is this at # two eight, and look how nice and sharp and clean
and smooth, it is very, very nice and this is the background area, the boca looks very
good, what I_S_O am I at, I am at twelve fifty, so boom and then also you can see you do have
some vignetting here, and of course I would be corrected.
I didn’t correct any of this, but you can see I can bring it out more if I do something
like that.
I don’t look at that as being such a big deal at all.
Umm, I don’t think you could totally get rid of that, but look, you could see as I
go up, we are getting rid of it, where we are at now, Red F four, you can see that the
lines were all straight, I am just playing around here.
You can see how straight the lines are at fifty, very, very nice representation here,
no fringing that I can see, and really you can take this all the way up to F twenty,
F sixteen to get that.
So you know pretty nice looking lens, nice in the hands, again nine hundred and fifty
bucks, Allens does get them in stock so if you would like to pick one up, give them a
call, check out Allens Camera dot com.
Phone numbers, two one five, five four seven, two eight four one and really guys, this is
an unboxing Sniff Test semi sort of review, but it’s giving you the power to take a
look at these pixels and peep all you want because I know a lot of people love doing
that.
So hopefully I get my hands on one of these soon to take out and actually use in a real
world environment because that to me is the only way you can tell whether the lens is
good or not, not sitting here in a fictitious made up world, but that is about it.
That’s about it?
Jared Polin FroKnowsPhoto.com.
See you.
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