Jared Polin: Right before we jump into this Sigma versus Otus comparison, I want to let
you know if you haven’t signed up for the FroKnowsPhoto e-mail list, you can click on
the screen right now.
Just look for this orange box over on the website, put your name, e-mail address in
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Jared Polin, froknowsphoto.com, here with the review or comparison of the Sigma 50,
1.4 for Canon and the Zeiss Otus 55, 1.4 that is also for a Canon mount.
Now both of these lenses are being touted as some of the sharpest of the sharpest of
sharpest with honors, sir.
And I'm here to do some tests and some comparisons and as much as I want to get out into the
real world and do some actual real-life shooting, we’re going to have to do some setups in
here because it’s not a great day out there and I don’t have a lot of time with these
lenses before I have to get them back because, well, I have to get the Otus back because
it’s really expensive.
First things first, pricing-wise, $950 for the Sigma; pricing for the Zeiss – did you
see I didn’t really touch it because I'm trying not to touch it too much?
– this one is just under $4,000.
That is a big price difference to have.
There’s a lot of other things we’re going to look at.
We’re going to look at how they smell, how the wind tunnel test looks, how heavy they
are.
We’re going to do real world shootings using the bobble head.
We’re going to see the boca [Phonetic] [0:01:32] of the bobble head behind it.
We’re going to shoot the brick walls that I have just to give you guys some examples
side by side.
Now again, this is a 50 and this is a 55 so it’s not going to be exact but my goal here
is to give you images to look at so that you can pixel peep for yourself to determine,
“Do I want a lens that’s $4,000 just to say that ‘Hey, I spent $4,000 on a lens’?”
or is this Sigma 50 the one for you?
So there are raw files, there’s full res, edited, JPEGs, edited or unedited, I'm not
sure which ones they’re going to be yet but they’re going to be there so this is
what I have laid out for you.
So first things first, why don’t we look at how they look?
Yup, this has yellow printing and this has white printing so I don’t know if one has
an advantage there.
The Otus is definitely more shiny.
It definitely is shinier and this has more of a dull finish.
How do they feel in the hands?
Holy Otus, I mean, that Otus is as heavy as an Otis elevator.
I mean, I'm surprised that I don’t have a [weighing] system to try to raise this thing
up as I hold it.
That Otus is built – I mean, it is incredible how well this Zeiss lens is made.
It probably is worth the $4,000 that it costs or just shy of that because Zeiss makes some
tremendously amazing glass.
Now, what do we think about – well, we got how it weighs.
Obviously, the Zeiss is much heavier.
If you’re interested in weight savings, the Sigma is going to be better for you.
If it doesn’t matter how much it weighs, then you can afford it.
That’s what it’s all going to come down to for this lens especially this Otus.
Comparison-wise on the wind tunnel test, we’re going to have to get down here and see.
You know what?
I think the Sigma is better in the wind tunnel test.
The reason I'm going to tell you is it’s not as tall; it’s more squat, closer to
the piano here and that the Otus blocks it more so if you’re doing something that deals
with wind and you need some aerodynamics, the Sigma is going to win there.
That’s a very important test in my books.
Sniff test-wise, Sigma smells like it’s affordable and the Zeiss, the Zeiss still
smells like LASIK eye surgery because it is sharp as sharp could be.
They’re actually pretty darn sharp because I’ve already reviewed this lens separately
but this is a comparison of them both.
I want to jump to some real world examples now because that’s what you guys want to
see.
So let me set up the Bobble Mcbobbleson.
Yeah, that’s right.
He shoots raw.
We’re going to set up the bobble head.
We’re going to do some close focus tests, we’re going to run through f1.4 all the
way up to wherever it goes.
We’re going to see how it works and I’ll be using the 5D Mark III because these are
both Canon lenses so let’s jump on to that.
The first test that I want to run through is the autofocus test and I have the Sigma
set up on the 5D Mark III right now to check out it’s autofocus.
Yup, it’s autofocusing.
It is moving so that’s a good thing.
That means it actually does it.
Let’s switch over to the Otus and see how that one autofocuses.
Alright, so let’s try the autofocus right here of this lens.
Yup, it’s not moving.
Nope, nothing happening.
Oh, wait, let me twist this knob.
Now it’s auto – now it’s manually focusing.
Yeah, that’s what I didn’t say earlier, is that this Otus is a $4,000 manual focus
lens.
That means it will not be autofocusing.
That means it’s going to be very difficult to shoot a lot of things if you have bad eyes
and don’t have LASIK surgery which you probably should invest the $4,000 to LASIK surgery
if your eyes don’t work so well over getting this lens.
You’re going to have trouble focusing.
If you’re shooting moving subjects, the Otus isn’t going to be for you because well,
it’s not going to help you out because it doesn’t autofocus.
You have to manually do everything and that, for somebody like me, is kind of like a no-no.
It’s not going to work.
It’s not going to fly.
But maybe this lens could be used for Sina [Phonetic] [0:05:47].
Maybe it’s a good Sina lens but the only other thing is you’re not going to be able
to put one of those Sina thingies that you spin like this because there are no notches
to do the smooth focus with this.
Maybe it’s not even meant to shoot with video but I'm sure it would take some amazing
video nonetheless.
That test, let’s see, the winner of the autofocus test between the Sigma and the Otus
Zeiss is Sigma because it actually autofocuses.
Now let’s do a close focusing test.
What that means is I want to get as close as possible to my bobble head right here,
as close as it will focus.
In this case it says a half a meter and that’s where we have it set right here.
We’re going to go through a test from 1.4 all the way to f16 and in the background,
we’ve placed my Tetris lights so that you can see different colored boca in the background
and just basically pixel peep so the point here is to get as close to this bobble head
as possible where we can focus.
What I'm going to do, I'm going to use live view right now to get my focus right because
it has to be tack sharp at 1.4. 1.4 is so very – it’s very, very hard to shoot at
1.4 especially without autofocus now that you have to manually do it, I don’t know
that you can get it as good as you really want if a subject is moving.
But here, inanimate objects, we can do it all day long.
So right now, we’ve got this locked at 1.4 and I want to start the process and go all
the way through to f16.
So we’re at 400 ISO.
I'm using aperture priority just so that we can go through these images and keep them
all pretty similar.
So here we go, 1.4.
Alright, let’s go up to the next.
Let’s go to 1.6.
Boom.
1.8, f2, and now let’s do f16, boom.
So we went from 1.4 all the way to f16.
I didn’t want to make you guys sit here and watch me do f1 to 6, 1.8, 2, 2.5 but the
whole point here is to let you guys look at these images on the computer and determine
for yourself how sharp this thing really is.
Let me look at the back of the camera here.
I want to take a look at f16 and then f1.4.
This is insane.
At 1.4 zoomed all the way in here, we can see that it looks like the bobble head’s
eye is in focus.
That’s important but the nose isn’t even close to being at focus.
Some of the beard is and even the eyebrows aren’t because 1.4 is so narrow.
It’s such a shallow depth of field but as we go and we look and let’s just jump right
to 16, and it’s like ba-bam!
You can see how the boca goes from really boca-licious as [Inaudible] [0:08:30] would
say to almost, you know, you could see the bricks.
You could see outside my window.
Now the reason you’re not seeing f16 getting everything in focus is because we’re close
focusing.
We are not set in infinity and beyond right here and we may do some other tests after
that you won’t watch but just to give you some sample images.
So f16 looks great and then going to something like f2.2, like that is so, so sweet and the
boca looks amazing with those colors in the background.
I think this is a pretty good test for you guys to see the quality of the lens and it
is as sharp as a tack.
It’s sharp as Mack the Knife on top of it as well, so really, really, really nice.
Obviously set up in a controlled environment, not sure how it would work out on the street
but for this environment, obviously, I think it worked pretty well.
So now we’re going to run through the same process with the Sigma 50, 1.4 and see what
we come up with there.
Now we’ve switched over to the 50, 1.4 Sigma lens.
And what I have to tell you is that this is a 50, the other one was a 55.
The whole point of this little test is to get the closest focusing that we could do
so the frames are going to be slightly different but of course, one’s a 55 and this one is
a 50 so it’s going to look different but we’re going to do the same thing here.
We’re going to run it from 1.4 all the way up to 16.
So I'm going to check my focus, get here into live view.
That looks pretty darn good, eyes looking focused, turn that off, here we go.
1.4, boom, 1.6, boom, let’s get some 8, 1.8, f2, and now, f16, boom.
Let’s take a quick look at these.
We’ve got f16, it looks nice.
I mean, it’s so hard to tell obviously on the back of the screen what is going on compared
to what you guys can see on the computer but that’s why I’ve given you the access to
download the full res JPEGs and some of the raw files that we put up so that you can pixel
peep.
I know that Stephen’s going to pop some up on the screen back and forth so you can
see what 1.4 looks like from the Otus and 1.4 looks like from the Sigma.
Of course, again, slightly different focal distances with the 50 and the 55 but really,
you’re really getting into pixel peeping at this point when it comes to doing this.
We’ve done these two little tests.
Now I'm going to go ahead, go out and about.
I don’t know how far I'm actually going to go but I'm going to go shoot some of this
lens.
We’re going to go shoot some sample images and that’s what I'm going to do and then
come back, wrap this up, give you my opinion and then let you guys pixel peep to your little
hearts’ desire so you can do whatever you’d like to do.
So there you have it, we’ll be right back.
I want to wrap this up.
Now I went out and shot other sample images.
When I say “went out,” that doesn’t mean I went too far.
I don’t have this lens for very long so I wanted to make sure that we at least got
some sample images so that you could do your pixel peeping all you want.
So I did some basic stuff.
Ideally in the ideal world, in a world where I could do whatever I wanted and had owned
this lens, we would go out and do an actual photo shoot with it and do the best that we
could but in this case, we’re just touching the surface of it just so that we could do
this comparison and that’s exactly what we did.
So all the files are over on the website.
You can download some of the raw files, you can pixel peep all you want but let’s just
think about it.
This one is $950 for the Sigma.
The Otus is fantastic but it’s $4,000 and it lost the autofocus test by a lot.
It actually didn’t even rank anywhere.
It ranked as zero out of two million or even ten.
It was a zero out of ten in autofocus because it doesn’t autofocus at all.
So you have to ask yourself, “What use does a 55 mm, 1.4 non-autofocus lens have for you?”
For me, it doesn’t have a use because I have trouble with my eyes.
I do not see focus very well so I have trouble and always have had trouble with manual focus.
And it is beautiful, it is sharp, it creates a ton of great images but you have to say
for $950, the quality that you’re getting out of the Sigma, the fact that it autofocuses,
the fact that it’s so darn sharp at about 2.5, 2.2, it just looks amazing for the pictures
that I have seen and the pictures that I have taken that I don’t know how you don’t
save $3,000 unless you’ve got all the money to burn in the world and you just want to
have something called an Otus in your bag.
So really, I’d have to say if you were fighting between a 55, 1.4 and a 50, 1.4 between the
Otus and a Sigma, I’d be going with the Sigma because that lens is going to definitely
be, well, you’re going to have a lot more money to spend on other things in the end
and that’s really pretty much all there’s going to be.
I want to thank Mr. Bobble Head right here.
That’s exactly what we did.
What else does he say?
Thingamobobber!
If you want to pick yourself up a Fro Knows Photo bobble head, you can do that at store.froknowsphoto.com.
I want to thank Allen’s Camera.
Check out allenscamera.com if you’d like to purchase one of the Sigmas for a Nikon
or Canon or the Otus for a Nikon or Canon.
You can call them at 215-547-2841 but I want to thank them for the support that they’ve
given me and for allowing me to use these and test out these lenses so that we could
bring you guys some samples to pixel peep.
And that is it.
Jared Polin, froknowsphoto.com.
See ya.