- Well, Sigma is back at it again
with another new lens for the Sony E-mount system,
and today, we're going to be taking a look
at the 105mm F2.8 Macro Art lens.
I've been shooting with this lens
for the last couple of weeks,
and I'm very excited to share with you what I've found.
But first I want to know, do you own a macro lens?
Have you ever considered picking one up?
Leave a comment down below and let's start a conversation.
Okay, so the 105mm F2.8 Macro is a DG DN lens,
meaning that it's made for full-frame mirrorless cameras,
and right now the mounts include both Sony E-mount
and L-mount cameras.
I did also do some testing with my Sony A6600
to see how it performed on APS-C as well.
It has Sigma's Art designation,
which is their premium level of lenses.
105 millimeters is a great focal length for macro shots
that you don't need to get too close to your subject,
but it can also be great
for things like portrait photography as well.
The 105mm macro is retailing for 799 US
or 1,199 Canadian, which puts it at about $300 less
than the super famous 90mm macro from Sony.
But we're going to talk about that a little bit later.
First things first, let's take a look at the features
that this lens offers.
As you can see, this lens is a long and slim lens.
It's got a decent weight to it at 715 grams,
but it feels well-balanced when it's paired
with both my A7III and my A6600.
It's got a 62mm front filter thread,
which is a bit uncommon,
and I personally don't have any step up rings or filters
for that size, so everything I shot was without filters.
And yes, that means cranking the shutter a bit more
in video mode.
We've got an aperture ring on the lens
that's similar to what we saw on the 85mm F1.4
that was also recently released,
and it has the ability to choose
whether you want it clicked in 1/3 stop increments
or declicked for smoother movements.
That being said, it is electronically coupled
to the aperture, not physically,
so you'll notice a slight lag in the response
when using it declicked,
and it still seems to actually change the aperture in steps
rather than being fully continuously smooth.
You've also got the option to put it in automatic mode,
which allows the camera controls to take over
if you prefer to work that way.
And there's also a lock switch
that'll keep it either in that mode or in the other mode
where the aperture is controlled on the lens.
We have an autofocus toggle switch on the lens,
as well as a programmable custom button.
We've also got a focus range switch
that goes between the full range, 1/2 a meter to infinity,
and the minimum focus distance of 29.5 centimeters
to 1/2 a meter.
I think of these as full-range, portrait, and macro options
for the most part, and for my American friends,
that's 11.6 inches minimum focusing distance.
We've also got some weather sealing going on with this lens,
which is evident from the rubber gasket on the mount.
There's a rubber texture on the focus ring
that I always personally really liked from Sigma.
It is a focus by wire system, so that has its pros and cons,
but the ring itself is generally pretty smooth,
except I noticed that if you happen
to grip the ring a little too hard, it gets a bit stuck.
This isn't something I've ever personally experienced
on another lens,
so of course I started squeezing all my lenses
to see if it happened,
and while it definitely did happen across the board,
this specific lens seemed to be worse
than all of the others.
Honestly, it's not really an issue,
but it did catch me off guard the one time
when I must have applied my grip of steel to the focus ring.
Okay, that's pretty much it for features and build,
so let's talk about how it performed.
First off, a quick disclaimer, this is a preproduction unit,
so there are likely to be fixes and firmware updates
for the production models.
Hopefully this means a few little tweaks to the autofocus,
but more on that in a second.
Overall, this lens was a pleasure to shoot with.
I've been trying to get outside with it as much as possible
as the season changes over from summer to fall,
and we're finally seeing those beautiful fall colors.
I was really in love with the photos
straight out of the camera,
and the thing that really stood out
about this lens is the incredible sharpness.
I could tell how ridiculously sharp it was,
just from seeing the photos on the back of the camera.
Right from wide open at F2.8,
it is razor-sharp at every focusing distance
that I tried it at.
I didn't so much treat this as only a macro lens,
I used it more as kind of an all-around lens,
and it performed so well in every situation I put it into.
Of course, I did get up close and personal
with some beautiful autumn leaves,
and it really showed just how razor-thin
your depth of field can get with this thing.
I also tried to shoot some kind of medium-range shots,
as well as some nicely compressed landscapes.
And once again, I love the incredible sharpness, the color,
and the contrast were really nice straight out of the camera
but of course, I still have to slap some edits on
to really make those fall colors pop enough.
Even when I shot directly into the sun
and tried to cause ghosting, chromatic aberration, flaring,
all those kinds of things, it was extremely well-controlled.
There is an in-lens profile applied that I can't turn off,
so I'm not sure how much of it is the lens
and how much of it is the profile,
but either way, it's ridiculously good.
Lightroom doesn't have a lens correction profile
for this yet, but also I didn't notice enough distortion
to bother me at all.
But where I was really in love with this lens is
when I shot a few portraits with it.
When you really nail the focus,
it is such a pleasing image with wonderful creamy bokeh.
I also shot a handful of images with my Sony A6600
to see how it would perform on APS-C,
and it was equally as impressive.
Often I find that full-frame lenses don't quite hold up
the same level of sharpness when mounted on APS-C bodies,
but this lens still performed incredibly.
I would even argue that the A6600 autofocus worked better,
but I've found that before between the A6600 and the A7III,
so it might be more about the camera
than the lens specifically.
Speaking of focus, there are a couple of little things
about the autofocus that I ran into
that I hope get fixed up for the full production models.
All of the Sony autofocus functions worked,
including the subject tracking, face autofocus,
and eye autofocus.
However, I did find that there was a decent amount
of the camera not knowing what to focus on,
and therefore a decent amount of hunting,
which doesn't always happen with my other lenses.
It would happen in kind of a weird way sometimes too,
where I would have a point set in the center of the frame,
and it would hit focus seven or eight times,
but then on the ninth time,
it would throw the focus all the way to infinity
and all the way back.
It wasn't enough of a problem to be upset about,
but it was a bit odd from time to time.
And I did also find myself using manual focus
for video mode a little more than I usually do
as a way to try to avoid that hunting.
It didn't seem to do that same all the way out
and all the way back in thing in video mode as much,
but there were a few times that it definitely got confused.
I would say the autofocus was good about 95% of the time
in my tests.
Maybe even a bit more on my A6600 than my A7III.
The other thing about the autofocus is
that it's pretty loud.
Definitely audible when standing back from the camera
and looking at the monitor.
This is what it sounds like when I'm trying to autofocus
with the microphone on top of the camera
at the same level as if I would be standing
in front of the camera.
(camera clicking)
And here it is boosted up in post
so you can hear the autofocusing noise a bit better.
(camera clicking)
And surprisingly enough,
the aperture is actually a bit noisy
when you go to change it too.
Mostly when it's in declicked mode,
because obviously you don't have the clicks masking it.
This is much less of a problem for me
because I'm not usually changing aperture
while I'm shooting a video.
Sometimes, but very rarely.
Now, one question that popped into my mind was
how does this stack up
against the super famous Sony 90mm macro
that's loved by so many?
Well, like I mentioned before,
the Sigma is actually US$300 cheaper
than the Sony 90mm macro.
However, the Sony does offer stabilization in the lens,
which at these longer focal lengths can be really helpful.
It's nice that the Sony full-frame bodies
all have in-body stabilization, but the OSS can still help.
Unfortunately, I don't have a 90mm macro
to do an image quality comparison,
but I'll leave a link down in a pinned comment
to Dustin Abbott's review of this lens,
where he showed that the 105 is actually even sharper
than the 90mm,
and showed the overall quality to be as good,
if not better, than the Sony lens.
Overall, if you're considering a macro lens,
this is definitely a solid option with ridiculous sharpness
and an amazing image quality for less money
than the top-of-the-line Sony alternative,
which basically seems to be what Sigma keeps trying to do.
And even though I don't shoot a whole lot
of macro photography, this also turned out to be one
of my favorite portrait lenses that I've ever used,
so that macro function could actually just be a bonus.
My only real gripes with it were the autofocus noise
and the bit of hunting,
but we've seen Sigma fix autofocus issues
between preproduction and production using firmware
in the past, so here's hoping.
But as always, I want to hear from you guys.
What do you think about the 105mm F2.8 macro lens
from Sigma?
Leave a comment down below on your way down there,
and make sure to hit that like and subscribe button,
and hit that bell notification
so you don't miss out on future reviews and tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
(relaxed music)