I've made this video before, but since the last time
I've made it, three things have happened.
Sony's released their new 35mm f/1.8,
Sigma's released their new 35mm f/1.2,
and the 35mm f/1.4 Art Lens has got a firmware upgrade.
And so it's time to re-evaluate
which 35mm lens I'd recommend today.
Let's get Undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!"
So, I'm a big fan of 35mm, I probably use it more
than any other focal length and right now,
my current reigning champ
for the Sony E-mount is the 35mm f/1.4 Art.
I'm not going to cover everything that I did
in the previous videos but I will give you
some rapid fire rationale as to how I got here.
Before these recent releases, the contenders
were the Sony 35mm f/2.8, which is $800 for a lens,
two stops slower than the competition and dealing
with the limitations of a semi-pancaked build.
It's a decent lens but not a great value in my opinion,
and then you have the Samyang or Rokinon 35mm f/1.4,
which is a good value lens coming in cheaper than the 2.8
or even the Sigma f/1.4, but there are some slight issues
with that lens when it comes to flair, chromatic aberration,
corner sharpness, or even build quality,
which the Sigma f/1.4 handles quite a bit better
for not that much more money at the cost
of just slightly worse autofocus performance.
And finally, the Sony Zeiss Distagon f/1.4,
which solves many of those problems but unfortunately
suffers from bad quality control,
because, of the three copies of that lens that I tested,
all of them had bad decentering issues,
which is not acceptable for $1,600.
So after careful consideration, I went with the Sigma 35mm f/1.4
as, sort of, a best compromise between features
and values, and I was willing to deal
with the worse autofocus performance
because it wasn't really much of an issue in photos
and I didn't do a lot of continuous autofocus for video.
And I've been using it since then and I've been happy
with my choice. Now, some people mentioned in the comments
that they opted against the Sigma f/1.4
in favour of one of the other f/1.4s
due to the Sigma's size and weight.
This is a misconception as well as a mistake, in my opinion.
You should be aware that both the Samyang f/1.4
and the Zeiss f/1.4 are pretty much identical
in terms of size and weight to the Sigma f/1.4
and should not be a factor in your decision making.
The only lens that actually is smaller
and lighter is the f/2.8,
but again, at the cost of two stops.
But that's all changed now since Sony
has released their f/1.8,
which is the lens that we've sort of been discussing
ever since that original video. I remember your comments saying,
"Why can't they just make a lens like the 85mm f/1.8,
a lens that we all love, but for 35mm?"
Well, they finally did, but is it enough to beat the Sigma
35mm f/1.4, now that it's been improved with firmware?
And what about the Sigma 35mm f/1.2,
a lens that you actually can call
much bigger and heavier than the others?
So let's test all three of these out,
starting with the difference in size
and weight, and move on from there.
The Sigma 35mm f/1.4 is 665 g or about 1.5 lbs
and extends about 5 inches or 12.5 cm from the body.
I'm used to it now and I don't mind heavy lenses,
but I do find it a bit too long and heavy
to balance perfectly on the Sony a7 III.
It's only mildly weather sealed, but it does feature a familiar,
linear focusing ring with window and tactile stops.
The Sony f/1.8, however, is significantly smaller.
It only extends around 3 inches or 7.5 cm from the body
and weighs less than half that of the Sigma f/1.4
at 281 g, or just over half a pound.
It definitely achieves a better balance on the a7 III and feels
really good in the hand, but I do kind of feel like,
maybe, we went a tad too much in the other direction now
and that this lens could potentially benefit
from a little bit of extra length and weight.
And, its compact size leads to it using a 55mm filter thread,
which is significantly less common
than the 67mm found on the Sigma f/1.4.
It has a focus by wire system, but it's linear
and very responsive and feels surprisingly similar
to a mechanical focusing ring.
It's well-dampened for its size
and makes repeatable focus easily achievable.
It also has six points of weather sealing which is a huge
step up from the Sigma f/1.4 The new Sigma f/1.2 is also
weather sealed, though, but it's significantly larger.
It's about an inch longer than the f/1.4 version and weighs
over a 1,000 g, or just around 2.5 lbs.
It has an 82mm filter thread and an aperture ring that can be
de-clicked using a switch along the side.
Other controls include the AF/MF selector,
which can also be found on the f/1.4 version
and a function button that
you don't normally see on Sigma lenses.
It exists on the Sony f/1.8,
but it's usually only found on Sony lenses.
It also comes with a new hood design, which features
a novel, almost silicone-like coating on the bottom edge
and push-button release instead of the older twist-lock style.
The aperture ring is really, really nice.
When in clicked mode, it satisfyingly snaps to every
1/3rd of a stop and has the option to remain in "A,"
for camera control, and when de-clicked, it's very smooth
and pleasing. The focus ring is also very smooth.
They've eliminated the window and the soft stops found on
the f/1.4 version, but it is extremely well-dampened.
However, it's not fully linear in its response.
The focus throw on this thing is huge.
It ranges anywhere between 580° to about 720°.
I find that you can turn it over and over and over again, just to
get the full focus range, but it does seem to be
a little bit acceleration based, because if you put a marker
on the focus ring and then try to achieve the same focus,
it does change the accuracy of it depending
on how quickly you turn it.
So, getting precisely repeatable focus
isn't as reliable as with other lenses, but it's better than
your typical focus by wire lens, and because of the long throw,
you definitely can pull focus to where you want it to stop,
but perfectly repeatable might be
a little bit of a problem on this lens.
It has the same minimum focusing distance as the f/1.4,
which is 0.3 meters, about 0.99 feet,
but the f/1.4 has a much shorter throw,
albeit it's mechanical, so it's perfectly linear,
but it only goes about 90° from infinity
to the close focus distance.
The Sony f/1.8 might be
my favourite of the lot, though.
It is a focus by wire system with no window or anything,
but it's completely linear in its response,
and the focus throw is quite a bit longer too.
I think it goes about a 150°, so you do get some extra reach
there over the f/1.4 version,
and the minimum focusing distance
is actually smaller on this one
at 0.22 meters, or 0.73 feet.
Overall, the construction of the f/1.2 is outstanding,
and rivalling that of a Sony G Master,
but of course, much bigger.
And whenever you start to get into lenses this big
and with this size of form factor,
you always wonder if the image quality
is going to be worth the increase in size and price.
For example, in the case of that 40mm
Sigma lens that we reviewed not that long ago which is
an absolute behemoth, there was definitely
a noticeable improvement in image quality.
However, I didn't find that advantage
to be as significant on the 35mm f/1.2.
Yes, it's definitely sharper in the corners,
but it's marginal and I don't think
that it's enough to warrant double the price
or the huge increase in size. To demonstrate what I'm talking
about, let's look at some images here in Lightroom.
On the left, we have the f/1.2, wide open at f/1.2
and on the right, we have the f/1.4, wide open at f/1.4,
and I would say that the sharpness is
pretty darned similar when we're in the centre here.
Probably just a little, tiny bit sharper on the f/1.2.
But, if we look over toward the edge,
that's when we can start to see
a little bit more of the improvement of the f/1.2.
We can see this is clearly now sharper than the f/1.4 is,
but it's not a huge difference in my opinion,
and if you consider how zoomed in we are
just to be able to see that difference,
I don't know if it's going to be worth it to you.
There's also a bit more fringing, like,
if you look up here in the corner,
yes the f/1.2 is clearly sharper,
and we get more of that, sort of,
purple ghosting happening
around the words up here of ColorChecker,
and you can see it around this little bullseye logo.
Or, if we look at this line here, we can see that this is
a bit sharper of a line and this one's a little bit softer
with a little bit more purple creeping in, and that's
pretty much the difference that you're looking at between
the f/1.2 and the f/1.4 when wide open.
The difference is a bit more significant when
comparing the f/1.2 to the f/1.8.
The f/1.8 is probably the worst optical performer
when it comes to sharpness of the three lenses, but again,
that's to be expected, but again, the differences
are actually pretty marginal. Here, have a look.
So again, on the left, we have the f/1.2
wide open and on the right, we have the f/1.8 wide open.
If we look up here at the word "ColorChecker",
we're getting that same, you know, purple
fringing around the edges just like we saw.
And if we move over to the edges over here,
again, we're going to see a reduction in sharpness.
Now, it is a bit worse on the f/1.8
than it was on the f/1.4,
but it's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things
and as we move closer towards the centre,
as you can see down here,
it starts to become a lot less apparent.
This is the f/1.2 and this is the f/1.8, and yes,
the f/1.8 is definitely not as sharp as the f/1.2,
but even, you know, a quarter of the way more
towards the centre, it starts to become a pretty insignificant
difference in my opinion, and if you look at
how small it is in the actual image, it was this tiny
little font right there beneath the Polaroid.
Are you really going to care about that kind of difference in
sharpness and the overall image, especially when, usually,
you're putting your subject closer to the centre
than you probably would this text over here?
But, to the f/1.2's credit, I should say that even when
you stop all the lenses down a little bit,
so in this example here, they're both at f/2.8.
The f/1.2 does still maintain its sharpness across the frame.
So, here is the f/1.2 at f/2.8 on the left
and here is the f/1.4 at f/2.8 on the right,
and we can see that there's still a disparity in sharpness.
Probably the same significance as it was,
wide open, which again,
testifies to these lenses that they perform pretty much as
well wide open as they do stopped down a little bit.
But you can still see that the f/1.2 is still sharper
than the f/1.4 even when you stop them both down,
and this is also true for the f/1.8.
And in case you were wondering, here's the difference
between the f/1.4 and the f/1.8,
in case those are the two that you are deciding between.
This is the f/1.4 on the left and this is the f/1.8
to the right, both stopped down to f/2.8.
I would say that they're pretty darned similar,
let's move over to this here.
Again, right at the very edge, the f/1.8 does seem
to suffer a little bit, where the Art lens
doesn't seem to have that big of a problem,
but you know, looking up here now that they're stopped down,
most of the fringing has been taken care of,
and in the centre, you've got slightly worse
fringing on the f/1.8, but again pretty much equal sharpness.
So, the f/1.4 and f/1.8, when stopped down,
are pretty darned similar.
Wide open, obviously the f/1.4 has,
like, 2/3 of a stop advantage,
and so at f/1.8 it's going to outperform it a little bit,
but they're pretty close, just a slight edge to the Art lens.
Another thing that we should look at while we're in here
is the corrective profiles
for those that are going to be applying those
in Lightroom or whatever raw developer you use.
If we enable the profile corrections,
this is the f/1.8 here,
we can see there's actually very little changes
being done to distortion, it's mainly just vignetting.
And the vignetting is definitely noticeable on the f/1.8,
but that's impressive, how well the distortion is controlled.
Now, if we switch over to the f/1.4 and do the same thing,
we can see that there is some distortion being corrected,
but less vignetting correction
and then if we go over to the f/1.2
and we enable profile corrections,
we can see that there's a lot of everything going on.
There's a lot of vignetting that needs to be corrected
and also quite a bit of distortion.
So, the worst offender for distortion
is definitely the f/1.2, then the f/1.4,
and then the f/1.8
and in terms of vignetting, I would say that the f/1.2
and the f/1.8 have, probably, the most vignetting
and the f/1.4 does surprisingly well.
However, when it comes to flaring, the opposite is true.
It's well controlled by all of these lenses
but the Sigma f/1.4 does seem to be the worst offender.
I was expecting the f/1.2 to show an advantage here,
but I was equally impressed by how well
the Sony f/1.8 performed in this regard.
Now, all three of these lenses
have different maximum apertures.
There's a full stop difference
between the f/1.2 Sigma and the f/1.8 Sony
and the Sigma f/1.4 comes in a third of a stop slower than
the Sigma f/1.2 and 2/3 of a stop faster than the Sony f/1.8.
And this will have two impacts on your shooting.
First, if smooth out of focus areas is something
that you're going for, then you will see a bit
of an advantage moving up to the Sigma f/1.2,
but it's not a huge improvement over the f/1.4,
in fact, all three of these lenses produce similarly
pleasing bokeh, with minimal cat-eyeing and onion ringing.
The only real difference is the size
of the circles and how important that is to you.
But also, if you find yourself shooting at high ISOs a lot,
then that extra 2/3 of a stop could make a difference.
For instance, if you were using f/1.4 lenses on the a7 III,
and were shooting around ISO 6400,
then dropping down to the f/1.8 would bump your ISO up to 10,000
to get a similar exposure and that could definitely add
a significant amount more noise to your image.
And similarly, moving up to the f/1.2
would give you a third of a stop reduction in ISO,
which could produce slightly cleaner images.
But these three lenses don't seem to transmit equally either.
When testing them at equal aperture,
and ISO and consistent lighting, it would appear that
the Sigma f/1.2 is a tad darker than the other two,
and that the Sigma f/1.4 is the brightest.
The difference between the f/1.4 and the f/1.2 was almost a third
of a stop better transmission on the f/1.4, which in some ways
defeats the entire advantage of having the f/1.2.
The Sigma f/1.2 also seems to be a bit more
punched in despite equalizing the position.
At first, I attributed this to focus breathing, but the f/1.2
doesn't breathe as badly as the f/1.4,
and yet it gives a look more like a 37 or 38mm lens,
making it somewhat redundant
to that terrific 40mm lens that I mentioned earlier.
As I was saying though, there's definitely an improvement when
it comes to focus breathing on the f/1.2 over the f/1.4,
but the f/1.8 is the best here
with pretty much no breathing at all.
Okay, now let's talk about autofocus.
As I was saying before, the Sigma 35mm f/1.4
recently got a firmware upgrade
to improve its autofocus performance.
I did a before and after test of the new firmware
and overall, the improvement is noticeable.
It's more impactful in some areas than others,
but I do find the EyeAF to be
a bit more sticky and reliable now,
and the continuous autofocus for video is smoother.
In the older firmware, I always felt like the focus
happened in stages, there'd be, like, a major movement,
and then some more subtle movements,
and that doesn't exactly look that great in video.
Well, since the firmware update, it appears to have
smoothed out some of those movements now
and that transition is a bit more in line with other lenses
in terms of setting the AF speed in the camera.
Previously, it felt like the Sigmas only had
two speeds: really fast and really slow,
and that normal, medium speed, which is what I would
usually use on a Sony lens just didn't really seem
to translate well to the Sigma lenses.
Well, I do find that since the firmware upgrade,
there is a bit more of that medium speed on the Sigmas now,
still not quite as smooth or as reliable
as the Sony f/1.8 lens though,
which is damned near perfect right out of the box.
I first tested this lens at Kando and I was blown away.
And then, I did a two-hour talking head
continuous AF face tracking test,
and it never lost focus once, no matter how I turned or
moved my body, and I think a lot of this has to do with the fact
that the Sony lens is using a different
internal drive mechanism. It's using a linear drive motor,
which focuses smoothly forward and backwards
inside the lens, instead of a rotational focus
that you'd find in some of the competition,
like some of the Sigma lenses,
and overall this creates a faster,
smoother and definitely quieter autofocus, overall.
The Sigma f/1.2, on the other hand,
feels like a bit of step backward.
Its Video AF is clunky again, like the f/1.4 used to be,
and it makes a lot more noise.
I pointed the Deity D3 Pro at each of the lenses
as I did an EyeAF tracking in photo mode
and the only lens that was audible
from where I was standing was the f/1.2
[slight rattling]
[scuffling]
The f/1.4 does make some noise
but you only hear it if you put your ear
right up to it and the f/1.8 was absolutely silent,
but despite the differences in their method or volume
of their autofocus, all three of these lenses
feel pretty much instant when it comes to photo focusing,
and I can't see you having an issue with any of them.
But if perfectly smooth video autofocus transitions are
important to you, then the only real option is the Sony f/1.8.
Face detection in video was a bit more even
than I expected it to be.
I thought the Sigmas would lag
behind pretty badly, but they did quite well.
It would appear that they can handle the smaller
movements without noticeable issue.
It's just the large focus movements
that suffer from the choppiness.
The Sony f/1.8 was a bit more responsive at times,
but I think all three are usable for this application.
Alright, so now comes the important question.
Which lens am I keeping, and why?
Well first off, let's eliminate the f/1.2.
I don't love this lens. The only thing that I can say
about it is that it fixes the Distagon.
It offers all of the same features as the Distagon,
like the Aperture ring and the function button,
but without any of the decentring issues,
it has an overall sharper image
and a better build quality,
and it's a $100 less at 1,500 bucks.
So, it does that well. It's definitely sharp
and that sharpness carries out all the way to the edge.
It just wasn't as impressive as the 40mm.
It's not as sharp, doesn't transmit any more light,
and is damned near the same focal length anyway.
And since the 40mm is $100 cheaper than the 35mm f/1.2,
if you're in the market for an optically stunning
monster lens, I would get the 40mm,
because in the 35mm department, we have better options.
The Sigma 35mm f/1.4, which is now discounted
from $900 down to $700, and the Sony f/1.8, which is $750.
Because the Sigma f/1.4 is now $50 cheaper than the Sony,
it's probably still the best compromise lens
and I can still definitely recommend it.
It offers slightly better image quality than the Sony,
2/3 of a stop more light and it keeps up
in the photo department. But, when I think
about what you're getting in return from
the Sony for giving up
that extra light and sharpness,
you get weather sealing, which, along with
its compact size makes this a more versatile lens,
and you pretty much eliminate the focus breathing.
And I'm okay with giving up that 2/3 of a stop because
I find that I often shoot around f/1.8 or f/2 anyway,
and I rarely have my ISO up high enough that a larger aperture
would make that profound of a difference on noise.
Plus, you get a longer and smoother focus throw
for manual focusing on the Sony,
and a shorter close focusing distance.
And, you get a focus motor that works wonderfully
for autofocus transitions and video.
And isn't that a big part of the appeal of using a Sony camera?
So for me, I'm willing to spend the extra $50
and go with the Sony f/1.8,
my new favourite 35mm lens for E-mount.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful or at least entertaining.
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Alright... I'm done!