So Sigma recently released their classic 70mm macro,
like this one, for the Sony E-mount,
alongside a whole bunch of other lenses
for the Sony E-mount. They've also released it
for Canon and Nikon, but this time it's an Art Lens.
So today we're gonna do a quick review of this lens,
see how it stacks up against the Canon version,
and also see how it fares against Sony's own 90mm Macro G.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and today I've got three macro lenses for us
to take a look at. But first, I want to give
a quick thank-you to Camera Canada for supplying me
with these lenses so I could make this video,
so make sure you check out their links
in the description below. So I've had a bit of time
to test these lenses already, and I can say, surprisingly,
there is a clear winner in terms of which lens
is actually best, but it's a tough decision
on which lens to buy, and we'll get into that in a minute.
But first, let's start off
with something easy and just talk about
what you get in the box.
So with the Sigma, you get the basic stuff.
You know, same classic white box you get
for all the Art Lenses. Right on the box it advertises
that you get a seven-year warranty,
which is a lot more than what you get
with most manufacturers. Like the Sony, for instance,
is only one year, so that's a consideration to make.
Inside the box, you get all the usual garb.
You get the warranty information, the manual,
and then you also get their bag,
the sort of classic Sigma bag, the soft pouch.
And, you know, it's decent. If you've ever had anything
from Sigma before, this is what you'll expect to get.
It's foam top, it's got like a sort of duffel bag kind
of feel to it, and a decent little zipper.
Stores your lens. Okie-dokie.
The Sony lens is mostly the same,
other than the fact that the box is orange.
Pop it open, and inside you get a little bit better
of a bag. Let's have a look at it here, I'll show you.
So...comes in bubble wrap, and then the bag--
which a lot of the, like G and G Master lenses have,
you know, nice bags with 'em. This one's sort of
a really nice leather drawstring, you know,
high-quality kind of tote that. uh-- whoa!
[sniffing]
Ah, it's got a really strong kinda sawdust smell
on the inside. But it's a nicer bag.
That's the only real differences in terms
of the unboxing. Moving on to the lenses themselves,
they're about a similar weight. The Sigmas are a bit denser.
Because the Sony is a little bit larger, so I expected it
to be heavier but they feel like they're about the same weight.
The construction is great on all three.
Sony has a couple more features that we'll talk about
in a second, but they all feel really solid
and really great. The Sigmas have their classic rubber
focus ring, where the Sony has more
of a gridded metal focus ring. A quick note
on the weather sealing: the Sony doesn't really have
much in the way of weather sealing at all,
where the Sigma for Sony has a little bit better.
There's a bit of a gasket that runs around the outside.
You can--it's a little bit tactile. And then the Canon,
surprisingly, has the best weather sealing of all,
the Sigma for Canon. It seems to have
a rather noticeable hide-lipped gasket that runs
all the way around and is, you know, quite thick.
So if I had to rank them in terms of weather sealing,
I would go Sigma for Canon, Sigma for Sony,
and then the Sony 90mm native.
All three lenses have the same three-way selector
for focusing distance with full, infinity to half a meter,
and then half a meter to their closest
focusing distance. Now, the Sony really starts
to break away from the Sigma here when it comes
to a couple extra features and functions
that were added to it that I really like.
The first is a pretty basic one:
it has a "Lens Function" button on it,
which a lot of the G-class lenses do.
And then the second thing is this great
manual focus clutch that you engage just by sliding
the focus ring up and down, and when it's engaged,
it overrides the automatic focus in the manual
and gives you hard stops on the focus ring,
so you really know where you are in the focusing.
And then to double that down, they've also added
a gauge here, which lets you know not only
the magnification ratio that you're on,
but also the focusing distance.
This is a great feature for a macro lens to have,
plus it's really fun to use.
Also, one of the features that's only included on the Sony
and not on the Sigmas is the ability to engage
the stabiliser, the optical steadyshot,
which is why the lens is the Macro G OSS.
Now, often you'll pay quite a bit more
and it's a sought-after feature to have
image stabilisation, and I think for the fact
that this is a 90mm macro, image stabilisation
is a handy feature to have. Now, I want to talk
a little bit more about that difference in focal length,
the 90mm on the Sony versus the 70mm on the Sigma,
because this is gonna come into play
in determining which lens to actually buy.
And we're gonna explain that a little bit
with some tests on the focusing system,
because there's some things that I really want
to show you, because I can't do it until I actually power
this lens on, but as you can tell with the Sigma,
there is no indicator as to what your magnification
level is, or anything about your focusing on
the outside of the lens. You actually have to engage it,
because there's an extending barrel
that comes out that has all that information on it.
So that extra length coupled with
the shorter focal length is going to make
a difference in terms of your usage situation
for which these lenses are gonna be best suited for.
So just before we jump over into the focusing tests,
I want to give you a quick little note on
why the magnification ratio is important,
for those of you out there that don't shoot
a lot of macro. So, when it comes to macro lenses,
a true macro lens should be able to achieve a 1:1 ratio,
and this is always achieved at the lens's closest
possible focusing distance. So, when you have
the lens at exactly the closest distance you can get
to the subject while still being in focus,
that's your closest-- or your minimum--
focusing distance, and they're usually written
on the lens somewhere.
For instance, this one's right here.
It says 0.28 meters, or 0.92 feet.
Now, that goes by the focal plane mark that
is indicated usually on the top of your camera body.
So, from that mark to the actual plane of focus
that you're taking-- so, like, you know,
the flower petal that you're trying to get in focus--
that distance, when you're at your closest
focusing distance with a macro lens,
that's when you will achieve 1:1 magnification,
and that's kind of, like, your ideal macro distance.
That's why 90mm is probably a little bit better
than 70mm in some usage scenarios,
because you can achieve your 1:1 magnification
while being a little bit further away.
So, think that if you were approaching
some kind of timid creature that you wanted to get
a macro shot of. The further away that you can stay,
the less likely you are to spook them.
So for that usage case, the 90mm allows you
to get 0.28 meters, or 0.92 feet,
where the 70mm is 0.258 meters,
so you have to get just a little bit closer.
But now we're gonna talk about how you have to get
even closer still because of the extending barrel
of the Sigma. So, let's plug this into the camera
and turn it on, and then you can see what I mean.
[low whirring]
So, now that the barrel is extended, you can see
the magnification ratio, the focusing distance in feet
and in meters, like I was saying earlier.
So, the information is still there, and although you can
still set it to 1:1 manually, you don't actually get
to see where you're going until after it extends.
Where on the Sony, it's just all visible there for you
and can just turn it until you find the hard stop
that you want. Now, one thing I noticed right away
about the Sigma was how much noisier it is
than the Sony. As soon as you start focusing with it,
it makes this constant churning sound,
which can obviously be a bit of a problem, again,
in that scenario where if you're out, you know,
wildlife and you don't want to spook something,
it actually makes quite a bit of noise.
[electronic whirring]
[click]
So do you see what I mean now,
about how it's pretty noisy and you can constantly
hear it kind of [mimicking whirring] going in
and out like that? I think you'll see
a significant difference when we put the Sony on,
so let's throw the Sony 90mm on there now,
and I want you to look for two things:
I want you to hear for the difference
in the focusing sound, but also see how much further
away we can have the furthest point--
the farthest sort of object of our camera--
from the subject in order to achieve the same image.
[sparse, almost inaudible clicking]
[click]
So as you saw-- well, I guess heard--
the Sony is near silent. And I really, really enjoy
the AF/MF clutch that they have here.
I like that it's so much faster to get into manual focus
override and I really like the hard stop
on the 1:1 ratio there. So if you want to just do it
manually, you can just lock it in MF, switch it to 1:1,
and then just get a little bit closer
until you find yourself in focus, take the shot,
now you know you're getting that 1:1 ratio.
The Canon version of the Sigma performs mostly
the same way as the Sony version of the Sigma does,
but there are a couple little differences in the quirks
that I should point out. The Canon one,
when you shut it off, it doesn't automatically sort of
retract the barrel, where the Sony one does.
As soon as you turn it off, that goes back inside.
So, you have to turn it on, and then you can pull it in.
But the advantage that the Canon has in this
is that you can always manually override,
regardless of what setting you're on.
But, with the Sony, you have to engage the DMF mode,
or manual focus mode, in order to actually override.
The Canon does have the MF switch,
but you don't need to engage it in order
to actually manually override the lens.
The Canon model did focus a little bit more slowly
and a little bit less reliably than the Sony model,
but that could be for a few reasons.
This is an older Canon, this is a 5D Mark III,
where the Sony is a brand new a7 III,
so I think that it's probably more reflective
on the bodies then it is on the lenses themselves.
But, it does go to show that despite people
having complaints about the Sony versions
just sort of being like longer versions
of the Canon ones, they do actually capitalise
on Sony's very fast autofocus.
All right, now let's take a look at the images
that we captured. We'll open them up in Lightroom
and we'll do a little comparison to see
how the Sigma stacks up image quality-wise compared
to the Sony.
[otherworldly instrumental]
♪
With the Sony, I expected it to be a little bit better,
but I did not expect it to be essentially silent.
And then also, like I was saying,
because the Sigma has an extending barrel
and the Sony does everything internally,
not only is the Sony near-silent,
but the center of balance doesn't change at all,
and you always have sort of the same sort of
familiarity with how long your lens is gonna be,
which is going to affect your ability to be stable.
So, that coupled with the included stabiliser
on the lens, the Lens Function button,
the brilliant manual focus clutch...
the Sony lens is just far and away sort of better-made
than the Sigma. That's not to say that the Sigma is bad.
It's just that it's a different thing.
But all of these benefits definitely come at a cost,
with the Sony being almost twice as much
as the Sigma. So, it's gonna be more of a usage case
where you decide which is gonna be used where,
and whether or not you should spend the money
all the way for the Sony. And I think this can
be decided with basically just sort of two questions:
one, are you gonna be taking a lot of pictures
of creatures that might be alarmed
by you extending a barrel in their face
or making a bunch of noise? If so--and you want to do
that reliably and you like to do it a lot--
the Sony is definitely worth the extra money,
even though it is twice as much.
Also, I think in video, if you're planning on doing
any kind of macro video-- and I know this isn't really
a common thing, but if you wanted to do video
with this lens, I think the ability for it to be silent
while filming is going to be much more beneficial,
because I think this lens will basically just monkey up
any video you were gonna do if you have this thing
focusing at the time. Now, the Sigma,
on the other hand, I think actually does have a place,
even though it sounds like I was just ripping on it.
I still think it's great. The image quality is great,
the build quality is still good. It has a little bit
of weather sealing, it's got a seven-year warranty.
I mean, this lens is great, and coming in
at its price point of $800 CAD is also great.
The only thing that I would say about it
is obviously the limitation on being out in the wild
and making noise, or doing something on a video,
or spooking the creatures.
But if you're in a studio setting,
or if you're doing product photography with macro,
or even if you're just out taking photos of plants
where a little bit of noise and your distances
and that kind of stuff doesn't really matter,
this is a great solution for half the price.
And I would say that you--you know, yeah,
you're gonna lack that little manual focus clutch
and stuff like that, but... it's still a great, great lens.
They're grrrrrreat!
But the Sony is really the only option if you meet one
of those other scenarios where you want to do video
or you want to do creature macro photography, or...
if you just--you know, if the money thing really
isn't an issue and you just want to get the best one,
the Sony is definitely the best one in this category.
Anyway, that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found
this video helpful, or at least entertaining.
And if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up.
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Alright... I'm done.
♪