This is the brand new 14 millimeter f/1.4 DG DN Art lens from Sigma and this lens was designed
for astrophotographers specifically and it shows! This is just a remarkable lens for shooting the
night sky. I've been testing it the past couple weeks and I have plenty to talk about and show
you including a direct Milky Way shootout between this new lens and the older Milky Way champ the
Sigma 14 millimeter f/1.8 DG HSM Art. Since this video is a review let me start with just
a couple quick disclosures. Sigma America has lent me this new lens the 14 millimeter f/1.4
ahead of its release and they also supplied me with a Sigma fp-L mirrorless full-frame camera
here and other accessories like this EVF needed to complete my testing of the lens. I'll be sending
all of this kit back to Sigma shortly after this review is posted. As usual, no money exchanged
hands and Sigma has no say in what I share in this review. I rented the older Sigma 14 millimeter,
the f/1.8 from lensrentals.com so that I could make some direct comparisons in this video and
this video does have a sponsor which is brilliant.org and I'll let you know more
about brilliant at the end. So let me start with my biggest takeaways from using this lens and then
we'll jump into the fine details I think overall this is the best Ultra wide angle lens I've ever
tried for astrophotography optically it's just a masterpiece as you're going to see from the
tests it greatly improves on the star shape in the corners over sigma's older 14 millimeter art
lens while being a full two-thirds stops brighter wide open and then in terms of physical design I
am again very impressed. I don't have any other Ultra wide angle lenses that include this what
Sigma calls a tripod socket I'd call it a lens collar with a foot but no matter what you call
this feature it really AIDS in rotation of course and all as well as composition stability of the
system and it's especially welcome if you plan to mount the lens on a star tracker as I have here
there are two potential negatives with this lens and I'll explore both but in short they're the
size and weight of the lens compared to some of the competition in the mirrorless arena and you
know it's just quite heavy and bulky and then number two it's a focus by wire system meaning
even when you're focusing manually it relies on electronic communication with the camera
body and that's to be expected with any of these new uh modern mirrorless lenses that
but focus by wire does have some downsides and I'll talk a little bit about that so that's my
review in a nutshell but now let's get into the actual details and let's start with comparing it
physically to its predecessor the Sigma 14 millimeter F 1.8 DG HSM art I used both of
these lenses with L Mount and I was using this Sigma fp-L full-frame camera the new lens is a
full frame lens of course and it's available on launch for L Mount which is used by Sigma
Leica and Panasonic mirrorless cameras and e-mount which is used by Sony mirrorless cameras
since this is designed for mirrorless it has a very short focal flange distance in the back and
so there isn't going to be a way to mount this lens to other types of cameras like Canon RF or
Nikon Z kind of cameras and I have no idea if Sigma is eventually going to release this lens
for those camera systems but I wouldn't hold my breath on that this is in contrast to the
older Sigma 14 millimeter which was available or is available natively for Canon EF Nikon F
Sigma sa Sony e and l mounts and because it was originally designed for dslrs you can take one of
those DSLR versions and adapt it to many different camera bodies because it has a more generous focal
flange distance allowing for many different kinds of adapters to be used including ones officially
designed by Sigma which I personally use and are excellent the new Sigma 14 millimeter weighs 1276
grams with caps on while the older Sigma 14 F 1.8 comes in at 12 38 grams with caps on but if we
take off the new lens collar and foot on the 1.4 it then weighs 1184 grams so just a tad lighter
than the old version but in any case these are both very heavy lenses if we compare to a direct
competitor for Sony e-mount which would be the Sony 14 millimeter F 1.8 GM that weighs just 460
grams so if you're the type of astrophotographer who does a lot of backpacking to Exotic locations
you know definitely keep this in mind this is by no means a lightweight lens and it's also
not particularly easy to pack with this big foot on it that adds a bit of bulkiness to the lens
but other than that it's the same basic Dimensions as the predecessor now for me the trade-off of the
lens getting bulkier and heavier is well worth it considering how useful I find a rotating lens
collar it does a couple things that I love one since this is a heavy lens it puts the balance
point closer to the right place where we want it if we Mount the lens and Camera normally
it's going to be way too front heavy well if we mount it here with the lens collar the balance
is much better and then secondly this allows for full 360 degree rotation of the camera and lens
when attached directly to my declination bracket here on my star Adventurer this is super useful
when shooting something like the Milky Way where I want the foreground in it as well because I can
very quickly level The Horizon get my foreground composed exactly how I want it take my foreground
picture with the tracking off on this star tracker then turn the tracking on and get my tracked Milky
Way shot and they'll match up perfectly without this feature you typically have to use a ball
head or other compromises that push the center of gravity away and this is much easier to use
along the lens Barrel we have some new additions uh that we saw on the other mirrorless art lenses
like the option to change Iris with a ring the manual focus lock switch and the lip up here
so that the Dew heater doesn't accidentally slip into frame which is again a really nice and much
appreciated addition like with the previous 14 millimeter there is a place to put some sheet
type gel filters in the rear here but something new on this lens is they now have a place to
store your cut down sheet filters in the lens cap which I thought was pretty cool uh little thing to
add I didn't have any custom cut sheet filters to test this all out with but it's still pretty neat
last thing here to talk about is the physical design of the focus system traditionally with
manual focus the focus ring is mechanically actually coupled to a group of lenses inside
the lens and they moves them back and forth so there doesn't have to be any kind of electronic
communication to focus the lens it's done actually manually with these new lenses
designed specifically for mirrorless cameras that are focused by wire that's not the case anymore
these kinds of lenses need to get power from the camera body and be able to communicate with the
camera to focus the lens at all even when you're focusing manually because focus by wire means the
focus ring does not have any actual hard stops in here I can just keep turning it because it's not
mechanical it's electronic when you move it around it's just a little wire sending information to
the camera about the speed and the distance that you're moving this ring and then the camera sends
information back to the lens for how to move those lens elements to focus uh manually so it
means unless someone comes up with a really pretty crazy very thin smart adapter we're never going to
be able to adapt these kinds of focus by wire lenses to astronomy cameras now one cool thing
about sigma's implementation of this focus by wire system is they've put in a manual focus lock and
so you switch that lock on and then you don't have to worry about bumping your lens out of focus when
you for instance you put the Dew heater strap on because you're literally locked the focus position
electronically and this ring isn't going to do anything it's going to stay focused until you
unlock it alright let's now move on to the optical test which I'll show on the computer and these
were done of course on the same night under a dark night sky I'm going to cover vignetting Corner
Performance Center Performance and uh just sort of overall impressions and these images you're about
to see were captured with this setup right here which is the sky Watcher star Adventurer 2i star
tracker it's on an i footage carbon fiber tripod the camera is a Sigma fp-L which is a full frame
camera with 3.8 Micron pixels I did use the EVF to help aid in focusing and I captured these images
in the White Mountains of New Hampshire so it's fairly dark maybe Portal 3 but it wasn't a perfect
night I did get some Haze and maybe low clouds and maybe some light pollution from a nearby town
but we take what we can get out here on the East Coast it was my one completely clear smoke-free
night during the new moon period while I had this lens so I'm happy to be able to capitalize on that
okay let's start with vignetting which I could describe briefly as how much light fall off there
is from the center of the frame to the corners you could also call it shadowing of the corners and
this is actually very good for a 14 millimeter lens F 1.4 I was pretty impressed by how little
vignetting there was there is obvious vignetting but it could be much worse just based on other
results I've had with fast wide angle lenses so comparing that there's no comparison here to the
DG HSM version of the lens because it doesn't go down to F 1.4 but if we go ahead to 1.8 and now
we're just looking at one half of each frame uh you can see they're pretty comparable I I
don't see a huge difference in the amount of vignetting and I wouldn't say that there was
a huge difference between 1.4 and 1.8 in terms of the vignetting on the DN version of the lens
now at 2 at f2 uh I think that the DN version of the lens is actually looking better it's it's
brighter all the way to the corner than the HSM version just slightly not not a huge Improvement
in vignetting but I mean it's it's definitely noticeable and and I would also say at this level
F2 I'd be happy with either of these it's not it's very mild effect it's not it's not a huge deal
at F 2.8 the HSM version catches up to the DN version and again it's both uh they're both
looking quite good here and then at F4 I would call both of these fields flat they don't uh
they're not showing really any vignetting or hardly any at F4 okay and now we're on
to Center crops these are done at 300 Zoom again we're starting at F 1.4 where only the
DN version of the lens uh can go and this looks pretty good this is a field right in the center
of the Milky Way in Sagittarius this is the Sagittarius star Cloud right there and this
is the Lagoon and Trifid nebula down here just to give you some context for what you're seeing
now we're at F 1.8 and I want to make a quick note here about the difference in the contrast of the
dark nebula these were done at slightly different times because I had to change out the lens and all
of that and the Milky Way did rise Higher by the time I got to this lens it was probably you know
half an hour later so any difference that you're seeing in color is probably just because the Milky
Way core was higher in the sky so really what we're comparing here is just a critical sharpness
and we can zoom in a little bit to try to judge that and again this is at F 1.8 and if I just
look at the star Cloud here or just sort of the stars in general they do look a little bit
sharper in the new DN version versus the HSM version okay and then here's F2 and as you'd
expect as you stop down the lens uh they both get sharper but I think that the I would say that the
HSM version makes a bigger stride between F 1.8 and F2 while the DN version of course is already
making a pretty big stride from F 1.4 to F 1.8 so at F 1.8 it's already as sharp as this lens
is going to be at maybe F 2.8 but then at F 2.8 this one has sort of leveled off and how sharp
it can get so now they're a lot more equalized so this is all pretty interesting because if you're
someone who's concerned with the sharpness of your Ultra wide angle lens you can sort
of think well if I'm planning to stop them down to F 2.8 anyways it might not be worth getting
this new lens but if you're the standard Milky Way shooter who likes to shoot very fast then
this new lens is definitely definitely going to be worth it because you could shoot at F 1.8 but
get the sharpness results of this older lens at F 2.8 so it's it's definitely considering they're
also the same price as sixteen hundred dollars uh it's definitely going to be something to consider
okay and then at F4 they're again pretty equal and again the differences in color here are just
uh because of the altitude of the Milky Way core at that time of night okay and then for the corner
comparison this is where I think it gets the most interesting because there's the biggest
difference between these two lenses I zoomed into 500 because I really wanted to make it clear even
if you're watching this on your phone or something on YouTube uh the difference here between the
corners on the new DN mirrorless lens versus the older HSM lens designed for dslrs this may look
uh soft and and a little bit distorted compared to what we just saw but for a 14 millimeter lens at F
1.4 this is an amazing performance I I you'll see here in a second what I'm talking about
um there is just a little bit of distortion you know away from Center where the stars are a little
bit elongated but it's fairly sharp we're seeing a lot of stars meaning it's it's sharp we're seeing
a lot of small Stars right at F 1.4 now if we go to F 1.8 and then this comparison Lens comes in
what I hope you can see here is we're seeing many more small stars in the background while in this
one it's so blurry we're not seeing a lot of those faint background Stars the other thing
that should be very evident is on Bright Stars over here with the new DN lens we're just seeing
a little bit of elongation in the corners in the extreme corners of a full frame sensor right well
with this one we're seeing a lot of astigmatism that's what gives it this sort of bird-like
shape here right where these little wings come out of the star and this is what I find pretty
ugly in wide-angle lenses generally and the old HSM lens this was one of its main faults I would
say technical faults is it had this astigmatism in the corners of the lens well this one doesn't have
it at all it just has your standard distortion just a little bit of elongation which this one has
too right these stars are a little bit elongated this way then they also have this astigmatism
Distortion going this way this is at F 1.8 here is it F2 you can see this lens sharpens up a little
bit you're seeing more background stars but it still has pretty heavy astigmatism this lens still
has the Distortion and the main thing that I would say changed between F 1.8 and F2 is the vignetting
really went away that's why this field got so much brighter but the Distortion is still there
okay and then F 2.8 it the Distortion is starting to go away and the Distortion and astigmatism
is starting to go away in the HSM lens so it's starting to catch up just like what we saw with
the other tests they really start equalizing around F 2.8 and then an F4 this lens I think
still shows a little bit of weirdness with the star shape this lens the new DN lens gets almost
perfect I mean if you're really pixel peeping you can see a little bit of distortion still but this
is a pretty amazing for the extreme corner at 14 millimeters at F4 anyways my overall impression of
this new lens is like I said at the beginning the most impressive lens technically I have ever shot
with now that doesn't mean that it's going to be perfect for everyone you know some people may want
something a lot lighter weight that they could go backpacking with or travel with more easily but if
you want just sort of the ultimate 14 millimeter lens in terms of how it renders star field so
there's nothing holding you back in terms of you know the optical Perfection of the lens I would
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