- As someone who's relatively new
to the world of Sony cameras,
I Canon't believe how great
the 24 millimeter 1.4 G Master lens is.
So let's focus on what makes this prime
my primary lens of choice.
(audience laughter)
And you're looking at the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4 right now
on the A7S3 and it's at F1.4,
and this has been my main lens
for the past few months worth of videos.
So you can kinda go back and see how it performs.
And in addition to reviewing this lens today,
I also wanted to compare it against
what has been my main lens
for the past two and a half years
and that is the Sigma 24 millimeter 1.4.
The big difference being that this is a Canon mount
and the Sony lens is a Sony mount, because that makes sense.
But with the Sigma MC-11 adapter,
you can use Canon EF mount lenses on Sony's e-mount
And that is e-mazing.
And it actually works pretty well.
With Canon lenses, this adapter will maintain autofocus
in stills photo mode, but not in video modes.
You have to manually focus your Canon lenses.
However, with Sigma lenses,
the adaptor will maintain auto-focus during video modes.
And it's not quite at the same level
as a native lens would be,
especially on something like the A7S3
which has a really, really good autofocusing system,
but it's pretty decent.
I'll show you samples
once we start looking through this lens as well.
I do wanna point out that since this is a lens review,
I wanna make sure to add in as many photo
and video samples as possible.
This main shot here, unless I say otherwise
is the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4.
This shot over here is the Canon RF 50 millimeter 1.8.
So if you see this angle, this is not the Sony lens.
And if I use the Sigma lens
and I'll be sure to put on screen which lens is which,
and obviously, if there's a product shot of the Sony lens,
that shot wasn't taken with the Sony lens.
I sure hope all that makes sense.
So lens see how these two lenses compare and I will start
by just spoiling this entire video.
If you want the best value lens, get the Sigma.
Its retail price is about $850.
If you want the best overall lens, get the Sony
if you have the budget for it.
Its retail price is about $1,400.
So why on earth would you spend almost twice as much money
to get the same focal length and the same aperture
and roughly, the same image quality?
What I can tell you is after using both of them side-by-side
for months now and knowing the Sigma lens really,
really well, because I've used it for years,
the image quality is really, really close between them.
I do think the Sony is a little bit sharper
and that could be because it has a better focusing
motors built into it,
but I don't know that it's worth twice the price.
So if you're going on image quality alone,
you really can't go wrong with the Sigma.
This thing is built really, really well.
I did do an entire review on it.
So if you wanna dive into the details,
you can check out that separate review.
The Sigma does have a filter diameter of 77 millimeters
which was great for me because all of my other lenses,
pretty much are 77 millimeters.
The Sony has a filter diameter of 67 millimeters.
So I didn't have to buy a step-up ring
so that I can use my ND filters that I currently have
with the Sony lens, not a big deal.
So before we do some side-by-side comparisons,
let's talk about the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4.
Like I mentioned, it retails for about $1,400.
Prices change all the time.
So check the links, if you want the most up-to-date pricing.
When you buy the lens,
it comes with a lens hood and it comes with a nice, soft,
pretty rugged carrying case and that's pretty much it.
Now this is by far the most expensive lens I've ever had,
and I'm used to the world of Canon.
And when it comes to Canon's L series lenses,
which are their higher-end lenses, they're very heavy.
They're like bricks.
And the same goes with most of the new RF series lenses.
So what that means is that over the years,
I've come to associate heaviness and weightiness
with quality.
So what surprised me was
when I took the Sony 24 millimeter out of the box,
the first thing that stuck out was how lightweight it felt.
And at first, I was kind of thinking,
oh, this doesn't feel as high quality
as the Canon L series lenses that I'm used to,
or even as high quality and dense
as the Sigma 24 millimeter art series lens.
But I realized I was just looking at it wrong.
And the Sony lens is incredibly well-built.
It seems to be very durable so far.
And the lightweight is a benefit because now you don't have
all that extra weight on your camera.
If you're watching this video,
I'm assuming that you've watched a few other videos
about this lens.
So you probably know that it's a great lens.
And before I just start gushing praise all over it,
I'm going to tell you the things I don't like about it.
'Cause there's only a couple of things,
but it's worth mentioning.
The first is small, but it is something.
Most of my Canon lenses and the Sigma lens
have little windows.
So you can actually see all the information
about your focusing distance and everything.
The Sony lens doesn't have that at all.
And while the image quality of the lens is outstanding,
one thing that I not too crazy about is the focus breathing.
It pulses in and out quite a bit.
And to be fair, the Sigma does that too.
But I think because this lens just cost so much more money,
I was expecting it to be absolutely perfect in every way.
And so when I noticed some focus breathing,
I was a little bit disappointed.
You might be able to see it basically, especially F1.4,
if there's a lot of movement,
the lens will stay focused on me.
You can kind of see,
especially if you look at the background,
it just sort of, kinda like moves and pulses a little bit,
which can be distracting.
So if I move, you're gonna kinda notice
probably some of that focus breathing,
and it's the most noticeable on shots like this,
like a talking head shot where the camera is locked down,
but the subject might be moving.
That's where the focus breathing is most noticeable.
So sometimes if it becomes what I feel is too distracting,
I'll go into final cut pro, I'll add a stabilizer
and I'll click the little tripod mode option.
And that actually does reduce it quite a bit.
So it's a problem that's been easy for me to adapt to,
but it's definitely worth bringing up.
And speaking of adapters,
let's compare the focus breathing of this lens
to the focus breathing of the Sigma.
So this is the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4.
I'm moving my arms around
so we can see some focus breathing.
And this is the Sigma 24 millimeter 1.4 on the A7S3
with that adapter.
So I still have auto-focus.
If I move around, it should be staying totally in focus.
And if I move, you can kinda see
if there's any difference with focus breathing on the Sigma.
And those are pretty much the only things
I don't like about this lens.
Everything else is amazing,
and it is the best lens I've ever used.
So that's the headline of this review overall,
even though I really do really like the Sigma lens
and you can probably see image quality wise,
it's not that much difference,
but while the Sigma is connected to the camera
and I'm holding the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4 very carefully,
'cause it's very expensive,
let me show you a couple of cool things about this lens.
So as I said, in terms of image quality,
there's not a lot of difference between the two of these.
So if you're just looking at image quality
and you're on a budget,
the Sigma, you can't go wrong with it
and whatever autofocus performance you're seeing
from the Sigma right here,
just remember if you get the native Sony e-mount version,
it will probably be a little more improved
than the adapted version that I'm using.
The Sony 24 1.4 has a focus switch, which is very normal.
That's the only switch that's on the Sigma lens.
It also has a custom setting button right here,
which some of Canon's newer lenses like the RF lenses
and even one of their adapters have control rings on them.
So you can assign custom functions to that ring.
This button works kind of the same way.
However, this is one of the things I am liking
about Sony more than Canon, is Sony doesn't really care
what you assign to this button.
You can assign any feature to it.
Canon sort of limits you to features that it thinks
would be most relevant to have on the lens.
Sony doesn't care.
Like you can set this to your audio controls.
You can set this to whatever you wanna do.
I have this set to the rule of thirds grid.
So when I press this,
it puts the rule of thirds display on.
When I press it again, it takes it off.
In addition to that button,
you've got a very nice focus ring right here.
It does have like an infinity focus.
So it will never, it's an infinity ring.
It will never stop turning, but it is also electronic,
which means unlike some of these older,
heavier Canon lenses, where when I turn the focus ring,
you can hear it.
(focus ring grinding)
It's physically turning the elements inside the lens,
which can help you to be much more accurate
in your focusing.
And if you need to go from point A to point B,
you can just immediately get there
and it'll be the same every time.
Electronic focusing isn't as reliable.
However, this focus ring feels really, really nice.
I don't know what the correct term is
for like the throw of focus,
how far you turn it to go from one end to the other.
I'm gonna call it a throw.
It could be the wrong term, long focused throw,
which means that when you are in manual focus mode,
it does seem incredibly responsive
and you have a long way to go
to get from one point to the other.
The Sigma lens is pretty good for this too.
However, it has a shorter distance,
so that can make it tougher to nail your manual focus
because you kinda just have less room to work with
and you have to be really, really precise with it.
Now, beyond that,
there are two things about this lens
that I think do justify its higher price
and show me in a lot of ways that
even though this is not a cinema series lens,
Sony did design it with video people in mind.
And I appreciate that as a video person.
The first is this second ring back here,
which is an aperture ring.
So on the lens itself,
you've got this A right here
and then you've got all your f-stops
and you can just click it out of automatic aperture,
and then you can adjust the aperture manually,
but that's not all because there's another button over here
that says click on or off.
And when the click is on,
that means you can go through each of your f-stops
and there's a physical click where the ring stops.
You can even hear it.
But if I turn click off,
now it's completely smooth.
That's a big deal to me cause it gives more control to you
behind the camera, whether you're doing photos or videos.
Sometimes having clicked aperture is nice
because you can just tell exactly
what stop you're at and you can feel it,
but especially for video,
having a de-clicked aperture ring
helps things to be as precise and smooth as possible.
And to take that even a step further,
I've known people who have spent quite a lot of money
to send lenses into companies that will de-click them.
So they spend a whole bunch of money
specifically to enable clickless aperture,
which this lens just includes right out of the box.
So that's pretty awesome.
And the last feature that I think makes this
an amazing lens, especially for video
and the kinda work I do,
is that the autofocusing system inside of it
not only is great, but it is completely silent.
Now, most of the time when I'm filming my videos,
I have the Rode Video Mic NTG mounted on a boom arm,
just out of frame, away from the camera.
So even with the Sigma lens,
which is on the camera right now,
there's not a lot of focus motor noise being picked up.
However, the Sigma lens is very loud
and every lens I've used makes focusing noise.
It's this little click, click, click sound.
I just kinda got used to it.
If you're somebody who has like a video mic
on top of your camera,
you're probably used to hearing that cliquey focusing sound
and it just sort of is what it is.
I never thought you could get around it
because lenses need to focus.
This however, dead silent.
It doesn't make a sound.
No noise will get picked up in your video.
And if you have it mounted on a camera
with a microphone on top, it doesn't matter.
There's no noise that's going to be picked up.
Let me show you an example of this.
I'm gonna take this microphone
and move it over the Sigma lens so you can hear the focus.
Now, you probably can't hear me as much, but as I move,
you can hear the focusing.
(Sigma lens clicking)
Let's do the same thing with the Sony 24 1.4.
There's no sound at all.
It's dead silent.
Isn't that crazy?
If you're someone like me,
when you get a lens that's really fast, like an F1.4,
you really wanna use it at 1.4.
And that is just the personal style choice.
I know the crazy blurry backgrounds and stuff
aren't for everybody, but I love it.
I love using the lens at F1.4.
So what that means is that I need this lens
to be super sharp because sometimes
you might get a lens that goes to F1.4, 1.8,
but it turns out
those aren't actually its strongest settings.
And then that can be a lens let down
because you need to go to like F4, F5.6
for it to really look its best.
And what I have found is that the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4
looks good across the entire spectrum.
So here's some examples of everything
all the way from F1.4 to F2.8 to F5.6 to F8 and F11.
And to me, it looks really great with all of them,
but of course, the Sigma is really strong too.
So here's some side-by-sides with the Sigma
at those same F-stops.
We've got F1.4, F2.8, F5.6, F8 and F11.
And when I say that this is the best lens I've ever used,
I really do mean it as much as I love the Sigma lens.
When I got the Sony camera,
my original plan was just to adapt this lens.
But knowing that the A7S3
has a reputation for having really good autofocus
and knowing that I was new to the Sony ecosystem,
I thought I probably wouldn't be giving it a fair shot
if I wasn't using an actual native Sony lens
to get the full benefit.
And it has just been astounding.
I know a lot of that credit goes to the camera
for maintaining really good focus
and being able to have both the 24s at use in some videos,
having the Sony mounted on the Sony
and the Sigma mounted on a Canon
is really cool cause it opens up a lot of versatility.
So I still get a ton of use out of this lens
and really like it.
I definitely recommend both of these lenses,
which one is right for you really depends.
If you have the budget, go for the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4,
because it does have slightly better image quality,
in my opinion, in my experience.
But it also has those few extra features,
which are really nice.
The customized function button is awesome.
The manual aperture capability is amazing.
And of course, the dead silent auto-focus,
not super quiet auto-focus, not hard to notice auto-focus,
but completely silent autofocus motors,
but at roughly half the price,
you also can't go wrong with the Sigma lens.
It doesn't have the fancy features, manual aperture,
customized function button or anything like that.
And it does have pretty loud autofocusing noise.
However, that might not be an issue for you.
If you're a still photographer,
focus noise doesn't matter at all.
Or if you're running a set up
kinda like I'm doing here
where your microphone is not mounted on your camera,
it's not gonna pick up the focusing noise anyway.
If you're somebody who uses the lens for video
with a microphone that's mounted on your camera,
that's where that motor noise will be annoying to you.
There'll be anoising.
However, I think that investing in lenses
is one of the best choices you can make
when it comes to camera gear,
because camera bodies do come and go over time.
But lenses can last a really long time.
This Canon 24 millimeter 1.4,
it's like a 15 year old lens
and it still works great with current Canon cameras.
And the same should be said for the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4.
It's a newer ish lens,
but there's no reason it shouldn't still be in service
many, many years from now.
In higher-end lenses like Canon L series
and Sony GM lenses also have the added benefit
of being a bit more weather resistant
and just more durable all around.
Lenses also tend to hold their value pretty well.
So if you wanna sell one down the line,
you're probably not gonna be out too much money.
And if you're thinking of purchasing a lens
like the Sony 24 millimeter 1.4, which is pretty expensive,
I recommend renting it first to see how you really like it.
And then you can decide
if you actually wanna purchase it or not.
This is not sponsored or anything,
but I've used lens rentals.com many times
for cameras and lenses.
And it's been awesome to get
for relatively reasonable price.
You can have seven to 10 days with a lens to try it out,
use it in your workflows, see how it feels
and then you can decide
if it's worth the actual investment or not.
So if you're on the fence
for something that's more expensive,
any kind of camera gear, renting can be a great way to go.
And if you wanna know more about lenses
and lens comparisons, "lens" me focus your attention
on this playlist right here, all about lenses.
(audience laughs & subscribes)