The background just melts into creaminess and I really like what Sigma is doing with the out of focus areas of the images. When you can get close enough to your subject, shooting at wide apertures allows a good amount of shallow depth of field. The bokeh rendered by the Sigma 16mm F1.4 lens is fantastic. Notably, Olympus and Panasonic prime lenses perform considerably better wide open and rarely require stopping down. At best, the sharpness is close to what the usual kit lenses from Olympus and Panasonic can do.
Under better light, it’s clear that even wide open, the Sigma 16mm does produce decently sharp images, but nothing to write home about. Since there was a chance that the image stabilization was not optimized for the Sigma lens (after all, it is a third party lens), I conducted a more thorough test on sharpness at different aperture values in a daylight situation.į1.4 (left), F1.8 (center), F2.8 (right) Bokeh Comparison Bear in mind that the F1.4 image was shot at 1/5sec shutter speed, while the F2.8 image was taken at 1 second shutter speed, both hand-held. As shown in the center crop of a building image above, the F2.8 crop displays significantly more detail, contrast and higher clarity than F1.4. I then decided to do a side by side comparison by stopping down the images to F2.8 to see the difference. They were not unusably soft, just not as sharp as I was expecting. With a few fast prime lenses, there really is no excuse why Micro Four Thirds shooters can’t shoot in the dark.Īs I inspected the images from this short session at night, I found the wide open images to be uncomfortably soft. This is the largest benefit of shooting with Micro Four Thirds: I can get away with perfectly sharp images at 16mm with a 1 sec shutter speed at ISO200.
It was a joy to have a F1.4 lens, coupled with the capable Olympus 5-Axis Image Stabilization – I could get away with hand-held shots at ISO200 most of the time. Autofocus (when used on the E-M1 Mark II) was snappy and reliable, I found no issues locking focus even in extremely dark situations. The Sigma 16mm F1.4 performed favorably well under dim street lights. After all, a F1.4 lens allows more flexibility in low light conditions.į1.4 (left) vs F2.8 (right), crop from previous image What should I do with a wide angle lens with a F1.4 aperture? Take it for a stroll at night on the streets of Kuala Lumpur and shoot the dimly lit scenes of the urban landscape. Being wider than 35mm allowed me to use the Sigma 16mm lens as a general wide angle lens in my test shooting sessions. The 32mm equivalent focal length is an odd one to work with – it’s in the middle of the more traditional 28mm and 35mm focal lengths.
#BEST BOKEH LENS SIGMA FULL#
Also worth noting that the Sigma 16mm is sealed from water splash and dust.įor a full specification list, check out the official product page here. The lens also features a non-rotating front element which is good news for filter users, and a respectable minimum focusing distance of 25cm (with magnification of 0.1x). The Sigma 16mm F1.4 lens construction consists of 16 elements in 13 groups, including 3 FLD, 2 SLD and 2 aspherical elements. Sigma has been highly praised for their newer line of lenses available to both DSLR and mirrorless system camps and built a reputation for delivering high performing optics at reasonable price points. The Sigma 16mm lens has a filter size of 67mm and weighs about 405g.
#BEST BOKEH LENS SIGMA PRO#
That explains why it is slightly larger and heavier than the Olympus 17mm F1.2 PRO lens. The Sigma 16mm F1.4 lens was originally designed to fit the Sony APS-C E-Mount but has since been adapted to a Micro Four Thirds mount. You may view the images from this article in higher resolution on an online Google Photo album here. All images were shot in RAW and post-processed using Capture One Pro, with minor adjustments. The Sigma 16mm F1.4 was used on the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II for all the sample images shown in this article. This is an independent review and my approach is always based on user experience and may be subjective. Some quick disclaimers neither Ming Thein nor I are associated with Sigma Malaysia. So is this really a budget-friendly option to the 17mm F1.2 PRO from Olympus, and does the Sigma lens perform well enough under the standard Robin Wong lens torture tests? A dear friend, Amir, who recently obtained a Sigma 16mm was kind enough to loan it to me for review purposes. After my review of the Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm F1.2 PRO, a few people suggested a lower priced yet seemingly competent alternative – the Sigma 16mm F1.4 DC DN Contemporary lens.
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