Sigma 321954 85 mm F1.4 DG HSM Art Canon Mount Lens - Black

Product Information

To decide between the two you should decide whether the higher weight and higher price are worth the difference in bokeh rendering.

The Sigma had less lens flare (which could be a good or bad thing depending on your artistic tastes) The 85mm F1.4 DG DN | Art weighs 630g/ 22.2oz., with a filter size of 77mm and a body length of 94.1mm/ 3.7in.*. Designed exclusively for mirrorless cameras, it has a “large lens diameter and superb optical performance” and “a lightweight and compact body,” a combination which has long been difficult to achieve. Overall, the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art is excellent for professional photographers specializing in both indoor and outdoor portrait photography. Sigma falls behind when you consider the size and weight of the lens. It delivers exceptional image quality, ultrasonic focus, and fantastic performance at f/1.4.

The Sony 85mm f/1.4 GM might be the most obvious alternative. It is significantly heavier than the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art and quite a bit more expensive. The focus ring is about 3/4 inch wide, using a rubber texture with lines running parallel to the lens body. The focus ring turns easily through its range, and an increase in resistance alerts you that you have reached the end of the focusing range. You can still keep turning the ring, however. The lens will focus a bit past infinity. Attached filters will also stay put during focusing, making polarizers that much easier to work with. The AF motor system employs a stepping motor which is optimized for both phase detection AF and contrast AF. Not only does this provide a smooth shooting experience only possible with a mirrorless camera, such as face/eye detection AF, but it has also made the lens body itself much smaller, as the focus lens has been made small to better suit a stepping motor. Furthermore, by making the most of the in-camera aberration correction functionalities, SIGMA was able to concentrate on the correction of aberration that could be handled by the optical system alone, which further contributed to making the lens smaller in size.

Serious portrait photographers need this focal length in their tool kit because it is just a portrait essential. It definitely isn’t a recreational lens to have on hand at all times, as it is highly specified and catered to perform in the realm of portraiture.At 89 x 105mm and 950g, it’s certainly not a compact, lightweight lens, but it’s still significantly smaller than the Sigma competitor, which measures 95x126mm and weighs in at 1,130g. The Canon lens also has a more modest filter attachment thread of 77mm, compared with the Sigma lens’s 86mm. As you’d expect, the ‘slower’ Tamron 85mm f/1.8 is somewhat smaller and lighter, at 85x91mm and 700g, with a 67mm filter thread. I really want to have a good copy of this lens in my photography equipments, so I have been trying 3 copies. To protect the glass, I have been using a B+W 86mm XS-Pro Clear MRC-Nano 007 filter for two years. The filter has had no effect on the image quality, so I would highly recommend it. The stand-out disadvantage of this lens is the weight. The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art weighs 1.13 kg and is 95 x 126mm in size. This compares to the Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM which is only 950 g and 89 x 105mm in size. This difference can be hard to get used to, but once you see how the lens performs, you’ll agree it’s completely worth it. The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art gives minimal chromatic aberration at f/1.4 and shows minimal (invisible to the naked eye) barrel distortion. In my experience, the lens reaches its ultimate sharpness between f/2 and f/5.6.

But I haven’t yet pulled the trigger on the Sigma or any modern 85/90. Frankly, every single 85/90mm that I see falls down in one or more ways for my usage scenarios. I don’t actually need the f/1.4 max aperture, I’d be plenty satisfied with a lighter, smaller 85mm f/1.8-f/2 with outstanding performance, which should in most ways actually be easier for designers to achieve with an f/2 max aperture than at f/1.4 (let alone the rumored f/1.2 of a new Sony). There are several alternatives to the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art. As a Nikon user, the following lens recommendations haven’t worked for me. But they could be helpful for other photographers. Wide open, the center and midframe already look very good to excellent. The corners are a little bit softer wide open, but still very usable. At f/2 contrast is a bit higher and the corners look very good now. The corners improve a bit further at f/2.8. Peak performance is reached at f/4-5.6. When stopping down further diffraction becomes visible.If you buy a product through one of our referral links we will earn a commission (without costing you anything). Mounted on the full-frame Canon 1Ds Mark III, corner softness is much more prominent; wide open at ƒ/1.4, the lens still shows 2 blur units of sharpness in the center, but the corners soften to 3-4 blur units. This performance improves as the lens is stopped down; mostly in terms of the center of the frame, but the corners do become somewhat sharper. The sharpest full-frame results are achieved at ƒ/5.6, where the center of the frame shows 1 blur unit and the corners just under 1.5 blur units. There's similar performance at ƒ/8, and by ƒ/11, diffraction limiting starts to take away from the sharpness, but similarly to what we noted with sub-frame performance, it's still showing 1.5 blur units across the frame. Fully stopped-down results are just over 2 blur units across the frame. While the Canon 85L wasn’t designed for peak sharpness, it has an almost ethereal fade from sharpness to blur. The “bokeh balls” do have more of an ovular characteristic to them compared to Canon’s circular appearance. Both have a soft transition due to their wide apertures and the difference is negligible. The high resolving power that covers the entire image from the center to the edges ensures sharpness of the area in focus, and coupled with the significant bokeh effect produced by the F-value of 1.4 brings out the users’ subject in an evocative way.