ISSUE 123
6 / NEWS
The widest f/1.4 prime for crop- sensor mirrorless cameras has been revealed by Sigma. The 12mm f/1.4 DC Contemporary lens is designed for stills and video, with a dramatic focal length that’s equivalent to 18mm in full-frame terms. Its fast aperture makes it ideal for landscapes, astrophotography, interiors and creative vlogging. The optical design has three double-sided aspherical and two SLD glass elements for high-resolution results, even wide open. Sagittal coma flare is well controlled, which helps with photographing starry skies. The lens remains highly portable at 225g and under 7cm long, so it pairs perfectly with compact APS-C bodies for travel and outdoor use. The lens offers fast, quiet AF via a stepping motor, with minimal focus breathing and smooth aperture control. It’s dust- and splash-resistant and has a water- and oil-repellent front coating. The 12mm joins the family of compact f/1.4 primes for APS-C cameras that includes 16, 23, 30 and 56mm options. It’s available in Fujifilm X, Sony E and Canon RF mount. sigmauk.com The wide world of APS-C
OPTICAL ICON Return of a legend Sigma steps up with a
The exterior is coated with a
both axial and magnification chromatic aberrations, which are easily noticeable in telephoto lenses. Even wide open, it’s built to deliver finely detailed rendering with high resolution and contrast from the centre to the edges of the frame. Sigma’s Nano Porous and Super Multi-Layer Coatings have been applied to suppress flare and ghosting. There are 11 aperture blades and a minimum focus of 170cm. The lens is equipped with two stabilisation modes: one for general shooting and another for panning shots. In this second mode, the image is stabilised even in vertical or diagonal camera movements, regardless of the horizontal and vertical orientation. The exterior of the lens body is coated with a thermal insulation paint to keep it cool outdoors on sunny days. The mount joints, manual focus
If there’s one type of lens that has achieved near-legendary status, it’s the superfast 200mm prime. The Canon options – which are available in f/2 and almost-mythical f/1.8 versions if you can find one – and Nikon’s f/2 were celebrated for their incredibly shallow depth-of-field and creamy bokeh that’s beloved by portrait shooters. The fast maximum aperture, ideal for indoor action, made them a must-buy for sports shooters, while image quality was incredible when stopped down. But their price points were always prohibitive – and since the switch to mirrorless, there just hasn’t been an equivalent option. Now, innovative Japanese lens maker Sigma has stepped in with a 200mm f/2 just for mirrorless, available initially in Sony E and Leica L-Mount, offering image stabilisation and costing a quite reasonable £2999. There really is nothing else like it on the market. The Sigma 200mm f/2 DG OS Sports has a linear HLA (High- response Linear Actuator) motor for accurate, high-speed AF, and there are 6.5 stops of image stabilisation. It has a dust- and splash-resistant build like the rest of Sigma’s Sports line. It consists of 19 lens elements in 14 groups, including two FLD and two SLD glass elements. This counters superfast 200mm prime for mirrorless cameras
thermal insulation paint to keep it cool and zoom rings, custom switches and exterior joints are all protected from dust and splashes, while the front surface of the lens has a water- and oil- repellent coating. The tripod ring incorporates a 90° click mechanism and the foot is compatible with Arca-Swiss clamps. The 200mm f/2 has AFL buttons in three different locations, plus focus mode, focus limiter, image stabilisation mode and custom mode switches. The L-Mount weighs 1820g, is 201mm long without the included hood and accepts standard 105mm threaded filters.
Hands on with the unique tele
We managed to get hold of the new Sigma 200mm f/2 lens just before this issue of Photography News went to print, so we used it on a motocross shoot – it gave very impressive results. It’s bitingly sharp and full of contrast, producing stunning results with an excellent AF that locked on. We tried it on a Sony A1 and A9 III; in both cases, Sony limits the maximum stills
frame rate on third-party cameras to 15fps, but that’s not really a problem. The lens balances well, is not too large, and the image stabilisation lets you really drop down the shutter speed range. We tried it for shooting both stills and video, where it was a stunner. Look out for a full test with lens charts and lots more use cases soon.
GREAT WHITE HOPE The new Sigma 200mm f/2 is a return to superfast telephoto primes for mirrorless
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