Review: SIGMA 20mm F1.4 | A by Manan Photography

INTRODUCTION

The announcement of Sigma 20mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens came in as big leap forward to an already excellent line up of ART lenses.

The Widest of any lens at a very large aperture of 1.4 and finally got my hands on it to try the beast.

Sigma 20mm f/1.4 is a superb lens. Optically it is the best 20mm SLR lens.

BUILT QUALITY

The build quality of the lens is as good as any other Art series lens. It feels like solid piece of  Art.

Being a 1.4 aperture lens at 20mm it has a big Bulbous element in the front with inbuilt hood which keep the lens safe from unwanted knock

Sigma’s Art lenses have an Classy look with good quality of Rubber very well placed on the lens and big focus ring which moves smoothly for manual focus.

IMAGE QUALITY

Having used the other ART series lenses, this also perform fairly well, all i did was test this lens at aperture below f/2.0 and it is really sharp even at f/1.4 this lens was much better then many other lenses at low aperture.

Contrast is very crispy and excellent color rendition.

This lens looses sharpness at the corner wide open, but close down a few stops and its razor sharp

There is some distortion in the corner but that is expected with any lens this wide, but nothing too distracting and can be easily corrected with software.

FOCUS

Sigma 20mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens focus pretty fast and is 95 percent spot on, Hyper Sonic Motors are nearly silent and moves very smoothly.

Manual focus over ride works very nicely thank to big and nicely placed focus ring.

USAGE & PURPOSE

I feel like the 20mm F1.4 would be great for close up environmental portraits. The shot keeps the subject large in the frame, as well as gives a sense of place without taking too much focus off of the subject.

Wide open with new modern camera which performs fairly well at High ISO, this is one of best solution for Nigh Life photography, you can keep you flash at home and you wont be disappointed with results on it.

Another perfect use of this lens Astro Photography, one can get those great shots of Galaxies and Milky way at low ISO and get very clean night sky shots.

Being Optically Very Sharp and Internal silent focus (HSM) this lens also great for Video Productions.

Landscape photography is real fun on this, the only thing which didn’t work right, you can’t use regular screw-on filters, one need to buy some sort of adaptor to use filters like ND or Polarizers which are very important for landscape photographer

SUMMARY

Sigma 20mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens is excellent over all lens and the best wide angle lens made for general purpose photography and pure heaven

Good Built quality, widest large aperture lens, fast and accurate autofocus and being very sharp, this Lens fit in the needs of many different genre of photography and is truly a feather on the cap for Sigma.

I would definitely recommend this lens to anyone who are looking at investing on a real game changer and I am sure it wont disappoint you in anyways.

About Manan Upadhyay:

Born in Ranikhet, a small picture perfect hill station.  Living amidst the nature and having travelled extensively in the Himalayan region, brought in an urge of capturing the breathtaking beauty of the hills.  Being raised in an hotelier family, succeeding in the same career path stood conventional. He turned his passion of photography into a career and has worked with some of the leading brands in the field of interiors, food and commercial photography.