Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM A Review

Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM A Performance

At maximum aperture, sharpness in the centre of the frame is already excellent, but as you may expect from a fast wide angle lens, performance towards the edges of the frame is only fairly good. Stopping down improves clarity towards the edges, retaining high levels of sharpness in the centre. Peak performance is achieved between f/4 and f/5.6. Here sharpness is outstanding in the centre and excellent towards the edges of the frame.

 

How to read our charts

The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column.

The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple.

For this review, the lens was tested on a Canon EOS 5D MkIII using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are extremely well controlled, staying well below half a pixel width at any aperture. This extremely low level of CA should pose no issues, even in large prints, or harsh crops from the edges of the frame.

 

How to read our charts

Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software.

Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more.

For this review, the lens was tested on a Canon EOS 5D MkIII using Imatest.

As is typical for a lens with a fast f/1.4 maximum aperture, falloff of illumination is quite pronounced. At f/1.4 the corners are 2.83 stops darker than the image centre and visually uniform illumination isn't achieved until the lens is stopped down to f/4 or beyond.

There is only 0.534% barrel distortion, which should pose few issues in normal use. If absolutely straight lines are paramount, then you'll be glad to hear that the distortion pattern is uniform across the frame, which should make applying corrections in image editing software fairly straightforward.

A petal-shaped hood is supplied as standard with the lens, which does a fair job of protecting the front element from extraneous light that may cause unwanted flare and loss of contrast. During testing, there were no issues with flare and contrast holds up well, even when shooting into the light.

Add your message