canon 50mm f/1.4 vs sigma 50mm f/1.4 Photo Gallery by Peter Dumont at pbase.com

canon 50mm f/1.4 vs sigma 50mm f/1.4

I had bought a sigma 50mm f/1.4 to see if it would make an upgrade from my canon 50mm f/1.4 lens.

I did this little test with the canon 50mm f/1.4 , the sigma 50mm f/1.4 , a tripod and a bottle of wine.
I photographed the bottle at each of the selected f-stops twice per lens
and show here the best of the canon shots against the best of the sigma's.

The focus point was the letter "B" in "VILLEREMBERT".
First thing that can be noticed is that the sigma lens appears to produce a slightly wider view than the canon.
The shots done with the canon lens were more consistent in their AF accuracy than the sigma lens shots.
In fact all canon shots were dead-on target.
The sigma lens has a colorcast and it seems to produce less contrast than the canon glass.
This was particularly evident when I did some outside portraits with both lenses.

The sigma 50mm lens is a big hunk of glass that feels great on a 5D, and the manual focus ring is very nice indeed,
but as it didn't outperform my canon lens, I have returned the sigma to the shop it came from.
I can heartily recommend this wine though .

canon 1.4 b.JPG	sigma 1.4 b.JPG	canon-sigma 1.4.jpg
canon 1.6 a.JPG	sigma 1.6 a.JPG	canon-sigma 1.6.jpg
canon 1.8 b.JPG	sigma 1.8 a.JPG	canon-sigma 1.8.jpg
canon 2.0 a.JPG	sigma 2.0 a.JPG	canon-sigma 2.0.jpg
canon 2.8 a.JPG	sigma 2.8 b.JPG	canon-sigma 2.8.jpg
canon 5.6 b.JPG	sigma 5.6 b.JPG	canon-sigma 5.6.jpg

post a comment

Keith		03-Dec-2009 20:03
On focus at wide apertures, if you are shooting at 1.4 then the dof will be so narrow that the point of focus will always be difficult to hold if hand held. The slightest movement will rapidly change the focal distance which is critical at this kind of aperture. There will also probably be some glass bounce when using autofocus which won't help the situation. Perhaps the use of manual focus would be better when using ultra wide apertures like 1.4 - and a tripod. The optimum for this lens is f4-f5.6 I think.

Guest		28-Nov-2009 21:01
The question has to be asked is why doesn't Sigma fix the focus adjustment problem? It my be a great lens once the focus adjustment is adjusted but most people won't go to the trouble to send it back, They will take it back. especially if it happens over and over.

Guest		02-Sep-2009 08:10
Its a good test of out of the box lenses, however leaving aside issues of field of view being different which is realy neither hear nor there, the images from the sigma lenses are clearly out of focus. Assuming auto focus was used in this test I'd imagine this would make many of the images from this sigma lens almost unusable. from what I have read sadly this seems a common problem with many sigma lenses made all the more clear by the shallow depth of field created by f1.4. My understanding however is that a well sorted sigma lenses is a true joy and equal and even better than most. Question I am asking is does anyone really want to be sending a brand new lens back to the makers for repair, shame really as this sigma lens looks so much better on the camera and this gives a better impression of professionalism

Guest		14-Apr-2009 17:50
I would tend to agree with the person who mentioned focus adjustments. I've found this to be a problem that is fairly common with Canon lenses as well. Most noticeably, I've had 4 of the vaunted Canon 135mm f/2L lenses and three had back focus issues, two bad enough that I returned them.

Guest		05-Apr-2009 20:40
"your distance is off. The Sigma is further back, taking up less of the frame, hence less pixels reading the same objects." --- Actually neither the Sigma nor the Canon are truly 50mm; The Sigma is rated at 48mm and the Canon at 51.68mm, that accounts for the difference in the FOV.

David Braddon-Mitchell		11-Jan-2009 12:42
Thw wider FOV will be due to the internal focus of the Sigma; If lenses tend to have wider fields of view at closer focussing distances. I'm guessing the FOV will be the same when both are focussed at infinity

Guest		08-Jan-2009 10:52
I guess you need a better bottle of wine to to a reliable test.

adam		01-Dec-2008 18:09
Excellent test, thank youfor your time and sharing the results.

Guest		27-Nov-2008 04:01
I made some tests: SIGMA 50mm 1.4 vs CANON 50MM F1.0, I can tell you there's no visible diference. I guess that in the above images the SIGMA is out of focus, that's the reason it doesn't loog good at f1.4 but exceeds at f5.6.

Guest		13-Oct-2008 14:55
All my SIGMA lenses (4) had to be sent back to SIGMA for focus adjustements. Each time it took less than 2 weeks and the lens was STELLAR after. What you got here is the classical SIGMA slight front focus or back focus. Too bad you didn't sent your lens to SIGMA... you would have had a much better performer than the Canon...

Guest		16-Sep-2008 12:01
Maybe you should have compared: "MIS EN BOUTEILLE AU CHATEAU" ????

Guest		15-Sep-2008 07:39
i think it is probably the same distance, but the sigma is a wider fov. it is debatable whether it would be more appropriate to match frames or keep the distance constant on a comparison between lenses with the same nominal focal length.

Guest		15-Sep-2008 01:50
your distance is off. The Sigma is further back, taking up less of the frame, hence less pixels reading the same objects.

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