Sigma 105mm f1.4 Art - A review
The Sigma 105mm F1.4 DG Art
The 50mm prime has continually spoiled me. The focal length works wonderfully for portrait and lifestyle commissions alike and you can shoot all day without taking it off. It’s so predictably good, so bloody easy in fact, that I began to feel stifled by it. I bought the Canon 85mm 1.4L for a differential, but turns out it wasn’t different enough - too close in focal length and feel, and despite doing nothing wrong it now has a happy new owner in Bournemouth.
I then began obsessively consuming YouTube reviews on this Sigma 105mm 1.4 DG Art. I never used Sigma lenses for all the typical reasons: autofocus issues, quality control, image feel, snobbery. But review after review had nothing bad to say about it. Well, there was one consistently bad thing…
First Impressions
The whopping 105mm front element of the Sigma 105mm f1.4 DG Art
… and that is, look at the size of the damn thing. 1.6kg in the hand - so heavy Sigma sell it with a tripod collar - and the 105mm front element is the biggest I’ve seen outside of the Hubble Telescope. This is a lens of extremes; weighing a ton, letting in incredible amounts of light, weather sealed and built for the apocalypse.
Test with Shireen
I bought a copy of this lens from MPB Photographic, and for its first ever outing I did a shoot with actress and dancer Shireen Ashton. I wanted to give it a colourful and expressive scene to render, and at its widest aperture to give the Sigma the hardest time. The 50mm f1.2 RF is probably the first prime lens I’ve used that stays technically excellent at its widest apertures, so I was interested to see how close the Sigma 105mm could get.
Left, the Sigma 105mm f1.4 DG Art; right the Canon 50mm f1.4L RF.
To me, this comes down entirely to preference. I prefer the 50mm perspective simply because I like the breathing room, but in terms of comparing the Sigma with my go-to lens, they were both fabulously sharp wide open and focused quickly on the Canon R5. I would say that the 50 produced slightly more vibrant colours. But maybe I’m just still using my 50mm brain, and instead of a scene, I should be using the 105 as intended - for portraits.
Test with Lily
Objective here was simple: one dark look, one bright look, both headshots, on the widest aperture.
A moody windswept portrait of Lily on the Sigma 105mm f1.4 AG Art.
The eyes here are tack sharp, while the hair across the forehead along with the earrings are off into bokeh-land. The 105mm perspective still feels very natural and flattering where the 85mm felt just a little too wide, and a 135mm would be in my opinion just a bit too compressed.
A clean bright look on the Sigma 105mm f1.4 DG Art.
I think maybe 105mm is the perfect perspective for portraiture and this Sigma is possibly the perfect lens to do it on. The resolution at f1.4 is so impressive here that I understand one reviewer’s comment that it seemed ‘medium format ish’.
Conclusion: hats off to the Youtubers
Buy this lens.
‘Bokeh Monster’, ‘King of the Portrait Lenses’ ‘The Dreamiest Lens I’ve Ever Used!!’. I’ve got to hand it to the YouTubers, they’re right. It’s a monster in every sense of the term: size, weight, and certainly performance. But in one respect it’s very reasonable indeed, and that’s price. Brand new it’s £1400, and this second-hand copy was £870. That is incredibly good value.
It won’t be replacing my trusty and relatively lightweight 70-200 for events work or headshot sessions. I’m treating this as specialist lens I can use on portrait and lifestyle commissions where special looking pictures are the point. It won’t be joining the 85 in Bournemouth anytime soon.