The Sigma 12/1.4 just arrived. First impressions: Very small and light, plastic but high quality. Super quick AF, low distortion for the width. I'll upload later, time permitting, and lens profile in C1 permitting.
SGinNorcal wrote:
The Sigma 12/1.4 just arrived. First impressions: Very small and light, plastic but high quality. Super quick AF, low distortion for the width. I'll upload later, time permitting, and lens profile in C1 permitting.
Sweet! Can’t wait to see some shots.
Was hoping more people would’ve been playing with it already, but it has been pretty quiet. This has prompted me to say screw it and just order it. Mine should be arriving Thursday from BH.
JohnDizzo15 wrote:
Sweet! Can’t wait to see some shots.
Was hoping more people would’ve been playing with it already, but it has been pretty quiet. This has prompted me to say screw it and just order it. Mine should be arriving Thursday from BH.
Owning the 14mm f/2.8, I probably won’t get this, but it is one of the first third-party lenses for APS-C Fujifilm cameras that has interested me.
Some quick initial shots. The first one is looking at indoor perspective distortion. The second photo is wide open. Third, I was looking to see distortion at the edges, notice a leg egg shaping of grapes at the right side of frame. Fourth, looking at backlighting and glare, I shoulda went for more sun and tested the sun stars, next time. Fifth, a more conventional wide angle.
Overall, pretty promising. AF performance matches the best native Fuji and better than many. The distortions you would expect are there for a 12mm, but not extreme. Its nice that is has a pretty short min focus. I like that in ultra wides. So small and light, it will make a nice pack along ultra wide option.
Arrived late in the afternoon. Agree with everything @SGinNorcal has said about the lens above.
Haven’t had much of a chance to play with it. But this thing is impressively light and compact for the specs. Will be back to report more once I get a chance to actually shoot some.
Just for discussion, my other intended use for the Sigma 12 would be as my doitall wide in a 3-prime travel kit. For my uses, the Viltrox air 25/1.7 and 56/1.7 and this Sigma 12 would be the near ideal trio and I already own the Viltrox's.
But I'd still love to see some astro or at least a decent "detail at infinity center to corner" comparative shot with it at f1.4, 2 and 2.8... (Hint, hint @SGinNorcal )
Jack Flesher wrote:
Just for discussion, my other intended use for the Sigma 12 would be as my doitall wide in a 3-prime travel kit. For my uses, the Viltrox air 25/1.7 and 56/1.7 and this Sigma 12 would be the near ideal trio and I already own the Viltrox's.
My 12 is arriving today. It'll be trio'd with the Fuji 23 2.8 and the Viltrox 56 1.7 on the X-E5. Have a road tip this weekend. Can't wait.
matsu131 wrote:
My 12 is arriving today. It'll be trio'd with the Fuji 23 2.8 and the Viltrox 56 1.7 on the X-E5. Have a road tip this weekend. Can't wait.
And it'll be a very nice trio indeed I think, especially coupled with the tiny X-E5!
Hi Jack,
I just noticed your tag. For the last week, I've been meaning to do exactly this, some basic astro shots. Last night would have been the night with good clarity, however I was too tired for a late night. Now, I'm looking at high clouds that don't look promising to clear out by tonight. Sometime soon hopefully.
Jack Flesher wrote:
And it'll be a very nice trio indeed I think, especially coupled with the tiny X-E5!
I think I've explained my use for the Sigma 12 as a wide option to the 16-55. But after using it an liking it, I realized that I have a tiny trio now, the Sigma and Fuji 23 and 50 f2's. Made me think a bit more about the X-E5. I'm using the tariffs as my excuse to avoid new purchases. I'll see how long that works
darwinphoto wrote:
I've seen a couple of reviews (Christopher Frost, others) and as I recall, sharpness wide open was quite good even in the corners. Bokeh seemed reasonably smooth and it gave rather nice sunstars at f/16.
But you can get the Fuji used for less than 1/2 the Sigma cost.
Let me chime in here with my test results. I think it all depends on your application for this lens and whether you have a wide lens already. I do have the XF 14 for many years but was curious enough to purchase the Sigma 12 to put it through some testing. Let me start with the pictures that I just finished processing a couple of hours ago:
The first picture was taken with the Sigma lens (aperture set to 2.0) and the second one with the XF 14 at 2.8. You be the judge. The best is to copy the images and place them side by side in your favorite image viewer. Note: At 1.4 the Sigma does display some coma in the corners, but at 2.0 coma is much more manageable (not only my observation).
The background was shot in blue hour to capture the ground with sufficient detail without noise. The sky shots were taken just after the end of the so-called astronomical twilight. 15 shots were taken with each lens; shutter speed = 15 sec both for the Sigma 12 mm and the Fujifilm 14 mm, and ISO was set to 1600. The Sky shots were stacked in Sequator and processed in LR. Stacked sky shots and ground shots were combined in a single image in PS.
The bigger question in my mind is whether this lens can be used both as a landscape lens and a lens for astro use.
I have tried already to summarise my thoughts on a DPR forum so I will just past in my comments here:
"I have spent a couple of weeks testing the new Sigma 12 mm f/1.4 lens using the X-T2 camera. Test results in my view are mixed.
On the positive side:
* small size and low weight (225 g)
* pretty sharp in the center and better than expected sharpness on edges and corners
* focusing in the center of the image (portrait mode) at F8 ensures a decent sharpness throughout the whole image
* a good candidate for an astro lens if you don't have one
* a nice "clickable" aperture ring
* manual focus ring works quite well - a plus for astro applications
On the negative side:
* Multi-colored Chromatic Aberrations - difficult to remove!
* Not the best Auto focus accuracy; out of 50 landscape type shots 4 were slightly blurred. Never happened to me since 2012 on any of the Fujifilm lenses I own. For critical shots I would have to resort to manual focusing - I am becoming more proficient with this - never had to do it before..."
The CA shows up in areas of greatest contrast transitions, like tree branches and leaves against the blue sky, but can also shop up somewhere unexpected in the center of the image or on the foreground. The green CA is usually on top and the red (or pinkish color at the bottom). While the green CA can be removed il LR in manual mode, the red/pink CA is a bigger challenge. While it may not be a problem for some it is a problem for me.
The Auto focus accuracy - this is strange, perhaps it is just my copy...
In summary, if I did not have the XF 14, I would keep this lens as an astro lens even though its use would be pretty sporadic.
Since I do own it I have a dilemma - keep it or return it...
jm10_former wrote:
Let me chime in here with my test results. I think it all depends on your application for this lens and whether you have a wide lens already. I do have the XF 14 for many years but was curious enough to purchase the Sigma 12 to put it through some testing. Let me start with the pictures that I just finished processing a couple of hours ago:
The first picture was taken with the Sigma lens (aperture set to 2.0) and the second one with the XF 14 at 2.8. You be the judge. The best is to copy the images and place them side by side in your favorite image viewer. Note: At 1.4 the Sigma does display some coma in the corners, but at 2.0 coma is much more manageable (not only my observation).
The background was shot in blue hour to capture the ground with sufficient detail without noise. The sky shots were taken just after the end of the so-called astronomical twilight. 15 shots were taken with each lens; shutter speed = 15 sec both for the Sigma 12 mm and the Fujifilm 14 mm, and ISO was set to 1600. The Sky shots were stacked in Sequator and processed in LR. Stacked sky shots and ground shots were combined in a single image in PS.
The bigger question in my mind is whether this lens can be used both as a landscape lens and a lens for astro use.
I have tried already to summarise my thoughts on a DPR forum so I will just past in my comments here:
"I have spent a couple of weeks testing the new Sigma 12 mm f/1.4 lens using the X-T2 camera. Test results in my view are mixed.
On the positive side:
* small size and low weight (225 g)
* pretty sharp in the center and better than expected sharpness on edges and corners
* focusing in the center of the image (portrait mode) at F8 ensures a decent sharpness throughout the whole image
* a good candidate for an astro lens if you don't have one
* a nice "clickable" aperture ring
* manual focus ring works quite well - a plus for astro applications
On the negative side:
* Multi-colored Chromatic Aberrations - difficult to remove!
* Not the best Auto focus accuracy; out of 50 landscape type shots 4 were slightly blurred. Never happened to me since 2012 on any of the Fujifilm lenses I own. For critical shots I would have to resort to manual focusing - I am becoming more proficient with this - never had to do it before..."
The CA shows up in areas of greatest contrast transitions, like tree branches and leaves against the blue sky, but can also shop up somewhere unexpected in the center of the image or on the foreground. The green CA is usually on top and the red (or pinkish color at the bottom). While the green CA can be removed il LR in manual mode, the red/pink CA is a bigger challenge. While it may not be a problem for some it is a problem for me.
The Auto focus accuracy - this is strange, perhaps it is just my copy...
In summary, if I did not have the XF 14, I would keep this lens as an astro lens even though its use would be pretty sporadic.
Since I do own it I have a dilemma - keep it or return it...
Appreciate this. The stars in the 12’s corner are notably sharper than the 14’s, no real surprise as weak corner performance was why I sold my copy of the 14 — and my 8-16 was notably better. I prefer to manually focus for astro anyway, and frequently in dark sky it’s mandatory, so that’s not huge for me. My real question boils down to the extra usable stop — which could be significant in some situations. The ability to get selective DoF in a wide is attractive as well, even if edge quality/ca/aberrations etc suffer. This post actually leaves me more interested in it. If you do decide to sell your copy, please pm me.
I looked at them side by side in browser (one image in each tab). Looking at the overall image, any coma or sharpness differences in the corners are invisible to me.
Even when I zoomed in a bit to examine the corners in more detail, the differences were small enough to have zero effect on the overall image.
)
