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For Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art, 136 customer reviews collected from 2 e-commerce sites, and the average score is 4.7.

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5.6.2014

I was lucky enough to have my annual jaunt back to Japan coinciding with the release of the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art in Japan. Or the evening before, where those kind people at Yodobashi in Ueno brought me a copy out from the stock room as it was yet to be put on display. It's worth noting that the lens is priced at around £600 in Japan, so not so much of the sting that will be inflicted on EU buyers where the price is near to 50% more at the present release price. So the question most of you will be asking is: is it worth the considerable hike in price over other 50mm 1.4 (and 1.8G) lenses. The answer quite simply is yes. And here is why.To be honest,I was slightly reticent about paying 2-3 times the price to the Nikon equivalent for what is, well a Sigma lens. I had previously tried out 2 of the older Sigma 50mm f1.4 HSM lenses and was not happy with either. They both had great bokeh. However, I couldn't achieve a decent enough sharpness until stopping down to f5.6. As for Nikon 50mm 1.4G, I never got along with the lens. Maybe I had a bad sample, but chromatic aberrations where horrendous even at f2.8. In addition, this was a horribly soft lens akin to the Sigma. So this left me with the Nikon 50mm 1.8G, which was the sharpest out of the bunch; although still not acceptable until f4. Bokeh is noisy and not particularly great and thus I rarely used this lens wide open at f1.8.So for those of you D800/e owners, you will be well aware on how unforgiving this sensor is. I think that only my 24-70mm 2.8G and 85mm 1.8G (stopped down to f2.8) really show the sensor's capabilities. That's what I thought, anyway until I mounted the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art. This lens is not only incredibly sharp wide open at f1.4, but in addition chromatic aberrations and distortion are hardly noticeable. Bokeh, in my opinion, is wonderfully smooth with very few outlining effects that sometimes plague large aperture shooting. Stopping down to f2.8 really brings the lens to its peak performance in terms of sharpness: to a level that I have not seen anywhere with any other lens that I have used on the D800. Colour rendition is as good as I have seen. Focusing is fast and very accurate. Even in low light. In fact, only the 24-70mm 2.8G out performs the Sigma in terms of speed and accuracy. But really, there isn't that much in it.So I have probably bored you enough as it is, but thanks for reading. In summary:Pros:- Easily the sharpest lens that I have used on the D800.- Can be used wide open at f1.4 without any concerns whatsoever. In fact, this is what I shoot mostly with a ND filter to avoid over exposure.- Beautiful bokeh and colour rendition.- Hardly any chromatic aberations, even wide open.- No distortion: I can't see any although I probably need to properly test this out by shooting a brick wall or something, although I have a life and probably won't do this.;)- Professional build quality. Solid metal barrel. Superb lens hood and great lens cap. Padded case.- Fast and very accurate autofocus, even in low light.- Relatively close near focus ability.Cons:- Expensive? Well is it really? For what you get. This lens is being compared to the Zeiss Otus 55mm, which is around 4x the price.- Heavy. But I guess it had to be. This is a no-compromise lens from Sigma. To make optics this good, it had to be this size. It is only out-dwarfed by the Zeiss Otus and nobody is complaining there.
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13.3.2020

I have had the Sigma art series 85mm for a couple of years on my Nikon D750, about which I had mixed feelings. Although it was possible to get stunning images, I found the auto-focus very unreliable. I wasted a silly amount of time trying to adjust this with AF fine tuning, and even bought the Sigma docking port (don't - it's a waste of money). Eventually I got there, but more by luck than judgement. So I had considered getting the 50mm, but the reviews suggested the autofocus problems were even worse on this than the 85mm.So about a year ago I purchased a Sony A7iii. Fantastic camera, which left my Nikon DSLR standing in most respects. Sony have upped their game considerably,and now make lenses easily as good as Nikon or Canon - if not better. However, they are priced accordingly, and I have not been impressed with the cheaper Sony offerings. DSLRs mainly use a phase detection autofocus system, which is where problems with back focus and front focus can occur. The mirrorless system uses a contrast based system (as does the live view option on a DSLR), so back and front focusing does not happen. I therefore reasoned that the problems I had with the 85mm on my Nikon should not be found on the Sony - and I was right.So the good points:I can sum it up simply by saying image quality.- this lens is about as sharp as you can get, even shooting wide open. I shot with a friend recently, who used a Canon DSLR and Canon lens. His images were certainly sharp enough imho, but he was continually impressed at how much sharper mine were- when shooting with a wider aperture, you get lovely creamy bokeh- shooting with the A7iii, autofocus is pretty well spot-on 90% of the time (far exceeds my hit rate with the Nikon)- no matter what aperture you use, this lens produces lovely contrasty images just like the 85mm- it is also quite a sensible size and weight, so feels nicely balanced on the relatively light A7iii, whereas some of the heavier lenses I own make it feel unbalanced.- Sigma art lenses are a lot cheaper than the equivalent Sony lens.Not so good points:- whilst the autofocus is extremely accurate, it is also relatively slow- it is a lot more expensive than a 50mm f1.8. However, the image quality far exceeds anything I have ever achieved with a 50mm f1.8. It is still cheaper than the Sony equivalent.Points raised by other reviewers which I do not really consider to be a problem:- it is pretty heavy for a 50mm, and heavier than the competition. This might be true, but I think it is an acceptable size, and balances well. The 85mm is a huge heavy beast, and this feels light by comparison.- no vr/image stabilisation. Possibly a problem when using with some cameras, but not when paired with the A7iii as the camera has built-in image stabilisation.The only genuine criticism I have is the slightly slow autofocus, and I do not consider it slow enough to be a problem.Overall I think this lens suits the A7iii perfectly, and delivers beautiful images at a reasonable price.
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1.6.2014

When Sigma brought our their 35mm ART prime I bought it and within a few shots I was immediately blown away, the lens was wonderful at capturing mood, emotion and was also very sharp and optically brilliant. 35mm on my full frame 5D MK iii is fairly wide and not the lens I would go to for portraits.However after being disappointed by renting Canon's crazy expensive 85mm 1.2 (Nasty CA and a little fiddly for video focussing so I couldn't justify the high price) I then was in the market for a solid portrait prime. I did consider the Sigma 85mm but then out of the blue Sigma launch their 50mm ART lens.I've had it two days and these are my first thoughts.I don't care much about weather sealing,size, weight, etc. because my main interest in a lens is what it does in terms of capturing a moment, how it deals with colour, mood, and so on.This lens is superb optically - it really DOES live up to the hype in terms of distortion control and sharpness. It is extremely sharp. After examining my pictures today I'm very impressed by the optics and how my images are super sharp.But there are some negatives with this lens and they are worth noting. Another reviewer commented on the lack of richness and bokeh compared some some Canon L glass. He or she is totally right.And this is a slight problem because this lens is very expensive and it made me wonder should i return this lens?A few weeks ago I rented a Canon L glass 2.8 100mm prime. Wow. I wanted to make love to the lens. Picture after picture popped with sharpness, beautiful colour and wonderful creamy bokeh. But the 100mm focal distance was perhaps too restrictive for me so I didn't buy it.But the Sigma doesn't render bokeh as well as the Canon I rented. It's ok but too busy. So you get a razor sharp image against a blurred background but the compromise is that the bokeh is NOT dreamy. It's almost devoid of big emotion. This means that capturing emotion in your shots is more reliant on wonderful light with this lens whereas some L glass will go a long way to help add some mood with the bokeh.The other thing is the richness of colour. It's not that the Sigma doesn't render colour well it's just that some Canon L glass I've used literally punches colour at you - the colours and richness are lacking slightly with this Sigma offerring.So it's a very very tough call. I feel like I should keep this lens because some of my professional work will involve lights and some post production and this lens offers such great optics that with a little work it can render superb looking photos.But unfortunately it doesn't get 5 stars because something, just something is missing here. A shame.
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16.10.2014

I had read a lot of stellar reviews about this lens and after my Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 was dropped by an assistant a few months ago I could never quite trust its focus, so I took the plunge with this one.I have shot a bit of video footage with it and recently took it on its first stills mission which was a test shoot in London on a beautiful fall day. You can see the results of that shoot here including a few notes on exposure etc...https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.736828319706288.1073741847.333578280031296&type=1Overall I'm very pleased with this lens. The build quality is excellent. It feels solid and precise. The autofocus is silent and very fast and when I could confirm that I'd grabbed the focus spot I was aiming for it was pin-sharp.When reviewing my photos it seems I missed my mark a few times, but this could be a fault of the 5D MKIII's focus system and not always being able define a small enough area in a photo for focus (the focus boxes I use in the viewfinder often focus on a small branch, or something near the subject if they're far away in the frame). The bokeh is superb. Really creamy out of focus highlights. The flare was hard to produce given the superb coatings Sigma have used to supress it, but when I was able to get flare with low sun it was a really nice effect which resolved beautifully in a reddish hue at the top of the frame (you will see this photo in the link provided above). If I moved the lens slightly I was able to get a more emerald hue. Lovely stuff for arty lifestyle, or editorial fashion photos.The only reason I'm not giving the lens 5 stars is because I find the manual focus ring a tad too sensitive. I'd like a longer throw on it for the video work I do as when focusing manually, you only need to move the ring 0.5mm in order to throw everything out of focus at f/1.4. I know this was meant for stills photography, but would be nice to have a little more play in the manual focus even for stills.One more thing... The lens came with a really well-constructed hood and a great, soft case.
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8.12.2016

I have been using this lens for over a month and i am completely satisfied with it and below it's why :I will start saying that I am not a professional photographer but when it is time to choose a lens for my photography I can spend days and sometimes week to find the right compromise between quality and price.I have a canon 6D and i have tried all kind of different lenses from m-42 lens mount like Carl Zeiss 50 1.4 same as Yashica mount, Canon 50.1.8 series I and II, Canon 50m 1.4, but nothing was delivering not even comparable image quality, sharpness and colors to the Sigma 50mm 1.4. something similar to this would be the Canon 40mm 2.8 pancake with superb sharpness and a bit wider.The SIgma Lens performs perfectly under almost any condition,Chromatic Aberration and purple fringing are superbly well by the lens, I have no noticed flare in any of the image taken, the focus it is super accurate and precise even at low light conditions, one thing you need to know that many people are complaining about the missed focus which could be true but there are copies and copies of this lens, mine was perfect I even bought aSigma USB Dock Mount to avoid any non lens precision, the dock has never being used and seats in my drawer. it depends of the camera but the micro focus adjustment can be done in camera setting using a focus chart for example this one, (DSLRKIT Lens Focus Calibration Tool Alignment Ruler Folding Card (pack of 2) which has been printed with high contrast and perfect to perform fine adjustment.One thing that it is a bit irritating for me is the weight of the actual lens (470g) if you mostly travel with the camera this could be quite a concern, but has 13 elements in 8 groups including aspherical elements and also SLD (special low dispersion) that helps in reducing chromatic aberration, and improve overall image sharpness and also that it is not water sealed, so you need to take extra care. View angle it is 46.8 degrees.The bokeh could be harsh at times as someone says, i am extremely happy with the purchase:) .
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28.1.2016

Already owning and having great results from the Sigma 50mm F/1.4 EX Lens I decided to upgrade to the newer Art version.I will not go into the technicalities of this lens as if you are looking at it you will already know your stuff. Instead I will just look at my opinions and my experience for comparisons.Instantly I am impressed with the results, seemingly gone is the AF issues of the old lens, instantly focusing on the desired subject in all but the dimmest of lighting with a dark subject, this sending the lens on a chase looking for its mark. I have used this so far for around about 500 exposures in a variety of settings and the majority of these shots were extremely sharp with a very pleasing bokeh.The ones not quite perfect were more often than not down to user error and therefore the lens cannot be blamed.I use this lens paired with a Canon 5d mark iii and it does just what I want. It has been used so far mainly for portraits of my children and family gatherings and also at my sisters stables for capturing horses and dogs. Whilst at the stables I have used it in fast burst mode whilst my sister rides in the outdoor arena and had some fantastic results were the older version seemd to lack.In short this lens is my go to prime and I have since sold the older version. The bokeh is soft and pleasing, the AF now seemingly fixed and images nice and sharp, the lens nice and quick. If you are looking for a extremely good prime I would suggest spending the extra for this and you will have no regrets. I have also used the Canon F/1.4 and also F/1.2 and in my opinion this leaves them behind in terms of results, especially now with the fixed AF system.
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16.10.2015

There are many reviews out there for all to see but my experience is all about my new adventure with this masterpiece of a lens.I received the lens in just a plain white sigma box. I popped out the luxurious padded case, belt fitting included opened the case to pull out the 50mm Art lens. Oh it feels like the L series pro, looking too.I grabbed my Canon 70D & set it at f1.4 aproximately just over a metre & half away & took my first shot? The crystal glass bowl just sparkled then sliding up the picture to reveal the true rich colours of the deep red apples onto the vibrant green pears upto the yellow bananas. All checked at 100%.Looking down the side of the shot revealed how good this lens is.The bokeh,blur whatever you want to call it is just so amazing in the fact that it just fades into a creamy mist. Keeping the iso at 100 I stepped up to f2.8 & the stunning quality of a rather boring bowl of fruit is so astonishingly good. Vibrant colours. Super sharp detail. Creamy blurry background. I am just so impressed with the performance of this piece of kit. Outdoor flower shots f1.4 through to f8, spot metering are just amazing.I have heard that 1 or 2 people have had problems using live view & the lens hunting to focus?? I've not experienced anything at all. The lens indoor & outdoor performed beautifully on just everyday shots.Back to the lens. Weight wise on my 70D weight wise sits nice. The quality of the lens is pro feel. The motor can be heard as it auto focuses but at the same time I don't video with my camera. All in all. Such a splendid prime lens to use. If you do decide to purchase. Enjoy ?
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14.8.2014

I own this and the 35mm Art lenses, both fall into a category between consumer primes and 'pro' lenses like the Canon "L" line. Their build and performance is similar and outstanding. I don't have experience with the equivalent Canon L primes to compare to but these lenses are both amazingly sharp with crisp contrast, streets ahead of the consumer primes I've used in the past. Reportedly the only area where the lens doesn't match up with its pro-level alternatives is in weather sealing.Reviews talk about how sharp the lens is edge to edge compared with almost everything else on the market. That might be true but like a lot of people who buy these lenses I'm using them at a wide aperture more often than not.This is the only area where the Sigma 35mm Art has a slight advantage over its 50mm cousin. The out-of-focus areas on the 35mm are sublime to my eyes, while the 50mm is no slouch there is some visible harshness in the blur if the background is 'messy', complex. But I am being picky, it's just not quite as nice as the 35mm but I prefer it to the Canon consumer primes I've owned in the past. For AF I had to make slight micro adjustments in-camera but once done focusing is fast and accurate, centre and outer AF points. I don't own the USB dock but I might try it if new firmware comes out.I managed to pick up both lenses new at low prices, the 50mm I bought here was £640 sold by Amazon, so it's worth watching for fluctuations in Amazon's price. At that price it's amazing value for money.Highly recommended, especially if you can get it for around £650.
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21.8.2019

This lens just blew me away! I'm a long term photographer who has used a fair few lenses on various cameras over the last decade and this lens beats any others in the 35 to 85mm focal range! it's so detailed I can even use it as a macro lens!I also have a Nikon 35mm 1.8g, a Nikon 85mm 1.8g and a couple of Tokina wide angles and only the 85mm comes close in terms of image quality and lack of distortion.The images I've taken with this sigma are bright, incredibly sharp, lovely soft bokeh for the background in the images and with no chromatic aberration or barrel distortion that I can detect at all. Ever so slight vignetting in some images, but way less than any other prime lens I have.The flexibility one has for making great artistic images with this lens are phenomenal. The website DX0 gave this lens top score in their database and I can see why.The only two drawbacks I've found: 1. My lens came badly calibrated to my D7200 with the autofocus getting almost 1cm out from the single point I selected. This is not hard to fix either with the sigma docking station or autofocus adjustments in the camera if you have the top range cameras that support such adjustments, it was more inaccurate than my other lenses, until I calibrated it, so make sure you do that.2. This lenses focal plane behaves differently and somehow in a more complex way than my other prime lenses (at low F numbers) which can trip you up in the beginning. It's definitely an art lens and not really a lens for people who stick the camera on full auto for point and shoot.
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2.3.2016

Like the other 'Art' primes, it's wonderful optically, but the AF performance is poor. And I mean, so poor that if you really need accurate focus, then you should think of these lenses as essentially manual. The 24 and 35mm lenses focus wherever they like as well, and I used to have the 18-35mm DX lens that was similarly shocking, but there's more DOF with these shorter lenses so it's less critical. The 50 is such a pain that I ended up buying the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 G for those occasions when I need AF! Even in live view it's very inconsistent, and bear in mind I've had three samples of this lens so I'm not just describing a problem with an outlier. Actually after fine tuning in the camera (D810)it's more consistent using PDAF for some strange reason!So, optically, yes, it's great. But only buy it if you're going to be focussing manually on a tripod in magnified live view. If focussing isn't critical for your application because you shoot stopped well down then get the Nikkor 1.8 G, because there's not much difference after f/4. Or if you need AF, get the Nikkor.As far as the optics go, the professional reviewers are right. There's hardly any distortion or CA, the bokeh's OK, and it's giddyingly sharp (if you can get the damn thing in focus!). But it's big and heavy and focuses all over the place left to its own devices, so unless you've got some special requirement for staggering sharpness at bright apertures, honestly I'd go for the Nikon 1.8G. It's cheaper, lighter, and focuses a lot more accurately.
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28.2.2016

Been watching this lens for some time. Wanting it, but not able to justify the price. Then the big price drop last week; bought it instantly. Minutes later, I added the Sigma USB dock to go with it. After some close range shots around the house, I did a quick and dirty AF fine tune (in-camera, not the Sigma calibration rig), I ventured out into the countryside to test on landscapes.Deeply disappointed when I got home to discover all long range shots were horribly out of focus. Had dark suspicions that the big price drop was relevant to this - 'are these returned lenses'?I have now used the Sigma USB dock, and test results are promising; both close range around the house,and outside medium rang and landscape shots. On the strength of the latter, I have made a (hopefully final) tweak to the 1.5 metre calibration. It now looks like the figures would be a nice curve on a graph. These are my adjustments:0.4 metres = +70.7 metres = +91.5 metres = +12infinity = +15The only reason to buy a large, heavy and relatively expensive 50mm lens is if you are critical about sharpness. Therefore, do not contemplate buying this lens without the USB dock. I wish we didn't have to go to this trouble, but we do; and it's worth it.I may revisit this rating and upgrade to 5 stars, but it's still early days.Update:After much testing, lens returned to Amazon owing to inability to fix reliable autofocus at longer ranges.
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20.7.2017

Maybe I'm right , maybe I'm wrong but having read many of the reviews in Amazon could it be that the focussing difficulties that some poeple are having are related to the camera they are using. Many cameras have built into their menus a correction for front or back focussing. It follows that cameras need to have some means of fine tuning the AF of a lens/camera combination. If , like me, your camera does not have this means of focus correction then it is clear advantage to buy a Sigma Art,Contmporary,Sport lens and adjust the focussing using the Sigma USB Dock.I have two of these Sigma lenses and have calibrated them using the Sigma dock.It was a time consuming process especially with the17-70mm zoom because there are 16 distance/focal length combinations to calibrate. But it was well worth the effort because they are spot on sharp now on my cheap Canon 1300 camera. Even with cameras with correction devices built into threir menus you can only do it once for a particular shooting distance . With the Sigmas this is done at crucial distances and at various focal lenghts ( for a zoom ) . This is an obvious improvement of just a one off adjustment. I have bought this 50mm for my Nikon camera which is slightly better than my Canon and the first thing I shall do is to calibrate it with the Nikon camera with a Sima USB dock.Does this sound like sense to you photographers out ther????RegardsKen
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13.1.2015

TL; DR; SUPERBHowever if we want to elaborate a little, there's the obvious - like great, sturdy construction, perfectly balanced focusing ring, fast, quite and - above all else - reliable focusing and the sharpness that this lens is admired and known for.I would like to focus on a different aspect, that seems to divide the audience - the bokeh. Some will tell you it's butterly smooth and wonderful, others - "there's no bokeh at all". Basically you can throw away the latter immediately as with f/1.4 you will get narrow DoF even with much wider lenses. If someone claims the image is "too busy" it means they don't know how to use the lens properly (increase aperture size, come closer to the subject).However it is important to notice the particular quality this lens renders which might be the reason for some mixed reports, as to some it may be actually overly "butterly" making it look as if photoshop blur was simply applied. If you expect star-like effects on lights or some crazy effects Lomography Petzval is known and bought for (check it out if you haven't seen it before!) then you might be - indeed - disappointed.So, if you want your background out-of-focus but still with some texture this may be a miss. However if you really want to focus all attention on your subject and things from the background are to disappear - look no further.
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6.3.2017

I've always struggled with which is the best 50mm lens is on a Canon fit. Its an obvious lens to own if you are going down the prime route but there are so many options with vastly different prices out there that deciding which represents best value is very hard.This lens is a massive step up in quality from Canon's own 1.8 lens (aka niffty fifty) but inevitably is also much heavier and larger. Sigma has historically be plagued with both unreliable autofocus and quality control issues however in the last couple of years, since their Global Vision approach of banding lenses (Contemporary, Art and Sport) they seem to have gotten significantly better.The version I have received is very sharp,good at autofocusing in at a good speed. I believe it can be further updated using their docking station (available separately) but I've only gone as far as fine tuning it with microadjustments which were less than all of my Canon L series lenses.I've not owned the Canon 50L and so cannot make a direct comparison between the two, it is a little faster but also a lot more expensive. I know some semi-pro photographers are hoping Sigma will upgrade this lens to make it closer to the latest Art series lenses which are easily riveling Canon L but for me as a serious hobbyist this was the right balance of price -v- quality and I'd highly recommend it.
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23.4.2019

I needed a 50mm prime lens for my new Canon 5D Mk4 and was saving up for the Canon lens. However, by chance I was at an event covered by a professional photographer and she had a Canon 5DS and I noticed she was using the Sigma 50mm F1.4 Art lens so I asked her why she wasn't using the Canon lens. She explained that the Canon lens was significantly more expensive and the Sigma lens, though heavy, had spectacular image quality.Based on her recommendation, and after reading some reviews as she'd suggested, I decided the Sigma lens was worth trying and I'm glad I did. The image quality is superb and, though the lens is very heavy, image quality is what I wanted. I already had the Canon 100-400mm ISM III lens,which takes the same 77mm filters as the Sigma lens so I'm very happy now with my lenses and camera - an ideal combination for my interests in wildlife, scenery and portrait photography.The Sigma lens autofocus is superb so I've not yet seen the need to update the firmware or calibrate the focus but if that becomes necessary in the future it's good to know that Sigma can supply the USB kit to simplify doing the upgrade. In the meantime I'm very happy with my Sigma lens as is.
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