Once More Into the Fray... Sigma 14-24mm f/2.8 DG HSM Art

The Sigma 14-24mm f/2.8 DG HSM Art comes into a hotly contested category with the promise of optical finesse that photographers have come to expect from Art series lenses.

- K Madhavan Pillai

A part from the fact that recent years have seen the rise of the ultrawide zoom category of lenses, Sigma’s Global Vision lines of lenses have veritably become the cats among the pigeons in a rather crowded segment. Sigma announced the 12-24mm f/4 Art in late 2016 (not yet tested by us). So, the release of 14-24mm f/2.8 Art in February came as a surprise. At the moment, both lenses are available in India.

In retrospect, why couldn’t Sigma marry the two? Firstly, a glance at the MTF curves confirm that the sacrifice in optical finesse would be too great for what has come to be identifiable with the Art series. Secondly, both lenses are meant for different types of users, with the additional 2mm being a sacrifice of almost 8o in angle of view, but the f/2.8 having its benefits in lower levels of light. It is a choice of one over the other. Personally, I find 12mm to be too wide, and can easily settle for better optics at f/2.8. The benefits do not end here.

Features

The very first paragraph of Sigma’s literature mentions optical performance to pair with 50MP-plus cameras. The 14-24mm Art features 16 elements in 11 groups including three FLD, three SLD, and three aspherical lens elements to minimise aberrations and reduce distortion to less than 1% at infinity.