Sony SEL14F18GM | Full Frame FE 14mm F1.8 GM - Premium G Master Series Prime Lens

Product Information

The L mount lens doesn't come close to f/1.4 of course, so the new Sigma will be a great first choice for L mount users. The non-extending 3.1" x 3.7" (80mm x 90mm)(dxl) size and 22.7 oz (645g) weight combine to make this a very a nice handling lens. These Canon 1Ds Mark II crops are from about 60% through 80% of the distance from the center of the frame to the right edge. The EF-S 10-22mm is not as sharp as the 14mm II in the corners even when stopped down, but it is impressive optically for its much lower price. To convert 14 mm to inches, multiply 14 by 0.0393700787 (or divide by 25.4), that makes 14 mm equal to 0.5511811 inches.

With its advanced optical design that includes 1 SLD, 3 FLD and 4 aspherical elements, the lens has been designed with astrophotography in mind. With a particular emphasis on optical quality at infinity focus, the lens has very well-controlled optical aberrations and sagittal coma flare, which ensures that bright points of light remain pin-sharp and round at all apertures and across the entire frame. Lightroom’s manual correction works well, but it does require about +75 in my experience (with a midpoint of 25) to correct at f/2.8. Remember, brightening the corners by a significant amount can start to make noise more visible, so that does harm this lens for astrophotography. Images were shot as RAW and processed with the Neutral Picture Style and sharpening = 1 (very low - 2 would look noticeably sharper). Just to be sure the ISO 12233 chart results from the 14mm I were correct, I re-tested it - with identical results. Just like with sharpness, this lens is a strong performer in the center of the frame for astrophotography, but the corners are significantly weaker. That’s especially true at f/2.8, which is usually what you’ll be using for astrophotography. Cropping or stopping down can both help mitigate this issue, but those options both change the value proposition of this lens.Vignetting is present and observable wide open, but this can look quite attractive in wide landscapes, darking the corners and concentrating our eyes on the central area, often where the main subject lies. There’s only negligible lateral chromatic aberration, even at the extreme edges and corners of the frame. The lens also does very well to minimize axial chromatic aberration, which causes fringing around high-contrast transitions in front of and behind the plane of focus at wide apertures. Distortion measures -0.38% barrel, quite a remarkable result for such a wide lens. It is no doubt sorted between lens and camera, but sorted it is. While the sealing in this lens is not different than the rest of Canon's weather-sealed non-super telephoto lenses,

While the lens performs great in terms of aberrations, flare resistance is not very good. Significant, very distracting flares are produced from having the sun in your frame. Multiple, large, rainbow-colored rings are produced, and a significant loss of contrast in dark areas is clear. This isn’t good for an ultra-wide lens that can be expected to have the sun in your frame with some frequency! Aspherical: Specially shaped glass elements greatly improve sharpness at large apertures and in the corners. Optics Thus my iffy converter was making 14mm perform poorly, while my old Tokina, which is a traditional design without any floating elements, wasn't messed up by the focus error of the converter. MPB puts photo and video kit into more hands, more sustainably. Every month, visual storytellers sell more than 20,000 cameras and lenses to MPB. Choose used and get affordable access to kit that doesn’t cost the earth.Don't waste your money on this for DX digital. For DX, get the 10-20mm DX or Tokina 11-20mm. These DX lenses can use front filters, and weigh and cost much less. This 14mm can't use anything except gels behind the lens. The reason today to get this 14mm is for use on 35mm and FX cameras, not to piddle with it on DX cameras. For such a wide-angle lens, the image quality is incredible from f/1.8 all the way up to f/16. Not only are the images incredibly sharp, but it creates beautiful bokeh and dramatic sunstars down to apertures as low as f/4. Many lenses struggle to be used wide open at f/1.8, but this one has no issues at all. There's the tiniest bit of vignetting, but nothing that can't be fixed in post-processing. The image quality is insanely impressive considering this lens doesn't have image stabilization, even though most full-frame camera bodies do tend to have in-body image stabilization nowadays. If you're more of an astrophotographer you'll be using it on a tripod anyway. The 14mm II "features completely redesigned optics including 2 high-precision Aspherical elements and two totally new UD-glass elements." [Canon] At the front of the barrel is a Lens Heater Retainer, which was a feature introduced on the SIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG DN | Art. This helps hold a heat strip in place, which are often used by astrophotographers when shooting in cold conditions to prevent condensation build-up on the front element. While ultra-wide lenses can have a wide range of uses, from journalism to sports, I was very keen to test this lens for landscapes and astrophotography. With both those genres of photography, it’s useful to have an ultra-wide lens at your disposal, and 14mm certainly qualifies!