Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Guys

Used my new 18-35 last night at a wedding reception and inside a venue the constant F1.8 turns night into day!! I love it to bits but a warning ! It's not a lightweight unit at all and makes the camera quite front heavy!

Zoom is also "almost" parfocal too ... Working on the focus peaking you can go from 35mm back back to 18mm and 99% of the scene is sharp ... the DOF at 35mm is quite hairy but still quite manageable and focus and zoom rings are really smooth. I just have to get my skills back up to scratch following focus when the bride walks into the reception.

My reception footage in a dark venue is really clean and bright but still keeps the ambience. I still had to use a little bit of fill light for the first dance but for that they almost turn all the lights off!!

Chris

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

yeap, same thing here. tested the focus during the zoom, and it change a liiitle bit.

the "ambiance" as you mentioned is really nice, i get much much more light and colors from the ambient light.

i used my camera light pointed up, to create a smooth bounce:

http://i.imgur.com/hBedbYgs.jpg

Also, don't forget: NeatVideo is your friend ;)

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Thanks Chris, I was looking at this lens on B&H last night.

I'm planning to buy the Tokina 11-16 (finally) and I was looking for a fast lens to go along with it. The Sigma was at the top of my list, so good to know that you're liking it!

What's the build quality like?

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Jody

Build quality is really awesome ..it's all in matt black and somewhat heavy though ... You can manually zoom (like when they cut the cake and it's smooth as silk!! Quality is definitely not comparable to the cheap Nikon kits lenses that come with most Nikon cameras ..mostly plastic !! The Sigma is close to 1/2kg so it does make the front end quite heavy compared to the stock lens .... images are really sharp!!

I was going to buy a non warranty one from Hong Kong and found they were $800 ...I got a genuine Aus warranty one (2 years) locally at Camera House in Leederville and they had it for $739.00 .. well worth the money!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my stills bag with Nikon body and 3 lenses got stolen from my car during a bridal shoot and I was going to get another Tokina 11-16 F2.8 but instead I found a used Nikon 10-24 F3.5 ...Ok it's slower but I use it for Realty work and it still works as well as was only $300.00 (almost new)
I never found any use for the Tokina at weddings as the new Sigma covers me from 18-35 and I don't really use 16mm or less anyway except for stills. For Realty video and stills the Nikon 10-24 does a great job!

Thanks Marlon ..I bought the Sigma as you loved it and I can see why! It's now my "go to" lens at weddings.... so far the only tricky bit is keeping focus as the bride walks in but the image is heaps better than my stock lens at 18mm .... You still have around 24" or more to play with as they walk in so you can easily just focus on the entry door and they stay in focus over enough distance as they walk in without losing it. Don't think I would be able to hold focus well enough if the bride walks down a long aisle!

Chris

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Suddenly I'm interested - been using my 5D for evening receptions but lack of pro focus features mean it's a bit hit and miss - I use canon EF glass with my EA50 and I'm guessing this sigma is for crop sensor, so what adapter are you guys using?

Pete

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Pete

Yep the Sigma is for the APS-C sensor ... I just use a dumb Novoflex adapter and it works perfectly ! Mine of course are Nikon mount so I can use them with my still cameras too but Canon mounts are also available for the lens ... trouble is would it be usable on the 5D???

Chris

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Thanks for the info Chris.

Slightly random question - I've only ever used the stock lens with my EA50 so far. Is there a noticeable difference/improvement in image quality when using lenses like the Sigma 18-35?

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

I'm really glad to hear about this lens. We've been looking at it (for the Canon mount). The reviews said it did a really nice job smoothly focusing, rather than hunting and pecking like what I have now does.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

The Sigma 18-35 is a really, really good lens. One of the best, for video
use that you can find. It is a crop sensor lens and vignettes on a 5D, so not
recommended for you DSLR shooters who go back and forth between stills
and video. On a Sony F3/5/55, FS100/700, VG20/30, EA50 or Canon C100/300
the lens is awesome.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

from what I see I would be happy with a lens that was even f 3.5 straight through although I will take more if I can:) Even though you cant really see noise at 21db gain id like to be about to shoot at 12 in a dark church.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Jody

Without pixel peeping and zooming up stills 400% I have no idea if stuff by Sigma/Tamron/Tokina is better than the Sony stock lens ... if it is then the difference is minor and certainly a client wouldn't see any difference so I would just assume that they are all middle of the road lens. Probably a top of the road Zeiss/Leica glass in the many thousands of dollars might be sharper but then you need to weigh up the extra sharpness against the price difference.

On my Nikons I find that Tamrons are a lot sharper than the kit Nikon lenses but don't have any Sony lenses to compare.

I use the stock lens quite often as long as I don't run out of light it's pretty useful at weddings ...at Realty shoots I go straight to the Nikon 10 -24 and shoot super wide the whole time!! Try the stock lens..it gives good results if you give it reasonable light and you have it so why not use it?

Chris

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Jody I use Canon EF lenses (24-105, 24-70, and 70-200) and the difference is noticeable. I find the image slightly sharper and the bokeh more pleasing to the eye. The downside of course is no autofocus but a better image combined with improved low light capability (all my lenses are faster than the kit lens) is worth it.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Chris I have the Tamron 24-70 F2.8 and it is definitely sharper than the kit lens. Combined with the Speedbooster I'm getting f2.0 and it's a real winner!

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

i took some pictures last night with the EA50 and 18-35mm, and like in the DSLR's, the image is amazing sharp across the entire frame, always at f1.8 and 1/60

sample (with a bit of PS to correct/enhance color only)

http://i.imgur.com/Q0dUO9ts.jpg

last week i used the kit lens, in a dark environment with strong back-light, and ugh, horrible chromatic aberration and loss of contrast. some lens do better in these scenarios, but i did not tested the 18-35 on the same place to compare.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Marlon

Yes that is stunning ..certainly is a really nice lens and I'm glad I have it. The stock lens still works pretty well in outdoor weddings but the Sigma is on my camera as soon as I go into the reception.

Just for interest it's a pretty nice lens on my Nikons too!! Put the camera in Aperture Priority mode and open up the iris and you get a rather nice lens to work with on the bride and groom!! It's useful to be able to use my lenses for both stills and video!

Chris

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Thanks for the info, Chris. I took the plunge and just purchased a Metabones adapter (NEX to EF), Tokina 11-16 f2.8 and Sigma 18-35 F1.8. I feel that these two lenses and the stock lens will work nicely for the majority of shooting situations.

Now for the excited wait for the courier man to arrive ;)

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Sounds great Jody

The Tokina is also an awesome lens!! Great for Real Estate work .. if you are doing video in houses just open it to F2.8, and at 11mm then leave the cam on auto and set the focus to 0.7m and you can rush around filming the house with a point and shoot camera as everything is in focus from 2' to infinity!! When mine was stolen I was going to replace it but found a Nikon 10-24 which is also nice and was nearly new at 1/2 the cost so I grabbed it!!

The Sigma is a neat lens too ..you just have to be a little careful and use focus peaking especially at 35mm as the DOF drops right down to around 23" if you are 10' away from the subject ... It's a little tricky trying to follow focus at 35mm so I cheat and go to 18mm and just get in closer!

Let us know your thoughts?? Is the Metabones a Smart Adapter or a Speed Booster??

Chris

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Thanks Chris. It's great knowing the Tokina is going to be so easy to set and forget.

I got the Metabones Smart Adapter.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

I will put my question here. I'm interested in this lens but I want to know how this compare against a fullframe lens F1.4 24mm ?? (I have a samyang T1.4 24mm)

Put on the nex-ea50 it is not a 24mm. So I will loose some light when I do this?

Will this sigma be better in low light?

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

The focal length has nothing to do with the low light, the f-stop does, the sigma is a f1.8 and the samyang a f1.4 so the samyang will perform better in lowlight but just a little bit, the sigma however has a constant f1.8 throughout the zoomrange making this lens a better choice for run and gun and if you add a speedbooster you gain on the wide end so it becomes a very versatile lens in smaller spaces, you also gain a stop I believe in low light but f1.8 is allready very fast.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

i believe the speedbooster only works with full-frame lens, 18-35mm is APS-C.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that there's 2 types: The regular speedbooster allows an APS-C lens to be attached to an APS-C camera (i.e EF lens to E-Mount body). But the new speedbooster Ultra looks like it is for attaching full-frame lenses to an APS-C camera.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

here is the metabones "smart adapter" that only adapt the mounts with electronics but with no lens on it (support EF and EF-S lenses):

Metabones®

and the metabones Speed Booster ULTRA (new version of Speed Booster, support EF lenses only as the old one):

Metabones®

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Not to get off subject here, but I have been following this thread and I plan to get this Sigma lens. I notice that both of these Metabones say they work with:

SP 24-70/2.8 Di VC USD A007 (Ver.15)

Which I think this is the lens. It is a full frame lens.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

I'm still waiting if someone can explain me why a 3x 1/3inch camcorder can perform better in low light than the nex-ea50 with a fast 1.4 lens on it.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Tom

It's all to do with light collection and the number of pixels on the chip area. Because the EA-50 uses a big sensor it has a high density of pixels to achieve a high still resolution (16.5mp) the humble little camcorder has a much low density of pixels on it's chip (2.2mp typical) so although it's a much lower resolution the pixels are bigger and better light collectors so the small camcorder is quite often better in low light than the more expensive big sensor cameras.

Chris

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Chris,

I always read how bigger the sensor, the better it performs in low light. Now I'm totally confused after reading your message.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Tom

Nope .. if you have a cluster of say 500,000 pixels on a chip they each are that much each physically bigger than a equally sized chip with say 2,000,000 smaller pixels ... the bigger pixels have a better light "gathering" capability (same as animals with BIG eyes see better in the dark)

The issue of course is that a sensor with only 500,000 pixels produces a very bright picture BUT the resolution is poor so your image quality is poor. The chip with 2,000,000 pixels is not as good in low light but has 4 times the resolution so you get a sharper image but it needs more light.

1080 video technically only needs around 2 mp resolution so a chip with 2,000,000 pixels works well. The EA-50 has a staggering 16.6 million pixels ..high resolution and to compensate for the poor low light if they tried to fit them on a 1/3rd chip (which they cannot) is why they are on a bigger sensor. Sadly each sensor is still smaller than sensors on 1.3rd chip cameras so low light suffers a bit unless you use a very fast lens.

Chris

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Noa,

I discovered this video


A full frame lens on a APS-C sensor does change the focal length but also the aperture!
So in my case the samyang F1.4 becomes a F1.4 x 1.6 crop = F2.24 on my nex-ea50.
So the sigma will be better in low light and has a "small" zoomrange and wider angle.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

You are not understanding it right, what he compares in the video is the difference between full frame, aps-c and m4/3 sensors which all have different cropfactors giving you a different frame on the same lens and which also affects the dof and how shallow that will be. No matter what type of lens you put on your camera, f1.4 stays 1.4, it will not be more light sensitive.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Tom Van den,

Thank you for that video post. It may not have helped Noa, but I got some awesome information from it.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

i believe the main reason some small sensor camera cam have same sensibility/noise as some large sensors is because large sensors as EA50 do not use all pixels, so you don't get the full benefit.

take a picture and record a video of the same scene. then resize the picture to 1920xXXXX. the picture will be much much better than the video. (and is not because of the compression)

a camera to fully use the 16mp and resize to full-hd size would consume much more power and generate a lot of heat. so they tho this.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

In what way should it have helped me? Toms statement: "the samyang F1.4 becomes a F1.4 x 1.6 crop = F2.24 on my nex-ea50" is not correct at all, the cropfactor off his camera's sensor has no effect on the f-stop of whatever lens he adds onto his camera, that was all what I was saying, a samyang f1.4 or a sigma f1.4 on his camera will have the same sensitivity, the cropfactor does not change this. There is only one adapter that has a effect on the focal length and the f-stop and that is a speedbooster.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Hi Noa,

It was not a derogatory remark I just wanted to thank Tom for posting it. I'm new to he whole crop and full frame world and I'm learning a lot. My statement was to say, even though it did not answer Noa's question, i got a lot from the video. That's all bro...

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

the crop factor affects the depth of field and the light gathering "per-pixel", reflecting on the ISO performance.

the "F1.4 x 1.6 crop = F2.24" is applicable to the bokeh. want the same background blur? a f1.8 lens on crop factor will give similar results as a f2.8 on full-frame.

on the ISO side, a full-frame have usually a 1 stop better ISO performance, (ISO 3200 on full-frame looks like 1600 on crop). but as i mentioned, the fact the camera does not use all pixels for video capture, the result is not as expected.

of course, if you use an adapter as metabones speedboster, the full-frame vs. crop results will be almost the same, as concentrating the light on the smaller sensor "fixes" the focal length, add the extra stop of light, and gives the extra "missing" bokeh ;)

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Just a small point here ... Sony cameras have a different size APSC sensor compared to Nikon (which is also the same as the Sony) Crop factor is in fact 1.5 not 1.6

I'm not going to argue here but my Nikon 28-75 F2.8 Full frame lens needs more light than my Nikon DX 17-50 F2.8 with both set at 35mm ... go figure ?

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Noa,

thanks for correction. The video was misleading for me.
And Like Chris and someone else said. The nex-ea50 has many pixels and because of that it is putted on a big chip. Less sensitive unless you use a fast lens on it.

But the nex-ea50 will always gives a better depth of field (blurry background) than a normal sized sensor. (or much easier) That's the reason why I bought it.

But why can handle the aps-c sensor higher gains/iso? Because of the big sensor?

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

No problem :) I do know a bit about the technical side of videocamera's/lenses from shooting with different size sensors camera's and lenses but I didn't see any difference from using a full frame samyang lens compared to a MFT lens with the same f-stop when it comes to lightsensitivity when using both on the same camera. The cropfactor has a influence on the field of view and the bokeh so a 35mm will look much wider on a full frame camera then on a MFT camera and at the same f-stop the bokeh will be much more pronounced as well on the full frame camera.

Tom, is this comparison done at the same f-stops? My cx730 is also quite sensitive when the lens is wide open and at 24db and can keep up with my dslr up to almost 6400 iso at f2.8, but not at f1.4, then the difference becomes quite noticeable.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

Noa,

the test in the video was the NEX-EA50 @ F1.4, iris full open, shutter 1/50 and my new hxr-nx3 @F1.6, itis full open and 1/50 shutter. So when both in auto the nx3 needed less gain! (yes I checked the settings and both were 1/50 and iris full open)

Like Chris said they put so many pixels in the nex-ea50 so it became less sensitive.
the nex-ea50 has 13,6 million pixels for video and the hxr-nx3 has 2,07million pixels for that.

But still not understand why the nex-ea50 can handles much higher gains without too much noise? @21db it is still decent the noise. I doubt my hxr-nx3 can handle that high gains.

Re: Sigma 18-35 F1.8 -Absolute Magic!
 

These were on back order from July - November. They are just starting to ship again. Let me know if you need a Nikon or EF mount. We have both coming.