the forgotten 35mm prime lens for Sony

Years going by and the feature of any camera gear that becomes more and more important to me is the weight and overall form factor. I have been on a quest to find the equipment that best combine performance, image quality and compactness and today I have a new 35mm full frame lens to talk about. the Sigma 35mm F2 DG DN. I picked it up already a month and a half ago to see how it can fit in my workflow, and I used on 8 different occasions to have a clear idea of what I like and what I dislike. I bought it with my own money, no one knows that I got this Sigma lens so I can give you my true honest opinion mentioning the good but also the bad without any sort of external pressure.

The promise

I am starting to have a decent track record with 35mm lenses. I still own the 35mm f1.4 from Sigma, I used to have the Samyang 35mm f2.8 that seduced me for its low price and extreme compactness. Not so long ago I replaced it with the Sony Zeiss f2.8 which is equally compact, more expensive but a better lens in all aspects. And now this 35mm f2 from Sigma kind of fits in between the light 2.8 versions and the 1.4. My hopes when getting this lens was to have something that is light and compact to carry a whole day while being as sharp and as competent as my 35 1.4 Sigma. Lately I am thinking that f1.4 on full frame is very shallow and in the end, maybe too much for me, I barely use it at 1.4 for my type of photos so the f2 version would almost be as good when taking occasional portraits and as a studio lens for talking heads, but light enough to be a good street and travel lens.

Potential deal breaker

I am not doing technical reviews comparing distortion and 400% zoomed in images. When I talk about gear is to explain how I like it or dislike it considering my style of shooting. Lenses have become so good these days so I think it is easier to start talking about features I don’t like and that can be a deal breaker for me. Doing so, if you relate to me and my style of shooting you can quickly understand what did not click and decide whether it would be a good pick for you. As a photographer who shoots mostly street and travel there are 3 elements, 3 characteristics that I don’t like. When a lens is too heavy, when it has uncontrolled and/or unpleasant flare or ghosting and last, when a lens is not resistant, lacking any sort of weather sealing or looking like it will break apart easily.

Weight

Starting with the weight, when a lens is too heavy and bulky, it could be the best performer ever, I will not bother taking it with me because I know it will spend most of the time in the bag not taking photos. Probably the best way to take good photos and make progress is taking as much deliberate photos as possible and the way you can make yourself doing so is by having gear that reduce the amount of friction to the minimum. That’s why compact cameras like the Fuji x100 and Ricoh GRs gained popularity recently I guess. This Sigma 35mm f2 is a lens that I would consider being just light and compact enough to carry a whole day. It can be a very good travel lens too for most situations with the 35mm focal length but also as a secondary lens in your bag because it is compact, light and very cylindrical so very easy to fit in all sorts of pocket.

Build quality

The build quality on this lens is absolutely crazy. It is from their contemporary line which is supposedly less premium than the Art lenses but I prefer the look and feel of this 35 f2 over the f1.4. It is really a little piece of beauty, probably the most good looking lens I ever had in my hands. It is built like a tank, fully made of metal which makes quite heavy for the size, it’s really a dense lens, sounds weird said like that but it really is. I have used other lenses that are the same size or even bigger while being a fair amount lighter. An all metal construction looks and feels good, also helps with durability I guess but plastic can sometimes be an advantage especially when it comes to making a lens lighter. It stills balance pretty well when paired to my Sony a7iv making the whole package just short of 1kg at 985gr. Would be maybe even nicer on a a7cii sparing another 145gr. Definitely a lot better than the 1.4 version, I can really picture myself having around my neck the whole day but the Sony Zeiss 2.8 is still at another level of lightness. The sigma is 325gr and the Zeiss 120, less than half. When you use the Zeiss it really feels like you are carrying the body only, light as a feather.

Full-Frame vs. APS-C (weight)

When you do the maths a 35mm f2 full frame lens has a shallower depth of field than a 23mm f1.4 ApsC lens. Almost the same but 23mm 1.4 apsc makes roughly a 35mm f2.1. The reason I am mentioning this is because I have been tempted to switch my gear to mostly Apsc but if we look at fujifilms 23mm 1.4 lens we notice that it weighs 375gr. Given that a xt5 is about 40gr heavier than a Sony a7cii, the overall package for the same field of view and depth of field is heavier on apsc. So yes in general full frame gear is heavier especially paired with 1.4 lenses but when you try match focal lengths and bokeh in the end it’s about the same. That was a pretty curious finding I did while working on this blog and something that will probably prevent me from being a victim of GAS and buying a whole new set of apsc gear.

Flare and ghosting

I like shooting against the light, not all the time but it is a recurring pattern in my style of shooting. I don’t mind a certain amount of flare in my pictures. I have the Fujinon 35mm f2 lens for my X-E4 and the lens technically suffer from being subject to flare but I find it very pleasing and somewhat coherent. You can play with it and have good results. What I don’t like is when the flare is all over the place, creating busy areas of rainbow washed out flare or when it looks very different from one situation to another. Sometimes you don’t have clear streams of flare but end up with ghosting and a complete loss of contrast all over the frame, that’s also a deal breaker for me. So the Sigma 35mm f2 in that regard is very good. The flare is very controlled, to the point that I would have liked it to have a bit more character like my Fuji lens but I can’t complain. There is also no ghosting or loss of contrast when shooting against the light so that’s a good point. Where it is not perfect though is on the fringing. In Japan there are power lines everywhere and because usually what comes behind the powerlines is the bright sky you can end up with some purple fringing in some situations, especially when it is overcast. You can correct that in post, the automatic feature in Lightroom doesn’t help a lot you have to adjust manually which can also reduce the saturation of the purple elements of your frame, not only where there is fringing. That’s a shame but luckily there is not a ton of purple in my compositions and I always tend to desaturate them anyway but that’s one thing to keep in mind if you don’t like dealing with fringing.

Resistance

Last thing I don’t like is when a lens is not resistant as a whole and also not resistant to raindrops or dust. When I do street photography in my city I don’t mind it too much because I usually go out with an umbrella and your gear being weather resistant does not really matter as long as you keep it safe from the rain shooting under the umbrella. But when I travel, if it is raining not too hard I’d rather wear a coat and a cap or beanie. I am not a fan of messing with an umbrella during trips so having weather resistant gear is nice. I remember in Italy last year, it rained during a day and I had to use my big and heavy 24-70 instead of the tiny Samyang 35 2.8 I was using at the time. My back and my neck were not happy about that but it would not have been a problem with the Sigma 35mm f2. It is dust and splash resistant so it should not be an issue to shoot under light rain without an umbrella. I did shoot with it once when it was raining and it got pretty wet but everythings fine. To conclude on the build quality it is again, one of the most beautiful lens I had in my hands. It has a clickable aperture ring that is pretty much on par with Fujifilm lenses when it comes to the satisfying feeling you get when spinning it around. I actually end up setting it on A and use the front dial to adjust my fstop. It is a faster way to adjust your aperture, easier when shooting videos and better for fast paced environment but when not in a rush this aperture ring delightful.

Additional features

That leads me to the little plus, the little features that were not deal breaker or deal maker but nice to have. The aperture goes up the f22, there is certainly a loss of quality past a certain F stop but f22 is good to have especially for video when you are on a pinch not having ND filters. It can help keeping your shutter speed in check for cinematic motion blur. It can also help sometimes if you want to play with motion blur reducing your shutter speed a lot, again without needing ND filters.

On top of the satisfying aperture ring there is another pretty nice design feature. The lens comes with a standard Sigma plastic lens cap but you also get in the box a very nice metallic magnetic lens cap. Easier to place on the lens and way more satisfying than the squeaky plastic ones.

The close focus distance is quite short 27cm, if you use the APSC crop mode you can really get nice close up shots. Not something I use for my street and travel photography but useful for when I make videos and thumbnails for YouTube.

Image quality and autofocus

So we’ve come all the way here without mentioning image quality or autofocus speed and accuracy. Like I said in the intro, recent lenses are almost all sharp enough and certainly Sigma lenses are. They are quite famous for that. Almost any autofocus lenses on a recent Sony Camera body will be good enough. There are some that are better than others but even the worst ones like the infamous 50mm Sony FE is good enough for Street and Travel. This Sigma is much better than that, probably not the best on the market but we are splitting hair. I haven’t felt any frustration with autofocus when using this lens even when playing and shooting photos of my nephew. The tracking focus was not perfect when I used it as a way to focus and recompose but like I said before, the eye tracking was flawless when taking portraits of my nephew not standing still.

Image quality, rather than zoomed in images and long descriptions I preferred showing a wide variety of shots during this video so you could get an idea of how it looks. Still to add a little comment, it is extremely sharp and you really get that crispiness in the images. More important than the actual sharp edges of the elements in your frame, the micro contrast is something I really like and generally look for. Before jumping on this lens I have been using the fuji 18-55 kit lens extensively for a few weeks. I criticized it for lacking sharpness and micro contrast is some situations and the Sigma almost felt it was too sharp with too much clarity. But I think it because I was coming from a lens that was not that good in that regard. At least with the Sigma you have all the sharpness and then you can decide to use editing tricks or diffusion filters to reduce these sharp edges.

A keeper?

Overall, I am happy with this lens, good value for money. I still wish it was maybe 50gr lighter with less fringing. I am not an event or wedding photographer so the f1.4 is very unnecessary for me. I will sell the 1.4 and keep this f2 for now. If it was 50 or 75gr lighter I could also get rid of the Sony 2.8 but I think I will keep both for the moment and reevaluate in a few months.

I hope it gave you some valuable insights. Gear reviews is something I have fun doing, especially when done with my perspective and considering my workflow. I find them more useful and if you want very objective scientific tests there are plenty of them online. Thanks for reading :)