Back in the film days, my first telephoto lens for my Olympus OM-10 was a 135mm – the
premiere focal length for portraiture at the time.
Nowadays, the focal length is uncommon for prime lenses – a victim of the new focal
lengths du jour at 85mm and 105mm.
So it's both surprising, but not totally unexpected for Sigma to come up with a 135mm
f/1.8 version for their heralded Art series of lenses.
Increased sensor resolution and performance has necessitated new lens designs.
Beyond price point, an arguable part of Sigma's (and the other 3rd party manufacturers')
success has been their ability to release more modern lens designs at a faster clip
than the Nikons and Canons of the world.
And this particular lens is faster and cheaper than the name brand competition.
Like other lenses in the Art range, the lens is a hefty piece of glass weighing in at 2.49
lbs without any image stabilization.
With the hood attached, it's big.
After AF Fine Tuning the lens with my Nikon D850 and re-familiarizing myself with the
focal length, I started to have some real fun with the lens.
Focus speed is fast.
Color rendition and contrast is fantastic.
The lens exhibits expected vignetting wide open, but it's unnoticeable at f/2.5 and
smaller.
I didn't run into any flare or ghosting even when shooting into the sunset.
Chromatic aberration was non-existent even shooting into backlit situations.
On bright days, the hood definitely helped reduce indirect light from bouncing around
the glass.
I'm not the type of person to obsess over the bokeh.
To me, the best quality of out-of-focusness is non-descript and has no identifiable characteristics.
The sharpness of the lens combined with the depth-of-field of this particular focal length
can yield some really nice foreground to background separation.
This shot was a pretty good indication of sharpness.
Look at the hair on his arm.
That's pretty astonishing detail at 1:1.
AF Fine Tuning the lens didn't solve all the sharpness issues.
I was still seeing motion blur with shutter speeds up to 1/250s, which is both a reflection
of my unsteady hands as well as lack of image stabilization with a high resolution sensor.
The old rule of "1/focal length" for a minimum shutter speed might not cut it anymore.
There's not much to criticize about this lens.
It's a fantastic intersection of sharpness, weight and price.
Image stabilization would have been a nice bonus, but that would have increased weight
and price.
Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give the Sigma 135mm f/1.8 is that I would seriously
consider adding this lens to my arsenal.
But on the other hand, I might need to try out that new Sigma 105mm f/1.4 first.
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