Eksovision - Faction

Over 115 million people who love Klarna. Sign up and start using the Klarna card so you can pay with Klarna everywhere and earn £10.

Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX HSM EF lens

https://ebay.io/m/ikJXdK

I'm sort of in two minds about selling this lens, as it seems I was fortunate enough to have an issue/reproduction of it that doesn't have any of the issues that plagued many of these lenses that were originally sold. It was loathed by early adaptors of it, as it was renowned for having serious issues with slightly off, miss-focus ruining people's pictures, as people's canon DSLR devices would give focus confirmation, for things to look fine in the view finder, but for it to be slightly off when reviewing the images afterwards.

I was unfortunately one of those people who had managed to acquire a refurbished issue of this lens with the unfixable focus issue/problem back then, at under half price, but I just put up with it, to still be able to get usable results, where I used the slightly janky move of leaning in, and leaning out slightly across multiple frames, which I continued to use for many years, until it unexpectedly got stolen. Many years later, I had re-acquired the lens for even less, knowing full well of it's serious shortfalls, and its technical inadequacies, in part having developed my own way of using the lens over the many years I had it prior, and in part for it producing slightly more interesting images than I would take using the solidly reliable Canon 50mm f1.4 USM EF on canon DSLR bodies, purely because I'd gotten so used to using the slightly awkward Sigma 50mm f1.4 EX HSM EF, whilst knowing how to get round its focusing issues to some extent. It was just unexpected, and very fortunate that the second refurbed copy of it that I'd managed to get my hands on last year, didn't have the focusing issues at all!

It seems I now have one of the rare examples of this lens here that didn't have any such issues when used with a Canon DSLR. Even then, it's still not perfect when used on a Canon DSLR, for being a third party lens that isn't granted the same levels of mechanical AF reliability as Canon's own 50mm F1.4 USM on Canon's DSLR devices, and the fact that it has more obvious chromatic aberration under certain circumstances (which can easily be fixed in an an instant with DX0 optics/photo labs, ACR, Affinity Photo 2, or the now completely free Canva Affinity anyway).

Geometric optical distortion on this lens is extremely low, less than 1% at 0.4 of a percent on a full frame sensor, and apparently 0.69% on an x1.6 APS-C sensor.

However, it was not until I had the chance to use it with a Sony mirrorless A7R II via the Sigma MC-11 EF to FE adaptor did it suddenly feel like I was using a completely different lens, as AF was even faster, and more accurate than it ever had been on a Canon DSLR, for it to produce tac sharp images every time when used in AF-C with expanded Flexi spot lock on AF mode. Devices such as the Sony A9 (and most likely any device from the A7 iii and onwards) set to AF-C expanded Flexi spot lock on AF mode literally turns this lens into a fast focusing tac sharp lens that's completely unrecognisable when compared to how it is on a Canon DSLR (whether the be 5D, 6D, or a crop sensor device of any iteration). However, it does make me curious as to how it would handle as an adapted lens on something like a Canon R5, or R6. I didn't include devices such as the A7R II, because despite being as capable as it is, the use of the same MC-11 adaptor limits it to a central cluster of AF points, with no option made available to use lock on tracking modes at all, unfortunately, although it is able to immediately acquire tac sharp focus with the central focus point cluster, at which point your only option is to use old-skool focus re-compose. On the other hand, the Metabones IV adaptor does allow for it, and does assist towards producing tac sharp images too even when shooting wide open at f1.4, its just that it does it far more assertively, with far less focus pulsing on the AF algorithms, and the processors of the A7 iii generations of mirroless devices, and onwards.

The lens itself is very capable of producing stunning images even today, where a quick Google search of 'image sample taken with the Sigma 50mm F1 4 EX HSM EF lens' will turn out a whole slew of stunning examples/aesthetic image samples.

However, I recently finally managed to acquire a used example of a Sigma 50mm f1.4 ART HSM EF to replace it, which on the surface gave me less reason to keep the EX version. The problem is, that the EX HSM version of the lens still has its advantages in other situations where a more compact, and lighter 50mm f1.4 lens might be more suitable for a given photographic task, especially since I now had one of the rare examples of it that didn't suffer from the same issues that were widely reported, and complained about by many 11 to 12 years ago.

Again, I bought these lenses myself, and I haven't been given these lenses by Sigma, nor have they paid me, unfortunately. Back then, they were vastly more affordable than the Canon L versions, and still are today even as used refurbed examples. These opinions of these sigma lenses are purely my own. If you're interested, you can find more details at the eBay link for it.

https://ebay.io/m/ikJXdK

MEIKE 35mm f2.0 STM FE lens

https://ebay.io/m/YA8BBy

Tamron SP 70-200mm f2.8 Di VC USD (A009) EF lens

https://ebay.io/m/EEwmH2

...well used Sony A7R II...

https://ebay.io/m/5mh7w5

I can't be bothered typing a whole bunch of stuff about it all over again, you can find everything you need to know about it at the eBay listing link above if you're interested. More generally though, the main reason for selling is to upgrade, get funds for independently testing other gear.