At $899, I am tempted to replaced my Rokinon 14mm/2.8 with this. Not as wide, but 4 times as much light at wide open.
Man, they are gunnin' for the OEMs! I am going to watch the tests/reviews very carefully. At the $899 price, if it comes close to living up to it's siblings, it will be in my bag. I just hope that reviews and availability align so that, should I want, I can buy it before my next vacation at end of January.
Man, they are gunnin' for the OEMs! I am going to watch the tests/reviews very carefully. At the $899 price, if it comes close to living up to it's siblings, it will be in my bag. I just hope that reviews and availability align so that, should I want, I can buy it before my next vacation at end of January.
I wouldn't be surprised if reviews start to pop up relatively quickly if things will be at all like the other Art lenses. I think they've generated enough buzz from the line that people are pretty quick to investigate new additions.
I read the imagingresource.com review... now my interest is really piqued! It would not be an expensive upgrade at all for me if I unloaded my Canon 24/1.4 (Version 1).
ETA: I went through the second review last evening... interesting that the reviewer is an astrophysicist. He really did a nice job showing the coma performance, which is decent but not, well, stellar. Still, I'm thinking this thing will blow the socks off of my Canon 24/1.4, and it is a lot wider to boot. Availability lines up nicely with my needs too. Methinks I will be prepping the Canon 14/1.4 for sale...
Roger over @ Lensrentals.com now has MTF curves posted. I was thinking I was going to wait for a little bit to see a few more opinions, and I was also considering the much wider, slower, and less expensive Samyang 14/2.8. After all is said and done, I am going to pull the trigger on the Sigma 20/1.4 this evening, and we will see how this goes.
Care to (briefly) explain WTF MTF Curves are besides an inconvenient typo? The colored lines and dots are pretty but less than meaningful to the non-engineer ... :-)
I was researching fast wide FF zooms and narrowed it down to the Tamron 15-30/2.8. At lower cost to either Canon or Nikon offerings, it seems to offer excellent quality at better price point. Of course it goes really wide at 15mm and got that 20mm covered as well going upto 30mm.
I think for general work the Tamron is a very good value. The coma performance at f/2.8 is not good, though, so in order to get good performance on night skies you'd need to stop down to at least f/4, maybe farther. For me, that's not going to cut it. The Sigma, though nowhere near as wide as a 14mm or 15mm lens, is two stops faster, and so I can stop down to f/2.8 and both coma and vignetting should be dramatically reduced. Or , I can accept some coma, and collect four times the photons.
ETA: for an economical lens for night-sky work, I think the Samyang 14/2.8 is an absolutely great value. The downside to this lens is the rather pronounced "moustache" distortion, which is not fully removed with any existing lens profiles in Lr.
I think for general work the Tamron is a very good value. The coma performance at f/2.8 is not good, though, so in order to get good performance on night skies you'd need to stop down to at least f/4, maybe farther. For me, that's not going to cut it. The Sigma, though nowhere near as wide as a 14mm or 15mm lens, is two stops faster, and so I can stop down to f/2.8 and both coma and vignetting should be dramatically reduced. Or , I can accept some coma, and collect four times the photons.
ETA: for an economical lens for night-sky work, I think the Samyang 14/2.8 is an absolutely great value. The downside to this lens is the rather pronounced "moustache" distortion, which is not fully removed with any existing lens profiles in Lr.
My order is in queue, no turning back now!
Funny, in our exchanges we had both alluded to how similar our searches were. Needless to say, I was contemplating the same Samyang as well, with the same thoughts. Make sure to post your thoughts as soon as you get your hands on one. If all goes as planned, I'll probably join you in ownership in a bit.
