So a good friend loaned me his lens. One of my subscribers that I have grown to know over the years offered to send me a couple of his Sigma lenses and let me use them for a while as review samples for you guys.
I really appreciate your offer Hassan and look forward to the day when we finally get to link up and go out on a photowalk together!
Hassan packed up two of his beautiful Sigma primes and sent them up for a look. He sent his 65mm f2 DG DN and his 90mm f2.8 DG DN. Both of these are in Leica’s L mount as Hassan has a Panasonic Lumix camera that is also in L mount due to the L mount alliance between Leica, Sigma and Panasonic.
The first impression of this lens is the darn thing is tiny. This lens is really small, this is awesome as it means it makes the system really compact. The next thing I noticed right away is how nice the build is, all metal construction for the major parts, including the lens hood from what I can tell. Really nice fitment of the lens components so there really is no play in the mating parts. Parts designed to move, like the aperture ring, move only in the direction they are designed to move in. The machine work and fitment is nicely executed from what I can tell.
The next thing I noticed is how fast the focus works, just understand this…it is fast. How fast? Well, it is fast enough to get the shot for me. it is not as fast as my native Leica glass, but it is plenty fast enough for my personal use. I don’t have a way to measure the focus speed, but it works great and I have no complaints about it.
It was even great at shooting panning blur photos of the passing bicycle riders in Coolidge Park.
So I took it out for a photo walk or two while I had it and to be honest, I think it is 98% of my Leica glass in every conceivable way. It is so close that you would not be able to tell if I showed you two photos and had you tell me which one came from which lens and why you think your answer is right. It is just that good. The images are laser sharp. The rendering is wonderful too. It is just a great lens all around.
Another thing I want to mention here is that the interaction with the lens is different than my Leica glass. Sigma approaches the aperture and the manual focus modes differently that Leica. I will be honest here, I kinda like the Sigma approach to aperture better too. The Leica lens is all software controlled, there are no external controls on Leica L mount glass except for the focus ring, so you use the camera’s controls to adjust everything. On the Sigma, the aperture control is on the lens, which is nice in my opinion. It has aperture choices in 1/3 stop clicks from f2 to f22 and then you can roll the aperture ring around to “A” for auto mode and the camera now has full control of the aperture just like the SL primes.
The other thing that Sigma does is something I am on the fence about. The manual focus is a switch selection on the lens itself. I dont know why they chose this way to control this function and to be honest, it is not my favorite way of doing this function. It might be that Leica’s firmware prevents Sigma from exploiting manual focus without it. I really don’t know why, but the focus ring is an encoder design which means it is not mechanically connected to the focus helicoid in the lens. One would think this would be how it would be designed if there was a mechanical switch separating the two modes. All that to say my thoughts of this lens are that it is a great lens, especially for the money and you can get them about anywhere. Well done Sigma, well done.
Thank you for reading my thoughts on the Sigma 65mm f2 DG DN lens that Hassan loaned me for my Leica SL2. It has been an adventure for me.