Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG HSM Art Aperture Series @ 24mm: Alabama Hills Rainstorm Creek (Nikon D850)
See my Sigma SLR lenses wishlist at B&H Photo.
This aperture series at distance shows the performance the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG HSM Art at 70mm from f2.8 through f/11.
This series is shown reluctantly, mainly for confirmation of the very poor performance seen at the other focal lengths: badly blurred edges. Here at 70mm it is at its worst.
Includes images from f/2.8 through f/11 along at up to full camera resolution.
Companies that allow seriously out of whack lenses to ship to customers deserve scorn as it does serious damage to a photographer’s work: my reward for all the hours spent in non-repeatable rare conditions is crap-grade images. There is no recovery from that. I cannot go back and repeat a once-a-year storm conditions, the snow way down the mountains slopes, water in the dry creekbed, etc. All of the material I shot is damaged by this poor performance. Shame on Sigma for letting a sample like this ship to customers.
This image is not my favorite at all, but it shows the poor performance well.
James K writes:
Your Sigma 24-70mm shot is not even iPhone quality. What a piece of junk. What a waste of your valuable time. I just returned 3 copies of their 16mm f/1.4 MFT lenses because they couldn’t auto focus accurately. One of the copies was sent to me directly from Sigma and that lens had such poor quality at f/1.4 and f/2 that I could’t believe my eyes. Pure crap, worse than your 24-70mm by a mile.
Sigma quality control is terrible. I will not buy any of their products again.
DIGLLOYD: well, I won’t go that far (“iPhone quality”). But shooting raw/DNG on the iPhone delivers hugely better results than the garbage that Apple’s JPEGs provide.
I wonder what is going on with Sigma quality control. I had not had such troubles with many Sigma DG HSM Art lenses. James K has had a lot of trouble recently.
Jason W writes:
So the 24-70 2.8 DG HSM sample here is clearly atrocious, but how would you characterize Sigma's general quality control versus Nikon, Canon or Fuji?
With the Fujifilm GFX, you had a 110mm sample that was even worse than what we're seeing here and I rarely hear complaints about their lenses. I worry some might throw the baby out with the bathwater, as Sigma has loads of word class glass.
DIGLLOYD: I’ve had very good luck with Sigma DG HSM Art lenses to date. I actually went and shot some test series with the Zeiss Milvus 25mm f/1.4 to rule out some kind of Nikon D850 camera sensor alignment issue, because the Sigma 28m f/1.4 DG HSM Art was also off a bit and the Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 DG HSM Sports needs a lot of stopping down. I could find no issue at all with the Milvus 25/1.4, which establishes the camera as OK. I don’t know what to think at this point.