Portrait lenses are getting more and more ridiculous these days with their oversized glass elements and their super wide apertures. It's like every year a company will come out and try and outdo everyone by producing the most over the top lens they can and honestly, I couldn't be happier.
It this type of competition that really benefits the photography industry. The kind of performance we're now seeing in full-frame lenses is pretty much unprecedented. Lenses like the 135mm f/1.8 Art from Sigma is one of the sharpest lenses on the market. In my testing I found that it performed incredibly well and on par with the Zeiss 135mm f/2.0. This is saying a lot because the Zeiss lens comfortably beats almost any medium format portrait lens when it comes to sheer detail and sharpness. In a recent comparison by Tony and Chelsea Northrup, they put the Sigma 135mm lens up against the new Sony 135mm f/1.8 GM lens. When it comes to sharpness this lens may not be quite as good as the Sigma or the Zeiss version, but, it does have a few tricks up its proverbial sleeve. The Sigma is a much more affordable lens between the two but Northrup does discuss several reasons as to why you may want to pay extra for the Sony.
Check out the full comparison to see how both lenses perform.
Sorry, no interest on any Tony and Chelsea video. Too many hack jobs and his videos tend to have numerous errors.
I'm sorry you feel that way, do you have any examples of the errors, please?
Oh my god, are you serious?
Tony Notorious, as many call him, is infamous for sensationalists claims, such as lies which photography companies tell, ISO is a fake, shoot jpeg (long feud with Jared the Fro), "The Truth about NNN," whatever NNN might have been, single card slot is not for pro's, Z6 video is unusable, and many many more.
It almost does not make sense to waste time of life to find out all these faux-pas in his videos.
Agree
I agree, life is precious and we cannot buy more time. I'm just here for the comments, a nice quick read and comedic relief.
His video about the FAA Part 107 drone test single handedly helped me pass the test my first time 🤷♂️
I know Tony browses this site so I hope he sees this. The 107 video also greatly helped me. Tony is actually a great educator but unfortunately he hasn't been doing much of that anymore. I know it doesn't get the views that review videos and the like do but man I'd love to see him do more of that.
You should see his video review hack job of the Panasonic S1r entitled “The Truth about the Panasonic S1r”. To his dismay, Tony wasn’t included with the vast majority of popular photo bloggers at the marketing launch; thus, Tony claims in his “review” that the camera is “over rated” and hammers away at it, urging users not to buy one or use one...all without Tony ever using the camera or testing it. He even misleads less knowledgeable viewers into thinking he has the camera in front of him in his video and that he used it for testing, by placing an older version Panasonic on his table tilted just so that a viewer can’t make it the model easily.
I was a fan of his before I saw that video review and witnessed the spite. The comments there are pretty much all in agreement that the video review was not credible and deliberately misleading.
His two videos defaming photographer Steve McCurry were easily the most disgusting videos I've seen on YouTube this year. Northrup based them on Northrup's own ignorant blunders and clickbait-y lies, smugly presented as righteous "true story" journalism.
25 to 50 percent images out of focus? Sounds like eye-af is doing a terrible job? Is that on a moving object wide open in afc?
I’ll take Rogers opinion and reviews any day over this guy.
https://m.dpreview.com/articles/1478096987/roger-cicala-tests-new-sony-f...
DP Review has been owned by Amazon since May of 2007. While I find them useful for straight tech specs, their reviews have been and always will be suspect as a result.
I’ve had quite few people say something similar to me about DPR and their reviews but I’m not seeing anything wrong. Is there anything specific you think that makes you suspect their reviews?
Usman, first off- I'm not trying to flame or start any kind of fight. Were you familiar with DPReview before Amazon bought them? I found their reviews to be far more honest in regard to the actual quality/usability of the products. Back then they had no fear not recommending a product if it wasn't good enough.
After Amazon purchased them, every single product they reviewed was "Recommended" so that was enough for me to question their credibiltiy.
Having an opinion doesn’t mean you’re necessarily trying to start a fight i just wanted to know your thoughts on the matter. You’re welcome to share tour thoughts :-)
I didn’t follow their reviews prior to them being bought by Amazon so I have no point of reference unfortunately. It is interesting if they recommend every single product.
Usman, thank you. Its so easy to misinterpret forum posts (anywhere online) that I just wanted to be clear.
Fred, Roger has nothing to do with Dpreview.
I believe Tony’s bias is evident here. In this video he determines the Sigma is sharper by comparing the lenses with pictures taken with pixel shift mode. Pixel shift is notorious for a lack of reliability and extreme sensitivity to camera movement. He should have used an easily repeatable method of shooting for comparing the two lenses, such as a single shot taken at a relatively high SS single shot. As a pro, he may know this, but if not then either he is deliberately misleading or unintentionally inaccurate.
Roger at lens rentals used reproducible testing methods, which thus approaches scientific in its method. Roger claims the Sony resolves at a much higher level. In fact, the highest MTF he’s ever seen in a consumer lens.
Fair points against someone are fine but come on man. Really taking the.... with your pixel shift comment and somehow Tony using that to confirm his preferred choice as being better lol.
Maybe his use of pixel shift is not evident of bias, but he shouldn’t determine lens sharpness with pixel shift shots.
In your article above you say “when it comes to sharpness this lens may not be quite as good as the Sigma or Zeiss”. Was this line just a summary of Tonys video or was this your conclusion as well?
Sharpness or resolution can be objectively measured, Tony doesn’t do that here but he does in fact come to a conclusion. That’s just plain misleading or inaccurate.
Summary of the video, that’s why I used the words “may not” because personally I haven’t drawn any conclusions.
I think I definitely need to compare these two lenses myself.
Does it really matter if one is even like 5% sharper than the other? Nobody is gonna even notice that. IMO the only things the majority of people need to look at is their budget and for a portrait lens how it renders the out of focus areas. If you can afford the Sony but prefer the look of the Sigma bokeh or just how it renders the image just go with the Sigma. Sharpness will barely matter since it's easy enough to give it a bit more of that punch when post processing.
Well yes, it does because it's kind of my job to compare lenses and write about gear lol.
So it matters to people that review gear but it doesn't really matter to the people actually using the gear
Well that entirely depends on the individual. Do you value better CA performance or do you prefer a sharper lens. If a lens is slightly sharper but costs a lot more do you think it’s worth it to pay the extra? What if the more expensive lens is not as sharp as the cheaper alternative would that help you decide how to spend your money.
Gear reviews help people decide what to buy its not about what’s good enough but what’s good value. Some people want the sharpest lens and some people want character in their lenses and don’t particularly care about sharpness. Some people can’t stand CA.
You’re coming at this in the complete wrong way
Rogers findings don’t disagree with Tony’s findings.
But they do, if only in regards to sharpness. Roger’s testing found the sony to be the sharpest lens he’d ever tested. He even specifically compared it to the sigma 135mm which was the previous sharpest. One of your fellow Fstoppers authors Ryan Mense even wrote an article about Roger’s findings. I don’t know about you but I’d certainly call that disagreeing with Tony’s findings.
I must have missed that. Looking at the article from Roger I didn’t see anything compared to the Sigma. I’ll look further into this and see if I can do a direct comparison too.
It may not get mentioned in the DP review article about his tests that got linked earlier but he talks about it in his article for Lensrentals.
https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/03/sony-fe-135mm-f1-8-gm-early-mtf...
Thank you, Cecil. Lots of interesting stuff here and lots of awesome new lens options :).
I would prefer if the Sony is better because it's a proper native option.
Rogers findings directly oppose Tony’s findings. Tony found the Sigma sharper. Roger found the Sony sharper.
Not a great deal of love for this Tony bloke, apparently.
He makes some mistakes from time to time (the "ISO is fake" he di recently is one of em) but he also makes some fantastic content like the blind test to see if Sony colors really sucked (and surprise, they didn't!) which probably piss off many fanboys, so he gets hated.
I'm a bit confused by the recent Sigma ART lineup. Art lenses started as "cheap" (they were all way below 1000€) but great alternatives to the super expansive and sometimes not so great lenses from Canon and Nikon.
Now however I personally can't find a good spot from em because they got so expansive and bulky they make no sense anymore to me.
The 85mm is more than 1kg yet it still suffers from horrible longitudinal CA and is outclassed by stuff like they waaay cheaper and lighter Tamron 85mm f/1.8 in most things apart from sharpness (and even that's debatable since in real world the stabilizer on the Tammy is very useful).
The 135 is monstrous, yet in the real world it isnt' really better than a Canon 135 that's cheaper, and it's not as light, good and fast focusing as the, albeit more expansive, Sony 135 which is super pricey but also probably the best 135mm ever made.
The 105 is a joke, 1,6kg of glass for a lens that fails to even be apochromatic. Why would you need all that glass if you can't even correct all aberrations? I'd much rather buy a 100-105 f/2 with better correction with half the weight compared to that thing.
Same goes for the 40mm f/1.4, just... why?
Hahaha the canon is an outdated dinosaur. You need an eye doctor or stop using your 8MP camera to compare lenses. Get real
Yes, the Canon is a dinosaur, but with very minimal PP (a tad of sharpness and contrast added), you can't tell the difference. I've never had a negative comment on any of my 135mm f2L pictures. Don't forget, 85mm - 200mm lenses are some of the easiest to design and build for sharpness and apochromatic quality. I know, I have a physics degree and studied optics. Canon can redesign the lens, but I would imagine that it isn't a priority.
Just because you've not had a negative comment doesn't mean the two lenses compare.
Check Fred Miranda test instead of this nonsense. The GM is clearly sharper and I own the sigma but i am not blind
"the Zeiss lens comfortably beats almost any medium format portrait lens when it comes to sheer detail and sharpness." right...
Have you done any comparisons?
I have, against several Phase One, Hasselblad, Pentax and Fuji medium format lenses.
I wonder how you draw your conclusions.
I don't spend my time testing all that much, however in this case I have with my own IQ3100 and the 35BR, 40-80 BR, 80BR and 120BR that I own and a 150BR I borrowed. These compared to the Nikon 24, 35, 85 f1.4's and Zeiss 135 on a D800E and the Canon 11-24, 35II, 135 and 200 f2.0 on a 5D4 and 5DSR. I don't own the Nikon and Canon gear any longer but I'm not blind and looking at the files tells the story.
I wonder what you did? Maybe you just had bad luck.
Compared the 135mm to the 150mm f2.8 BR on the Trichromatic
To the 150mm N on the 100c and 100mm f2N
110mm f2 on the GFX
150mm f2.8 IF 645
180mm f3.5 on the Leica
Only the 150 f2.8 BR was slightly better than the Zeiss, the rest were not.
To be clear I said almost any, sounds like you've only compared it to Phase One. Not all medium format lenses (if any) are that good or even anywhere near as good as the new BR lenses. Phase One isn't the only medium format camera although it might be the best.
Yeah that 150BR is in my radar, maybe later this year.
I can tell you which one will win without watching...
Although I’m not going to start maligning Tony, I do have a bit of an issue with your review Usman. You mention that you make your living reviewing gear. I don’t. I’m just a professional photographer, but like half the people here know, as illustrated in the comments, Roger from Lens Rentals is perhaps the number one most respected reviewer of gear on the internet. It’s actually not a good approach to just repost a single You-tubers review as a summary and propagate his statements as if their truth. The reason why it’s not great is that in this case you’re spreading misinformation and bias instead of adopting a more rigorous scientific approach. A scientific approach for someone who doesn’t actually want to test is to do a meta-analysis or a summary of as many reviews as possible. Or at the very least - site the leading expert.
Many if not most professional photographers who read lens rentals reviews accept Roger as the gold standard. The reason is because a) he literally rips the lens apart before testing. Showing extreme rigor and explaining everything there is to know about it from the motors to the substructures to whether they glue elements. B) he will not review the lens without first testing multiple copies. The reason for this is glaringly obvious - sample variation is a very real thing and the only way to achieve power is multiple samples. C) he standardizes and tests on actual equipment designed to test MFT. Not pixel peeping in Lightroom.
Tony did an unscientific test on lenses with potential sample variation and, introducing potential error via focus shift. It’s a fun test and I love Tony for getting out there. Rogers on the other hand tore the lens apart and tested 10 copies to average his results and eliminate sample variation. His approach is scientific and he is on par if not exceeding in pedigree reviewers such as Ming Thien and Jim Klasson.
I think you really didn’t do due diligence here. You found a YouTube quick and dirty review and treated it as an authority while ignoring the real authority on the internet. Please don’t do this in the future, I love F-stoppers and more and more the site is being accused of shilling and having major bias in reviews, such as in the profoto versus Godox reviews.
It’s just my opinion but I think if your not going to review the kit yourself and your going to reiterate experts, make sure you actually know who the experts are in our field.
This is not a review from me lol. Sharing a video does not make it my review. How are you even coming to the conclusion that this is somehow my review. I mean I guess you spent a good amount of time writing that comment but you’ve completely missed it on this one.
Alsooo I don’t make a living from doing reviews. I’m a commercial architectural photographer and that’s what I do for a living. Reviews are part of my job with fstoppers.
Is a 135mm a good option for sports and/or concert photography? I already have the Sony 1.8 85mm lens which I use for portraits and the Sony 24-105mm f4 which I use for events. I wanted something with a longer focal length than 105 and perhaps something faster as well. I was thinking of getting the 70-200mm Sony f4 but if I can spend the same money and get a shorter but faster lens with the Sigma 135mm, I’m open to that too but I’m just not sure it is practical for my needs which are sports and concerts.