Why 28mm Might Be the Sweet Spot for Filming Yourself at Home

A 28mm lens sits in an awkward spot between the 24mm and 35mm primes most people already own, and that in-between position is what makes it useful when you film yourself in a small room. If you record talking-head videos, tutorials, or product demos in a spare bedroom or home office, your focal length decides how much of the room shows up, how your face is rendered, and how close the camera has to sit to you.

Bought used for around $500 in October 2022, the Sigma 28mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art has spent most of the past few years on the studio camera that Josh Sattin uses to film himself. In his view, 28mm is the widest you can go on full frame before distortion starts to get in the way. Many people filming in a home office reach for 24mm or wider, or a 16mm lens on Super 35 and APS-C sensors, because the rooms are small. Sattin would happily use a 35mm or 40mm, but his space won't allow it, and he wants the frame to show the room and leave space for the products he talks about. The 28mm gives him slightly more compression and a bit more subject separation than a 24mm, without forcing the camera into the next room.

The bigger draw for Sattin is the Canon EF mount. He has used nearly every major camera brand over the years, and with a drawer full of adapters for Canon RF, L-Mount, Sony E, Nikon Z, and Fujifilm X, one EF lens can follow him to any of them. These days, it usually sits on his Blackmagic PYXIS 6K. He describes the lens as sharp and clean, with little to no chromatic aberration and very low distortion. He says autofocus holds up well even when adapted to Canon, Blackmagic, and Sony bodies. He rarely shoots it wide open, preferring f/1.8 to f/2 so more of him stays in focus while the background still falls away. Shooting there also lets him turn his lights down and still get more background blur than an f/2.8 zoom would give him.

Canon's EF mount places the lens 44mm from the sensor. Mirrorless mounts sit much closer: about 16mm for Nikon Z, 18mm for Sony E, and 20mm for Canon RF and L-Mount. That gap leaves room for an adapter to fill the difference without extra glass, so the lens focuses normally. Canon has moved nearly all of its new lens work to RF since that mount launched in 2018, and many shooters have sold off their EF lenses as they switched. That has pushed used prices down on lenses that were expensive when new. If you switch systems often, rent different bodies for different jobs, or run a cinema camera next to a hybrid body, a good EF prime can work across all of them. Spending on glass that moves between systems can stretch a budget further than buying native lenses for each new camera.

The 28mm also has an unusual history within Sigma's lineup. The DSLR Art primes began with the 35mm in 2012 and the 50mm in 2014. By 2018, the line had reached the 14mm and 105mm. Each Sigma lens carries a three-digit code on the barrel that marks its release year, so "019" on this lens points to 2019. Sigma also sold some of these DSLR designs in Sony E and L-Mount versions. As Sattin explains, those were essentially the same lenses with an adapter like the Sigma MC-11 built into the back. True mirrorless designs arrived later with Sigma's DG DN series. The 28mm and its sibling, the Sigma 40mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art, reversed Sigma's usual order. Most of Sigma's cinema primes were built from existing stills designs, but the 28mm and 40mm cinema lenses came first, and the stills versions followed. As far as Sattin knows, they're the only two Sigma stills lenses based on cinema designs. Both launched at around $1,400 each, just as many people were turning their attention to mirrorless gear.

The other lesser-known Sigma lens Sattin shoots his videos with is in the video above.