Lens review

Sigma 50 mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM

8. Vignetting

Sigma 1.4/50 HSM is designed to work with a full frame so the vignetting test, conducted on a small Canon 20D sensor is able to reveal just one part of the whole picture. The conclusions are favorable for Sigma, though – at maximum aperture it has a 22% (-0.73 EV)frame corner illumination loss, which is good, especially compared with the results of the competitors (from 23 to 34%).

On stopping down to f/2.0 the vignetting doesn’t bother us almost completely (12%) and by f/2.8 it disappears (8%).

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The fact of the existence of a very interesting non-central vignetting profile, presented by the Sigma, should be noticed here. To make sure that it’s not a result of an error or a body defect we repeated the vignetting test on another camera with the APS-C sensor and the results, within the error margin, were the same and the non-central profile also visible very clearly.