Name: Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM ART Lens for Penatx DSLR Cameras, USA Warranty
Brand: Sigma
SKU: SG3014DCPX
Price: 499.00 USD
Availability: Discontinued
Rating: 4.5 (78 reviews)

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM ART Lens for Penatx DSLR Cameras, USA Warranty

Sigma 30mm f/1.4

Sigma

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM ART Lens for Pentax DSLR Cameras, USA Warranty

Adorama

Photography

Lenses

SLR Lenses

Sigma SLR Lenses

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 

Top Rated Gear: Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM ART Lens for Penatx DSLR Cameras, USA Warranty Color: Black

The Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM ART Lens for Nikon DSLR Cameras (USA Warranty) is a prime lens designed for Nikon DX format cameras. Its 35mm focal length equivalent is 45mm which places it in the category of standard focal length lenses. With its particularly fast maximum aperture of f/1.4, the lens will perform very well in low light situations and provides shallow depth of field focus. With updated optical configurations (9 elements in 8 groups), as well as rounded aperture blades, the lens delivers sharp detail and nice background bokeh. Its minimum focus distance is 11.8" (30 cm).The lens' optimized light distribution helps to minimize field curvature preventing a loss of image quality at the edges of photographs and its double-sided aspheric lens element minimizes spherical distortion. A rear focusing system combined with a newly developed autofocus algorithm and Hyper Sonic Motor provide smooth and accurate autofocus. Fulltime manual focus is also supported. As part of Sigma's "Art" line of lenses it is compatible with Sigma's new USB Dock, which enables firmware updates and focusing adjustments.

I really can't tell a difference between shooting with Sigma and shooting with my Fuji lenses. Incredible quality for an incredible price.

Crisp, sharp rendering

Very sharp on my X-H2, light weight, and a great price. This is my new "walking around" lens!

Great value and performance

Lens is great. The lens case doesn't even fit the lens + hood. Pointless. Processing and delivery time could have been quicker like your other main competitor in NYC.  That's my reason for a 4-star instead of 5.

Great Lens!

work great sharp enough to people who is not professional

great product

An excellent lens that makes it easy to take good pictures.  A lot of fun to use.

Excellent lens.

Excellent image quality at all apertures. Lens is well constructed and durable. Works on full frame too with some slight vignetting.

Excellent image quality at all apertures.

Oh my, this lens is a little gem ! I purchased it for my D7500. Fantasic Bokeh when you want it and sharp as a tack when you want it. Great in close quarters and low light situations. I love it ! A great alternative to the 35mm Art DG, and a couple hundred bucks less.

Great Things Come In Small Packages

Excellent lens, field of view perfect, f stop great for indoors.

Great so far

I think this is the sharpest, finest lens I have ever had on my camera.  I love my Pentax Limited 35mm, but this lens puts it to shame.  Great bokeh, fabulous fast focusing.  I have not taken it off my camera yet.

I think this is the sharpest, finest lens I have ever had on my camera

One of my sharpest lens.  This is a go to lens for a variety of things including events, portraits, landscapes and more.  I used it on a APS-C but I have used it a couple times on a full frame 5DS and it was beautiful there too.  All of my gear was stolen recently this is the ONLY lens that I repurchased. Highly recommended.

Love Love Love

I use the Sigma 30mm 1.4 ART on a Canon C100 MII.  Great for video.  Produces nice images.  Works well with Canon mount.

Great lens on crop for video

An absolutely amazing lens! A huge step up from my canon 50mm 1.8! I take mainly portraits and it does perfectly with that. The focusing is fast and for the most part accurate. The build quality is nothing short of outstanding. Would recommend this lens to anyone!

Great lens

You need to have this in your bag! I bought this lens for a few main reasons. I wanted a really fast aperture for low-light conditions and a prime lens. The Sigma for me has it all. Its sharp, crisp and extremely quiet. Auto focus at f1.4 for me was a challenge at first. the more you use it the easier it becomes.

Killer lens!

I've had this lens for about two weeks. Not a lot of time to develope an opinion but just some initial observations. It's going to be best as a portrait lens, the focus is sharp and accurate when the subject is close (say 2-12 feet). I think the focus speed is good, but not as good as say my Nikon 17-55 or some other Nikon AF-S lenses. 

The biggest drawback or deficiency seems to be focusing on subjects that are 15-35 feet away. Maybe since the angle is wide, faces are small at that distance but for whatever reason it is consistently out of focus at those distances. 

AF tracking is not super fast and responsive as say a Nikkor AF-S lens. 

On the plus side a close subject is always tack sharp, the contrast is high and the colors are vibrant and crisp. 

I don't know if it will be a good landscape lens given that it does not seem to focus well at distant subjects. OTOH, it is sharp (when its in focus) and it renders colors and contrasts well. So if you're shooting on a tripod and have time to manual focus, maybe it will be a good landscape lens.
The construction seems rugged and tough.
Overall I think the lens is a good bargain.

So far so good

I paired this lens with my D7100, and when I look at the results, I think I'm shooting with a medium-format digital.

I couldn't ask for better color, sharpness, autofocus, build quality - you name it. 

In the week I've owned, it, I've used it for nature, landscape and city walkabouts both day and night.  It has the perfect focal length for all kinds of general photography in the DX format.

And the 1.4 speed opens up great possibilities for low-light and subject isolation.

Out-of-this-World Performance

Real good lens for just about everything. Amazingly build, real solid. Beautiful bokeh with 9 blades

Solid Image quality, and a much needed focal length for APS-C sensors.  Focuses pretty quick, but not as quick as canon's USM.  Great build quality.  Highly recommended as a first prime to go with a standard Zoom.  I use this alongside my Canon 15-85USM for low light situations, artsy bokeh up close, or when I want to carry around something a little lighter.

Highly recommended.

Great prime for Canon APS-C

Great for indoor portraits and landscapes as well. Great bokeh. Some problems with consistency in autofocus, but a solid B+ in my book (I've owned/rented quite a few prime lenses and this is based on a price/performance "ratio").

GREAT LENS

I use my new lens for low light applications, I also got is at a great price on sale.

I really like my new 30mm f/1.4

I have a Sony Alpha 700 that I bought with a Tamron 18-250mm F3.5 lens, and I wanted a fast lens that could double for portraits as well as scenery. The Sigma 30mm F1.4 lens fits that purpose very well. It produces very sharp images in limited light situations. While the Tamron images at 30mm are fine at F4.0, they are not quite as sharp as the Sigma at that same setting. Conversely, and surprisingly, the Tamron lens appears to have a bit of an edge when both are stopped down to F16. I can only guess that my automatic spot focus setting may not have been exactly on each time. I blew up the pictures and attached them so you can judge for yourself.  For wide angle photography, I am very happy to use the Sigma lens in a stitched panorama mode, so even its lack of wide angle is acceptable to me. I suspect I'll use the Sigma as my primary lens and only switch to the Tamron (zoom) lens when I can't get close to my subject.

Superb Quality

Although this is no tiny Pentax Limited pancake, it is not unwieldy.

On the APS-C "cropped" format, 30mm is about a "normal" angle of view. For me, it is better than the 50/1.4 I had before. And, the focal length fits between the 21 and 40 I already have.

Wide open is a bit soft as you would expect, and the thin DOF makes critical focusing a bit problematic.

Still, I'm happy to have it though at the regular price I would be hesitant to get it unless I had a real need for it, which I don't.

Fast and normal

The Pentax version has no HSM. Still, it focuses pretty fast, and the noise is no worse than other lenses.

No HSM for Pentax

First let me say that I am a photography enthusiast, and that I am still improving my skills.  I invested in a Canon T3i body about a year ago.  I first bought the Sigma 17-50mm F2.8 zoom lens.  I soon found that I needed a longer zoom and picked up the Sigma 50-150 F2.8 lens (the version that is now discontinued without image stabilization).  After buying these two lenses, I decided to invest in my first "prime" lens and selected the Sigma 30mm F1.4 primarily to help with indoor low light shooting and to increase my depth of field.  F2.8 lenses are "okay" for indoor shooting without a flash, but a wider aperture helps tremendously.  

After reading all the reviews I decided to buy the Sigma 30mm F1.4, the Canon 50mm F1.4 and the Canon 50mm F1.2 to compare them all.  I also had access to the Canon 50mm F1.8 "nifty fifty" lens for testing although I wanted something with a wider aperture so did not seriously consider that lens.  I am a value shopper and was not willing to spend more than about $500-600 for a single lens.  I did read about some of the other Canon lenses, like the 24mm F1.4 and the 35mm F1.4 lens, but they both cost ~$1400-$1500 per lens which put them out of my price range.  

I ended up with the Sigma lens because it was the best of the bunch.  For starters, the overall build, weight and feel of the Sigma lens was superior, in my opinion, to any of the 3 Canon lenses.  Second, the Canon F1.8 and F1.4 lenses were not sharp at maximum aperture - they both had to be stopped down to get a really sharp image - whereas this was NOT an issue with the Sigma it was very sharp at F.1.4.  I was very surprised about this finding with the Canon 50mm F1.4 although published reviews on the internet seem to allude to this as a shortcoming of that lens.  The bokeh was comparable between the Sigma and the Canon F1.2 and F1.4 lenses, although the Canon F1.8 lens was sub-par (as expected) but not really "bad".  However, when stopping down on the Canon lenses, the depth of field was increased and thereby minimized "artistic" opportunities.  Since I planned to use the lens for indoor shooting and for portraits, it was critically important for me to know that I could use the lens and be happy with the output at F1.4.  The Sigma focuses very fast, I think faster than the Canon 1.4, definitely faster than the Canon 1.8 and perhaps similar to the Canon 1.2 lens.  

I also realized through my testing that because my camera body has an APS-C sensor, that a 30mm lens is more or less equivalent to a traditional 50mm lens in its performance whereas the 50mm lenses performed more like an 80mm lens on my camera's body.  I found that the 50mm lenses did not provide me with enough of a wide angle for my shooting indoors at family events.  

The only issue I've ever experienced with the Sigma lens is that occasionally, perhaps 1/40 times when I first turn on the camera, is that every image taken will be out of focus. Simply turning off the camera and turning it back on resolves the issue entirely.  Also, I haven't experienced this problem in a few months so it might have been due to a dirty connection between the body and the lens.

Ultimately, this is a terrific lens.  It is on my camera at least 80% of the time since I've purchased it.  I only regret that I did not buy this lens first.  It works great in low-light, even without a flash, indoors and without hitting ridiculously high ISO levels.  The images are bright, with good color rendition and sharp, sharp focus.  It is fantastic for shallow DOF artistic photography.  It provides a wide enough view for shooting indoors at close range (whereas the 50mm had too much zoom).  It is a really fantastic lens and I highly recommend it.

Great lens!

Just starting working with this lens but so far it's everything I thought it was; great in low light and very sharp.

I really like this lens!!!

I love being able to shoot in low light situations without a tripod or flash... this is the perfect lens for this application

Superb "standard" lens

This is an excellent lens when you find yourself in an time, and distance limitation coupled with low light .....this lens will certainly get you out of a jam.

My bailout lens

If you are the type of person who strives for excellence in your photographic work, this lens is for you.  I purchased this lens on the recommendation of the sales rep. because he uses this lens and I couldn't be happier with it.  It has not failed me in any respect after 1,000 photos in just 2 weeks time.  It is lightweight, amazingly sharp and enables you to make an ordinary image into a work of art.  With the 1.4f stop,  and the 30m focal length which is equivalent to a 50m in film cameras or full frame digital, this is an excellent walk around city lens.  I would highly recommend this lens to anyone who cares about both the quality of the product and final image. I have 15 years of photographic experience and this lens has brought me to a new level. 

My order was handled in a helpful, efficient  manor and was delivered very quickly. I have never been let down by Adorama and will continue to use them for all my photography needs.

"Amazing, light, sharp & versatile"

It's a shame that there isn't really a cheap, fast, normal FOV lens for Canon's APS-C cameras, but the Sigma 30mm 1.4 comes awfully close to filling that void. It's a moderately priced, well-built, and optically excellent lens with good sharpness, good color, and very pleasing bokeh. For reasons I can't quite pin down, on an APS-C camera, I consistently preferred the results from this lens to what I would get from Canon's 35mm f2. 

The only disadvantage to be aware of is that different copies of this lens may vary in quality on your particular camera. This is where warranties - and patience - and microadjustments - come in handy. 

Other reviews purport that this lens is soft in the corners, but my copy was excellent across the frame.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM ART Lens for Penatx DSLR Cameras, USA Warranty

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