Sample footage with Sigma 50mm 1.4 lens

T

tfg

Well-known member
I just bought my 5D Mark II yesterday along with a Sigma 50mm 1.4 lens. I just thought I would share some rough footage in case anybody was interested in how the lens performs. This is purely for information sake, as the clip does not hold any artistic/entertainment value.

The footage is not color corrected or changed in anyway. No ND filter, so unfortunately I was shooting with a really high shutter (wanted to keep the lens open at 1.4 as much as possible).

http://www.theprogamer.com/daniel/sigma_50_14-stream.mov

I have learned a lot from this forum prior to making my purchase, so I hope that this footage might help someone in return. Enjoy.
 
Man that looks amazing.
the shallow depth of feild sure does look yummy:)

I noticed the audio isn't that bad too.
nice footage, great job!
 
that jello is totally acceptable considering you're at 50mm and it's handheld. With a shoulder mount it would be even better, and already your panning doesn't show us that much image sway, but more the vibration from the hands that produce it.

Great stuff man, thanks for sharing! Audio is surprisingly good!

Now if only there were a way of converting to 24p easily on a PC... Wonder if i could use my canon Rebel lenses on there... Probably.
 
Were you in manual focus? I heard some comment on how hard it was to hold the focus on your subject.
What sort of focus throw did you have?
I've seen very good reviews of that lens, may get one myself, if I don't go Leica / Zeiss for that FL.
Cheers,
Dave
 
dr_teeth90210 said:
Beautiful footage. So sharp! So vibrant! How much was the lens?
Click to expand...

The lens retails for $750 (Canadian) at Vistek, but I got the price knocked down quite a bit. Originally I was going to buy a Canon 50mm 1.4, but when I got to the store it turns out that they had already put the last Canon lens on hold for another customer. Worried that I might bow out of the whole sale, the sales person told me that they had a Sigma 50mm lens (which, I was told, is a better lens) and that they would knock off $250 of the price in order to get back into the ballpark price of the Canon.

After doing a quick google search I did indeed see that reviews confirmed that the Sigma had better performance, so I bought it. It's the only lens I've got right now ... just starting up, so to speak.
 
daveswan said:
Were you in manual focus? I heard some comment on how hard it was to hold the focus on your subject.
What sort of focus throw did you have?
I've seen very good reviews of that lens, may get one myself, if I don't go Leica / Zeiss for that FL.
Cheers,
Dave
Click to expand...

Yes, I was in total manual mode. I did not have any special focus device -- I was simply using the focus ring directly on the lens itself, while holding the camera without any shoulder mount. As for my comment on how 'hard' it was to focus -- just to clarify: the focus ring itself is smooth as butter, but still gives enough resistance that you wouldn't accidentally change it. It's perfect in my opinion. I was simply expressing the fact that shooting video with any standard video camera would never require such tedious focus work.
 
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I think the image looks great. Nice and sharp. I'm not a photographer myself but I believe the difficulty in focusing comes because you had it wide open. Instead of compensating with a faster shutter I would have set the aperture lower. The focusing would be much easier as the objects in the background would not be as blurred. But I do understand you wantd to see what it looked like fully opened and in my opinion it looked good. Thanks.
 
Ian-T said:
I think the image looks great. Nice and sharp. I'm not a photographer myself but I believe the difficulty in focusing comes because you had it wide open. Instead of compensating with a faster shutter I would have set the aperture lower. The focusing would be much easier as the objects in the background would not be as blurred. But I do understand you wantd to see what it looked like fully opened and in my opinion it looked good. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yep - that's why I kept it open at 1.4 - to test the shallowness of the depth of field, but still try to maintain focus of a moving subject, while also moving myself.
 
Hmmm.....Warehouse Express lists it for £360, so not too bad given our dire exchange rate.
The focus scale still looks very short though, that's the main thing that gives me pause, especially with such a fast lens and why I'm still looking for true manual lenses.
Still, I can't argue with your footage.
Dave
 
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