[Music] Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott. Sigma has done it again with another genre-busting type lens that does something that really hardly anyone else has done. Now, I can't say that no one else has done it before because as long as I have been doing photography and doing reviews, there's been that debate between the zoom range of a 24 to 105 mm F4 lens and then, of course, the maximum aperture of a 24 to 70 mm f2.8. And, of course, what people have wanted for as long as I've known the discussion is people want to have a 24 to 105 millimet f2.8. And why don't they do that? Obviously, the reason is that it's much easier said than done. Now, it has now been done since Canon released their 24 to 105 mm f2.8 Lis lens. They obviously, it is possible to do it, though to be fair, that Canon is a behemoth of a lens weighing about over 1300 gam and costing about

$3,000. But Sigma has come with a lens that almost does it. This is not a 24 to 105 f2.8, but their newest lens is the 28 to 105 mm f2.8 DG DN art series lens. The good news, however, is that although it's not quite as wide, Sigma has managed to keep the lens weight at under a kilo, and it costs just $1500, or half the price of the Canon lens. So, is this a lens worth considering? Well, that's what we're going to dive into in today's review, right after a word from our sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by the clothing brand Fok. You may have seen their ads on your social media feeds. The Fok brand was launched in 2020 with the intent of producing technical clothes with a better fit, particularly for those with athletic builds. I'm 6'1 and weigh 175 lb, and I found their size large slim fit cuts work well for me, tapering where I want them to while leaving room for my

active Lifestyle. The materials of even their basic t-shirts and polos feel great with soft cool blends of Puma cotton, bamboo fiber, and cerona fibers. This half-zip PO features high-end modal fiber along with some spandex for stretch. Fok boasts a 60% reorder rate, which tells you just how much their customers love the feel and fit of their clothes. Fok is offering a 20% discount on everything for my audience, so visit f.com and use code dustin2 to build your wardrobe. That's f.com and use code Dustin 20 for 20% off everything. So, as you can see, this isn't a small lens, but neither is it ridiculously large. In fact, as far as the physical dimensions, it is very similar to Tamron's 35 to 150 mm F2 to 2.8 VXD lens, though it is a little bit lighter. The Sigma lens is 87.8 mm or 3.5 in in diameter. It is right under 160 mm in overall length or 6.3 in. It has 82

mm front filter threads just like the Tamron. However, it weighs in at 990 G or 34.9 Oz. That makes it 310 G less than what the Canon lens is and about 175 G less than what the Tamron is, mostly because the Tamron is a little bit wider around in diameter, so it's got a little bit more heft to it. So, I feel like overall, all things considered, that Sigma has done a pretty good job managing the weight here. Though, to be fair, it is a smaller zoom ratio than either of those other two lenses. The Tamron also has the advantage, while it doesn't go as wide, of having a larger maximum aperture, going as large as F2 on the wide end. But overall, I think that Sigma has done the job, particularly if they've managed to pull it off optically, which we'll dive into in just a moment. Modern Sigma lenses that are part of their art series or sports series are very full-featured, and that's the case here. That starts with a

wide VAR variety of controls for the aperture. We do have an aperture ring. You have the option of either having clicks or with a button. You can dclick it. You have the ability to use an iris lock that will lock you either into the aperture ring or if you want to lock out of it if you PR turn prefer just not control aperture um yourself manually but control it from within the camera. You just lock it into the a position and it will allow you to just use the uh in-camera control and not mess with the aperture ring. We have got a couple of the custom buttons function buttons that you can program the function from within the camera. An AF MF switch and then we have a zoom lock that locks you into the 28 mm position to prevent anything like Zoom creep. Though as you can see I can shake it up and down this is a very well-engineered lens uh even if I put it halfway through it's not doing any kind of creeping. It is a very nicely made lens a combination of some different

materials here in it. I think largely we have got their thermal composites, which is their engineered plastics. Though it has a premium feel to it, that doesn't feel plasticky in any way. But I think that's part of the way that they have kept the overall weight down. Now, the zoom function is very nice and smooth, nicely damped, no kind of sticking points anywhere. I will note that, unlike Sony or any of the other third-party lenses that I'm aware of on Sony e-mount, it zooms in the opposite direction. So that's a little bit annoying if your muscle memory goes the other direction, which for most of us it does. But anyway, just something to be aware of. This is also available in a Leica L mount as well. We do have a thorough weather sealing here that starts with a gasket at the lens mount. There are internal seals and then a coating similar to a Florine-type coating on the front element that helps with fingerprints and moisture to complete the weather sealing design. Now inside

we've got one unique aspect here, and that is that they chose to do a 12-bladed aperture here. That's atypical for Sigma; typically, they use odd blade count numbers, nine or 11 blades, for example. In this case, it's 12, and I don't actually, I don't understand why more manufacturers don't do this, because the upside is it produces really nice-looking sun stars. In this case, to have that, those 12 clean sunburst effects, I think it looks really, really nice, and so I appreciate that. Here, we have no optical stabilization built in. You're going to be relying on whatever in-body image stabilization you have on your cameras, and most cameras, it's probably not going to be a factor, but if you have a camera that doesn't have IBIS, know that there is no lens-based image stabilization. It does come with the hood, which is a nicely made hood that locks. Sigma's modern designs have a lot of different textures and lines on them that make them have a great-looking kind.

of modern but yet sleek look to them. Overall, it also includes a nice padded zippered nylon case to carry the lens in, so it is very, very nice overall. Now we have a 40 cm minimum focus distance, and that's going to give you varying degrees of magnification, obviously depending on where you are in the zoom range. If you go all the way to 105mm, however, you can get as high as 0.32 times magnification. That's a very useful figure, and by the way, that's one area where it definitely tops the Tamron, which has about half that degree of magnification. And so, definitely something that I appreciate on the Sigma lens. So, feature-wise, a nicely equipped lens. How about autofocus? Autofocus, we have the HLA, which is the high-speed linear actuator focus motor here. That is Sigma's premium autofocus motor. It has a lot of thrust to it, and thus it is able to do near-instantaneous autofocus changes, not just on the wide end, but also as you can see here as I move

towards the telephone photo end that we're able to just essentially instantly go back and forth. So, that helps a lot to have the ability to focus in situations that demand high-speed focus. I had the opportunity to use this lens at a rodeo that came to town, and so as a byproduct, even though the lighting conditions weren't great, I think in some of these sequences I was shooting at ISO 6400. But this lens had no problem keeping up with the action and both acquiring the fast-moving, you know, horses and cattle, and uh, but also being able to track that action and to deliver well-focused results. And I found that autofocus was able to just snap into basically whatever I wanted to do. And we used it at a few events. I used it some, my wife used it some, and was able to capture things, you know, like people tossing horseshoes and to catch things in the midst of action, had no problem in acquiring that. There is essentially no sound to the autofocus motor as well. It

is pretty close to perfectly silent. I will point out the only limitation when it comes to action is one that affects all third-party lenses on Sony. So, this doesn't exist on Leica, though you know to counterbalance it. There are no cameras on Leica with, or at least with L Mount at the moment, that are shooting really high burst rates. But for example, on Sony, you're going to have a maximum burst limitation of 15 frames per second. Which means, you know, I have the Sony Alpha 1. It could do 30 frames per second. You're still going to be limited at 15. And even if you have the A9 Mark III and its incredible 120 frames per second, your limit is still going to be that 15 frames per second. Not Sigma's fault, but a reality here on Sony. Now, on the video side of things, Focus pulls were nice and smooth and confident. No issue there. There is some Focus breathing, but it's not terrible. And so, I don't have any real kind of critiques there overall. I

did notice that when it came to my hand test that the transitions were overall good, and uh, so whenever the hand was actually there and blocking my eye, sometimes I didn't realize it, but my eye was actually looking through there. So, a couple of those sequences does stay locked on my eye, but whenever I got my hand in the right place, it made that transition nicely from hand-eye and vice versa. What I found in some of my real-world focus changes is that it's not quite as nicely damped as what I would prefer, and so there is a little bit of a jump, you know, quickly moves to the next focus subject rather than a more cinematic focus pull. But, you know, if you want more cinematic looks, you know, fortunately, it does have a pretty nice focus ring here, and you can do those focus pulls yourself. I have used this lens for probably at least a half dozen of my YouTube videos. Obviously, wasn't announcing that because the lens wasn't announced, but I used it for filming in a number of situations, and it was reliable.

lock Rock Solid, and of course, the footage looked great overall. I do think it's a very nice lens for video. You do have the ability to, you know, zoom in relatively smoothly. You can see here in the shot that I went throughout the whole Zoom range, and it's relatively smooth. It would be better on a tripod, obviously, but for handheld, not all that bad. So overall, autofocus is pretty great. So how about the Optics here? I'm going to give you an optical overview, and then those of you that want the deeper dive, you can take a look at the Deep dive Optical breakdown that will come at the end of the video. I will film. It'll probably be a while before I can release it, but I will film a direct comparison with the Tamron and give you one of my verses episodes. But overall, here we have an optical design of 18 elements in 13 groups. That includes two lldd, two sld, and five aspherical elements. Sigma, in their internal literature that was shared with me, they compare this

favorably to both their 24 to 70 f2.8 and older 24 to 105 mm F4 lens. And so, this is a lens that has a very strong optical performance, though of course the Tamron also has an exceptional optical performance as well. Back to the Sigma, however, some pluses is that I saw very, very little fringing of any kind, either the longitudinal aspect before or after the plane of focus. Then also the lateral chromatic aberration that showed up near the edge of the frame. I didn't see any issue with those either. So overall, a really nice performance for that. Unfortunately, even though they only went as wide as 28 rather than 24 mm, they still ended up with a fairly pronounced amount of barrel distortion on the wide end. I needed a plus 26 to correct a significant amount of barrel distortion, and manually correcting it is a little bit challenging. It's not fully linear, so if you go to all the way where I adjusted the inside lines here, you can see it almost creates some

pin cushion distortion on the outside edges. There is a correction profile. Obviously, it does it a little bit more cleanly, though it doesn't fully correct the barrel distortion. And so, unfortunately, a little bit of that does remain on the wide end. Vignette is also very heavy on the wide end. We have got a plus 90 to correct for it, so almost maxing out the sliders for correction. On the telephoto end, the switch is to a pin cushion style distortion, still fairly strong, a minus 10. And I knew it was fairly strong because I saw in some of my real-world shots where you could see where there were lines towards the edge of the frame. For example, in this shot, you can see there's a bit of a bow to the line. And so, seeing that, I was like, Oh, there's definitely some pin cushion distortion here. And sure enough, when I tested, it was a minus 10 to correct the pin cushion distortion. Vignette is about a stop lower. I needed a plus 61 to

correct on the telephoto end or telephoto end, so that's right over two stops, whereas in at on the wide end, it is three plus stops. And so, definitely some vignette throughout the zoom range, though less so on the telephoto. In terms of the optics, I tested on a 61-megapixel a7R Mark 5, and my crops are shown at 200% here. I found that the lens is extremely sharp in the center and the mid-frame. However, at 28 mm, there's a fairly significant drop-off into the corners. It's quite a bit softer in the corners. Stopping down to f5.6, I found that the corners were sharper but never as sharp as the rest of the frame. They never quite catch up. I found that diffraction will start to show up by f11. It becomes much more noticeable by the minimum aperture of f22. You're probably going to want to avoid that because your image will get considerably softer. As we go throughout the zoom range, I found that things

improved a bit at 35 MIM all across the frame, including some improvement in the corners, a little more capacity for the corners to sharpen up as you stop the lens down. When you get to 50 mm, you have hit basically the benchmark, high-water mark for this lens in its zoom range. It is basically perfectly sharp at 50 mm, even at f/2.8, all across the frame, fantastically sharp, fantastically high contrast. It looks amazing. There is still good at 70 mm, though. It drops off a little bit from that high-water mark at 50 mm, and 105 mm is roughly the same, a little give and take relative to 70 mm. What the MDF chart shows is that it's really sharp on one axis and a little less sharp on another axis, and so the byproduct is that contrast isn't fantastic at 105 mm, but it is good enough that I found that my real-world results were sharp, not mind-blowingly sharp, but nice and sharp, even at f/2.8.

stop it down a bit, and it gets sharper still. Just to give you a quick overview, when I compared to the Tamron on the wide end, the Tamron is just a hair sharper. But there is some give and take at 105 MIM. Comparing there, um, the Tamron is sharper at that point across the frame. And as you stop the lenses down, the Tamron's um, improvement actually grows relative to the Sigmas. And so, it is a little bit sharper, I would say overall as a lens. I've used this lens ever since its introduction, and so being very, very familiar with it. I've probably used this lens more than any other over the last three plus years. So, what I found relative to the Sigma is that I felt like under similar situations, the Sigma was sharp but just not quite as sharp. Bokeh quality is good but not exceptionally good. I did find that there is some extra outlining in some areas, and if you got bright specular highlights, you may see a little bit of onion bokeh or concentric circles inside.

the specular highlights in some places, so it can get a little busier in some situations, and other situations, it looks very good. The rendering here, though, I would say is good, but not exceptionally good. Flare resistance, however, is exceptionally good, and for a zoom like this, I'm very impressed by how good it does in its flare resistance. Definitely something that the Tamron struggles with a bit. The Sigma was much better and basically Rock Sol in bright Sun conditions, and I love those Sun Stars, so that's a definite plus. Colors are also excellent. This lens produces beautiful-looking images, and so obviously, I appreciate that. In conclusion, this is yet another example of Sigma being unafraid to take on the major engineering challenges. They continually produce lenses that no one else has either produced or is even willing to try to produce, and even though they take big risks, I will say this for Sigma: they largely pull it off, and so I am impressed that here's another lens that does something not quite, but almost does.

what people have been clamoring for for you know nearly 15 years that I've been involved in the photography community, and they have largely pulled it off. Yes, it doesn't go all the way to 24 mm, but still a 28 to 105 mm f2.8 Zoom is impressive. And I think that that versatility is really what's going to sell people on the potential of this lens. I would say for myself that I still slightly favor the 35 to 150 mm Tamron, largely because I really do value that wide end of it and makes it easier for me to carry just one lens into an event setting. But I also recognize that the sigma does have some relative advantages. It's cheaper at $5500 versus $1,800. It goes wider 28 versus 35 mm. It has much higher magnification, and so that for if you're doing wedding photography, for example, it means you can get in close and get some of those details and nicely magnified shots. And the sigma also has better flare.

resistance. It's not cheap. It's not small. But there is a lot of versatility that's packed into this lens for a $1,500 US price. So, not cheap, but I think you know, reachable, particularly when you consider that for many photographers, this is a lens that might be able to replace multiple lenses for them, which obviously extends its versatility. I'm Dustin Abbott. If you want more information on the Sigma 28 to 105 Art Series lens, you can check out my text review that is linked in the description down below. It's also linked to an image gallery and some buying links there. And if you want a deeper dive into the optical performance, stay tuned. Here we go. So, we'll start by taking a look at the distortion at 28 mm. You can see a very pronounced amount of barrel distortion. So, if I fully correct the lines inside here, you can see that it creates a pin cushion distortion on the outside edges because you have to overcorrect the outside edges to properly correct the side edges by

comparison here is the correction profile from Sigma, and you can see what it does is it doesn't entirely um correct all of these lines, leaving just a little bit of a bulge on the outside to in order to allow for kind of a happy medium somewhere in between to get this result. On the manual correction, I dialed in a plus 26 and then all the way up to a Plus 90 to correct for the vignette in the corner, so pretty close to maxing out that slider. Now, as you go throughout the zoom range, that will invert to a pin cushion Distortion, as you can see here. Vignette still heavy but not as heavy, and also this Distortion pattern is much more linear. So even with a manual correction, you can see that I was able to correct it pretty cleanly. We have about a plus 60 for the vignette correction, so a little over two stops of Correction in the corner here at 105 mm. Fortunately, the next few metrics are much stronger, and you can see here that

there is a minimal amount of longitudinal chromatic aberration, a little bit of fringing after the plane of focus, but very, very little. In this shot of the grass, you can see, first of all, that you're able to get nice sharpness and contrast in the grass itself. But as we look here in the edges, places where there could be fringing, it's, it's, there's a little bit there, but it is quite minimal. No real issue with fringing here. Likewise, with lateral chromatic aberration, very well corrected for that. I see basically no fringing here, even at a high level of magnification, so nothing to worry about. So, taking a look at resolution here, this is 61 megapixels. I'm going to show you results at 200% magnification, 28 mm f2.8 in the center of the frame. Looks fantastic, lots of detail, lots of contrast, no concerns there. Mid-frame also looks fantastic. As we pan down here, we can see, I like to look at this bill, you can see that looking still good up

in this quadrant, just a little bit softer, less contrast. As we move down here, you can see likewise that we're losing a little bit of that contrast. And as we get down towards the corner, definitely a lot of loss from this point here to that final bit there towards the edge. And so, we lose a lot of contrast and detail there towards the edge. Now, stopping down to F4, it produces just a little bit of improvement in the center of the frame. You can mostly see that in the text here, which is a little bit more crisp. But already, the center looked pretty fantastic. Mid-frame already looked good, but you can definitely see an improvement in the mid-frame. And what you're going to be able to see is that as we come down here, even in this corner, it's definitely more contrasty and sharp. But even more noticeably here down in this Zone, look at the $2, how much better the contrast and the resolution is there. And you can see that as we get down towards the corner that it's definitely

improved. It's still not fantastic from F4 to F5.6. Another improvement for sure, but still not amazing. We'll take a look around different places around the frame, and you can see that looking at this side, this side also is looking quite equal as far as the centering goes. Up into this corner again looking very good at F5.6, and then up into the upper right corner, and we can see here it also looks good there. And so we do have a nice centering performance. So you'll find the center of the frame very slightly less sharp at F11, not bad, but you can see by F22, which is the minimum aperture, that it is dramatically softened. So you're probably going to want to avoid going past F11 unless you really need to. Now if we compare 28 mm to 35 mm, which is the next marked place on the zoom ring, you can see that in the center of the frame a very, very slight improvement. You know, it's not a lot to improve.

because it was already fantastic, but 35 mm does look a little bit more crisp. If we look in the mid-frame, you can see that there's just a little bit more contrast pop there. Let's take a look at this zone on the $2 bill. It's a little improved, but not significantly, and that's going to carry on as we go towards the corners. It is definitely better, uh, it's not great yet, but definitely better at uh f2.8, and it does sharpen up a bit faster at F4. By f5.6, looking pretty good at 35 mm. What's interesting is that even if I compared to f5.6 at 35 mm to wide open f2.8 at 50 mm, you can see that 50 mm may look even better. This is really the pinnacle of the performance in this mid-frame. I would say it's sharper at f2.8 and better contrast than it is at 50 at uh 35 mm, even at f5.6, and down into the corners, it's

probably not quite better, but it's certainly hardly any worse, even at f2.8. And if we stop down to 5.6, that's really close to about as good as we get in the corners. The corners are never amazing with this lens, but good enough, I think, to get by in real-world use where you're not looking at it at 200% magnification. So, if we move on to 70 mm, you can see that at f2.8, it looks good in the center, not as great as what it did at 50 mm. You'll find a bit of improvement as you stop it down, tell a little bit more contrast there. Mid-frame looks good, better still at F4. As we go down towards the edge here, you can see looking good down through here, and as we get down towards the Edge performance again, it's not amazingly good, but it's good. So, finally, at 105 mm, center of the frame looks very similar to what we saw at 70 mm again.

Some improvement when you stop down to F4. Mid-frame is looking good and a little bit better as you stop it down a little bit. As we scroll down here towards the edge, again it's looking good. It's never amazing in the corners and here I would say corners look a little bit softer, lower contrast even when you stop it down a little bit. For some real-world perspective, however, this is at 105 mm f2.8 and you can see that that's a lot of contrast and detail. There's nothing there that anybody would be unhappy with. So for some perspective, we're going to put the sigma at 28 mm and the Tamron 35 to 150 at both of them at f2.8. Obviously 35 mm for the Tamron. You can see in the center of the frame the sigma is good but the Tamron is crazy good. It's just exceptionally sharp in the center of the frame, very very crisp detail in the mid-frame here. The Tamron is, it's better but it's more

slightly better as we move down towards the corners. However, you can see that both of them are not fantastic, and the sigma is about equally not good compared to the Tamron. But if we look in this zone, for example, Le, the Tamron is clearly better, going all the way over to the left side here. And we can see again they're roughly equal. If anything, I think the sigma is slightly better over on the left side. So, I mean, overall, there's some give and take, though the Tamron is probably more consistently sharp. Now, the difference is a little bit more noticeable when you come towards 105 mm. I'm close. I didn't quite nail it there with the Tamron. Tried to get as close as I could, but in the center of the frame, both of them at f2.8, you can see that in the center of the frame, it's not radically different, though the contrast is definitely better there in the text. In the mid-frame, the Tamron is obviously a bit better. You can see, let's come back here for a moment, you can see

that in the writing here on the bill contrast is much more detailed and crisp there uh on the Tamron and then the corners neither one of them is amazing in the corners but the Tamron has just a little bit more contrast and detail resolving there. What's interesting though if you stop these lenses down here is the sigma F4. The Tam also at F4. The Tamron is just ridiculously sharp and so it really really improves at F4. You can see in the mid-frame it is considerably improved looks much better than the the sigma Down Under the corner it looks better. It doesn't look amazing but it definitely looks better than what the sigma does. You can see over on this side you can see that difference a little more clearly that it is definitely just a lot more detail and contrast that's there. So I mean definitely on the longer end the Tamron is the winner. Now we can see that you're able to achieve a nice high level of magnification with the sigma. You can also see that it is achieved at a not

particularly flat plane of focus. In fact, it almost seems three-dimensional, as if the ship is sailing right out of the rest of the scene. So, kind of an interesting effect here. Not what you're looking for if you're wanting a flat plane of focus. And you can see here up close, that's a great amount of magnification. If we poke in at a pixel level, you can see that the detail is okay. It's not amazingly good, so it's not going to replace a macro lens. But again, if you just back off and look at the image as a whole, I think it looks pretty great. Here's another shot here of a mushroom up close. Again, there's some a little bit of hard edges here in the bokeh, but still, it's pretty nice melting away of that background and a high level of magnification. Another shot here, I think the bokeh works a little bit better here, getting very, very close to these tiny little blossoms. And you can see that the detail up close looks pretty nice there. And this shot here, I

wanted to come back to this scene. Uh, this is a little bit different a shot but morning de shot because it shows what is probably the weakness of the bokeh. There's definitely some concentric circles in those specular highlights, some outlining as you can see, and just some hard edges there that I don't Delight me for sure. It's not a look that I particularly love. And so what that means is that in this shot, for example, things look pretty good Boke, pretty pretty soft, but here, I mean, there's definitely more outlining than what I would personally like in that particular shot. Here's more of a medium distance portrait shot, obviously full length, and there's some things I really like about it, things that I don't like as well. I love the overall look of the image. Uh, I think that the colors look great, skin tones look good here, detail on my wife's face looks very nice. You can also see that the detail and the wood textures here all look good. If we pan towards the background here, here you can see if you

look carefully. It's not wildly soft; there's definitely some outlining. It gets a little bit busier than what I would like. I do really like the colors, however. This was a pretty scene, but the colors are very nice, nice and nuanced. There, uh, another shot of my wife here looking out at that scene. Colors are just nice. The overall image I think looks really good, and the final real strength is flare resistance. And so here, stop down that sunburst effect looks great here at wide open. You can see a very good flare resistance, no issues there. Even zoomed in, I actually found that the Sunburst looked pretty good. And so it makes me wonder why they don't do this more often because typically when you zoom into a zoom lens towards the telephoto in the Sunburst effect looks pretty lousy, but in this case, it still looks good. Here's another shot at kind of a medium framing, and you can see that the Sunburst effect looks really nice. But overall, the flare resistance is fantastic. So some give and take, but

Overall, a lot of positives in the optical performance here, so hopefully, the deep dive into the optics gives you an even better sense of whether or not this is a lens that is worth your hard-earned cash. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in. [Music]

Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DN ART Review  | The Ultimate Zoom?

The home for Photographer Dustin Abbott's photography, gear, and tech reviews along with helpful tutorials.  

Sigma 28-105mm F2.8 DN ART Review | The Ultimate Zoom?

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