Welcome back, pet pixel viewers. It is Chris Nichols here, and I've got a brand new Sigma 28-105 f2.8 DJDN to show you here today. Let's get to it. Hey, I want to take a quick moment and talk to you guys about cage.com. I mean, we love their pre-owned services where you can trade up your gear. If you have something you're not using anymore, sell it. You know you're going to get a fair price. Trade up for something that's new to you or even brand new equipment. And that's what I really want to focus on today. K's gear experts aren't just there to help you out with your used purchase, making sure you get a fair price. They're also there to help you out with new gear. KH sells way more than just used camera equipment. You've got new digital camera gear, you've got film lighting filters. I mean, so much stuff is available there. You should definitely check it out. And if you're looking for accessories for your existing camera gear, maybe you need a brand new camera bag or memory cards.

batteries and Power Solutions cage.com sells that as well. So, if you're looking for New Gear, definitely check them out. If you're looking for used gear, maybe to trade in, get something new to you, or just get a good price for existing camera stuff, they're the best place to go. That's why cage.com is Petapixel's official pre-owned gear partner. Now, before we get to the lens, I just want to explain to you why we're coming from the podcasting space this week. Well, Jordan's had a bit of an unfortunate accident. So, over the weekend, he was helping out some friends at a wedding to get some beautiful stuff, and you know the consummate professional that he is. He wanted to get some reflected light for Golden hour, the last of the day. So, he sprinted across a field full of gopher holes. You can imagine what happened. He's okay, but he sprained his ankle very, very badly, and he cannot be on his feet for a few days. So, I'm shooting myself here today for this.

review, but here's the real star of the show: the 202 105 f2.8. This is the latest in Sigma's art series of lenses. You know, on the market, there's a lot of 24 to 70 f2.8s, and there's a lot of 24 to 105 f4s, you know, trying to get more range but giving up a little bit of light. But recently, manufacturers are trying to give both. So, you know, Canon has something like the 24 to 105 f2.8, a beautiful lens but a very expensive and very heavy lens. 24 to 105s are fantastic; I love the versatility, but sometimes you want something brighter than the F4. So now Sigma's giving us this. The 28105 gives a little bit up in the wide-angle focal length range, but it does get at that f2.8 aperture. Okay, so let's start off with handling on this lens. We'll start at the top and work our way down. We've got these nice art series push

button lens hoods. They release and click in place really nicely. 82 mil filter threads there on the front. You know Sigma doing really nice job with their manual focus rings. They're smooth. We got two customizable buttons here right next to the zoom ring. And we've got a nice aperture ring here which could be set both for click stops or de-clickable action for smooth work in video. Because this is an art series lens, of course, it is fully weather-sealed and beautifully built. But what surprises me most about this lens is even though we're getting the extended range and the f2.8 aperture, this actually isn't that bulky and it's not that heavy. Just shy of 1 kilg, okay, half a knocked in weight for a lens like this. That's actually pretty impressive and it's very easy to carry around all day. Now, as sad as Jordan's accident is, we actually did have something very fortuitous happen. We both were able to have quite a bit of time with this lens separately to actually get a lot of

samples on it. So, Jordan did take this, as I say, to go help out and shoot this wedding. And the autofocus performance on this lens is actually very snappy for event work like that, which is a really possible use case for a lens like this. I have no issues using this lens in quick situations like event work, sports, and action. Jordan and I were both also fortunate enough to get to shoot under bright sunny days, which is always good for flare tests. Sigma coatings always do a great job. You can see here this lens is no exception. It's handling bright light very well. We're not getting a lot of loss of contrast at all. You do notice though some purple ghosting when stopping down the lens. Absolutely sunstars as well. We tested. They're kind of average. I mean, they're not amazing by any stretch, but you can get some visual interest with them here. But yeah, overall, this lens does handle shooting in sunny conditions quite well. Now, one of the main strengths of a lens like this is just how versatile it is, how you

can use it for many situations from landscape departure still get that bright aperture but also sigma's give you a really good macro capability here for close-up so you get 40 cm of working distance even with the lens fully extended from the sensor plane you have a little bit of room to play with this does its best macro at the 105 mm range I do like the look of that more of a flatter compressed look for macro personally and it gets us just over 1 to three life size reproduction which is actually quite impressive for a lens like this so in a pinch if you need to do some nice close say wedding shots you know ring shots table centers things like that an event or you know just walking on the trails wanting to shoot close-ups of flowers and stuff this will do a really good job now because this is a faster f2.8 lens we do like to test for Loca that longitudinal chromatic aberration where you get color fringing in the foreground and background areas

that are out of focus, and it's really hard to remove in post. And Loca does actually show up here. I mean, you can see here it's pretty minor. We're getting a little bit of a split, kind of an orange-green kind of split here, but it will show up when you're shooting f2.8. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Stopping down, of course, we get rid of that as well. But if you are shooting something where L is critical, you're going to see a little bit of it here. Okay, let's talk about B next because a lens like this is absolutely capable of doing very shallow depth of field kind of work. I'm going to do this a little bit backwards from I normally do it. I'm actually going to start talking about the transitions from INF Focus to out of focus, which I actually find really quite pleasing on this lens. You can see how where it fades off into the background is actually quite nice. It's soft, and it's smooth looking, and with this 105 mm

telephoto range with f2.8 aperture. This is going to make an ideal portrait lens for a lot of situations where the eyes are in focus and everything just falls off really nicely. And as long as your backgrounds are clean and don't have a lot of detail, I think that's actually a really pleasant look. Where I have issues with this lens is where it comes to the bouquet when it comes to specular highlights. Now, wide open at f2.8, we're getting a nice little cat's eye effect, not too strong. I don't mind that at all. But when you stop down, you'll notice that the bouquet balls, they're a little bit busy, you know, a bit of a soap bubble effect and kind of busy. And so then when you go to situations where you have more rich backgrounds with a lot of detail, although it's dramatic, I find it's actually kind of frenetic looking, maybe a little bit distracting, as you can see here. And so again, bouquet is subjective. Everybody's going to have different

opinion, but although I like the look of the softness of the transitions, I do find the out-of-focus areas to be a little bit harsh, a little bit distracting. So, I certainly think that an event photographer is going to really enjoy this for stills. But what about for videography? Well, first off, as we talked about, nice smooth manual focus response. We do have that de-clickable aperture, but breathing has also been corrected quite well on this lens. At 28 mm, here you can see that there's a little bit of lens breathing where that field of view changes slightly as we focus from close to infinity. But at 105, it's very well controlled, almost no breathing to really worry about. Regardless, this is actually a really good result for breathing, and I'm surprised that Seg was able to pull it off on both ends on this lens. But is this lens sharp? Let's take a look at our test charts here and see. So, first off, at 28 mm shooting at f2, 2.8, you can see in

the centers here just a touch of softness, but really overall very good detail. Stopping down to f5.6 in the center, you notice the contrast gets a little bit better, a little bit sharper, but I mean details already really good. Looking at the corners here, extreme corners, you get some softness at f2.8. That gets a little bit better stopping down at 5.6, but overall the corners here wide open are actually pretty decent for a 28mm range. And we go to 105. This is actually very impressive. So here now at f2.8 in the centers at 105, tons of detail. And even when I stopped down at f5.6, I don't really notice that much improvement. I mean maybe a touch of contrast. Overall, it's already really good wide open. You'll also see the corners are quite consistent here at f2.8, decent sharpness in the corners, little bit of vignetting, but when we stop down f5.6, the detail tightens up, that vignetting goes away, and so overall

at 105, this lens is very sharp, very consistent across the range. So, I think Sigma has done something pretty impressive here with the 208 to 105 f2.8. They've managed to make a lens that is very beautifully made, very well built, but not too heavy, not too bulky, that will give you the versatility to shoot close-ups, to shoot portrait work with shallow depth of field, and be able to cover a lot of different kinds of photography with one lens. Yeah, you're giving up that 24 mm wide angle, which most other lenses will give you, and that is certainly something to consider. But I do think that the flare characteristics, the overall sharpness of the lens, these are all going to lend themselves well to any sort of situation this comes across. I just wish the bouquet was a little bit nicer, especially those backgrounds. But I think a lot of people who are shooting event work, maybe travel photography, or if you just want a lens that can do a lot for walking around during the day on the street, covering

many different kinds of focal lengths, but still have that low light capability. You might want to take a really hard look at this lens. I hope you guys enjoyed our little look here at the 28105. I'm sorry we had to do it from the podcasting room, but I assure you Jordan's on the mend, and we are going to be out in the field again as usual. Please leave your comments below, let us know what you think about this, or if you have any questions. Check out the Petapixel podcast as well; it's right on the same YouTube channel, or you can listen to it on all your favorite podcasting apps. Don't forget to also check out the merch store, get some T-shirts and hoodies today. Just go to store.petapixel.com and check that stuff out. Thanks so much for joining us, guys. We'll see you soon with more on Petapixel. [Music]

The IDEAL Wedding and Event Lens? Sigma 28-105mm f/2.8 DG DN Art Review

Welcome to PetaPixel, the home of Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake! We make videos about photography, cameras, technology, and everything in between. 