Sigma 16mm f1.4 DC DN Contemporary Lens - Sony E Mount

The Sigma 16mm f1.4 DC DN lens has completely transformed my photography and videography experience. From the very first shot, I could tell this lens was something special. The sharpness is simply outstanding—even wide open at f/1.4, the details are crisp and vivid, with gorgeous background separation that gives every image a professional, cinematic feel. The autofocus is fast, silent, and incredibly accurate, making it perfect for both stills and video work. Low-light performance is another major highlight—this lens handles dim environments beautifully without compromising image quality. The build feels solid and premium, yet it’s lightweight enough to carry around comfortably on long shoots.

It is an amazing lens! Fully compatible with the Canon M50 with no need to purchase any sort of adapters. Just fits straight on. The picture quality is remarkable. At f1.4 it is super clear, cinematic and leaving a nice Bokeh. The quality of this lens is all metal! So it feels nice and you know it's HQ durable. Highly recommend.

I've given a full set of stars for this though I'm not entirety sure why I need to rate it's thickness. I use this with a Canon M50 as my setup for Zoom meetings and it is perfect, allowing a nice shallow depth of field with great low light performance. It's the heaviest of my M-series lenses but I can see this being on the camera most of the time. Great for landscape photography and a great YouTube vlogging lens too. The other night I tried astrophotography with it and the f1.4 meant I could keep the iso lower than I otherwise would have to this creating a really nice image, though a full frame camera would always win of course. I highly recommend this lens and I'm sure the other mount variants would be just as good - fast maximum aperture, precise focus and a great quality image.

Recently I was on a coach holiday in Scotland, visiting the West Coast, the Moray Firth, and the Trossachs. I had with me the wide angle Sigma 16mm, f/1.4 lens for the Sony e-mount on my Sony A6300. I found this very useful in taking a photo of Glen Coe, as the sun was rising, the valley floor was still very dark, although the sky was very bright. The photo of Glen Coe won me a third place at a photographic competition. Where this lens really came into it's own was when we stopped at the Dochart Falls, in Killin, at 3pm on a very dark, and wet November day. I was able to shoot wide open at f/1.4, and still obtain some respectable images despite the inclement weather. So while a kit lens can be very good, a "fast" prime lens is always useful to have at hand especially if some locations are many miles away, and you may not have another chance to revisit those locations again. This lens is fantastic for landscape, architecture, and group shots, the image quality is fantastic, the build quality is excellent, the lens is a little heavy, but there’s a lot of glass in there!

I've had this lens for my Canon M50 camera for about 3 months now. I primarily use it for vlog-style videos. At 16mm on the crop sensor body, there is a 1.6 crop factor which equates to a 25mm focal length. Not to severe. I can easily handhold the camera in selfie-style and not fully fill the frame, in fact the subject remains sharp in the frame while the background has a nice blurry bokeh. With the camera in video mode, there's virtually no noise in Autofocus. The F1.4 aperture means i can get good images even in low light, and i can keep the ISO relatively low. It takes a neat image as well, landscapes for sure but also some portraits, as with any wide angled lens, keep the subject nearer the middle of the frame and you will keep the distortion to a minimum. I'm very happy with this lens. Sigmas glass is always very good, I also have a 35mm and 50mm in the Art series. Highly recommended

I have numerous Panasonic Micro Four Thirds Lenses- the 50mm, the kit zoom and the expensive Lumix G X Vario 12-35 F2.8. I do a mixture of photos and video and like to try my hand at 'Cinematic' pieces. I have to admit to being a tad (very slightly its still a great lens) disappointed now with the 12-35 which is considered to be a go to lens for videography. It's good and has a constant F2.8 aperture but the autofocus seems to sometimes snap to something, then 'wobble' a bit. It effectively sometimes focus' then defocuses then focuses again. This is a a trait of the lens. This seems slower focusing than the Panny, in video. But its very smooth and doesn't seem to do that double focus issue. So you can be very close to the subject (this is also effectively a macro lens) and pan over it for example, and it smoothly transitions to the distance. This is great for the video I like to do. Not only that but the images are simply phenomenal. The Panasonic G X Vario is good, but its twice the price, and frankly does not look as good as this. There is something you cannot actually describe easily in words about the look of this lens which makes it look fabulous. There are similar, much smaller fast primes from both Panasonic and Olympus but they lack that 'extra something' in the image that this lens does. Its the 'magical' element that this lens has. Two downsides- its quite large (a bit bigger than my 12-35 G Vario but not massively so) as it was designed as an APC C lens. However I am sure the size is resultant in that extra depth to the image quality over its smaller rivals. It also does not have in built image stabilisation. The Panasonic has it in body, but is even better when working in tandem with lens stabilisation so I am going to have to be a bit more careful moving this one about and also maybe use the gimbal more. If you have a G5 or G9 though, this is the lens that shows that camera's potential. In fact with this on, and its very shalow depth of field, it is difficult really to find a camera shooting better quality video than a G9/ GH5 10 bit coupled with this Sigma.

Purchased for my Sony a6400, to use primarily for landscapes and architecture. I'd heard very good things about the lens so was keen to try it out. There's no doubt the build quality is excellent and focus operation is beautifully smooth, but it is a large and relatively heavy lens on the a6400. I tested the lens against my existing lenses; the little kit lens (Sony 16-50 f3.5-5.6) and also the Sony 18-135 f3.5-5.6, by shooting a series of varied photos (using tripod) and then comparing centre/edge details in each shot. I was hoping to see a clear improvement with the Sigma. What I found was that, yes the Sigma was sharp and produced lovely colours, but so too were the images from both the Sony lenses. In fact there was absolutely no discernible difference. All my shots were jpegs at f8 (as I normally shoot at this aperture) which does of course flatter most lenses. Wide open results may well have favoured the Sigma, but that is not relevant for my use. Naturally I returned the Sigma lens. So my finding suggest if you intend to mostly shoot landscapes and buildings etc with small apertures, you might as well stick with the Sony zoom lens(es). The qualities of this lens are related to bokeh and low light performance. One of my favourite lenses is my Sigma 150-600 which I use with my Canon EOS77D for wildlife. Just mentioned that to dispel any thoughts that I'm anti-Sigma!

I won't write too much here because this lens is thoroughly and extensively reviewed everywhere else. I just want to say it is a very good lens, a bit large but you get a lot of light from it and it's just stunning especially in low light or at night.