Up until recently, the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens could make a very striking claim to be the world’s fastest 14mm prime production lens. Its maximum aperture of f/1.8 makes it a stop faster than Canon’s 14-year-old EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM; and the same goes for Nikon’s 21-year-old AF Nikkor 14mm f/2.8D ED.
Sony’s soon-to-hit-the-shelves FE 14mm F1.8 GM matches the Sigma, aperture-wise, but it’s not available anywhere yet and besides, when it does become available, you’ll only be able to use it with Sony-mount cameras. Sigma’s ultra-wide, ultra-fast astrophotography specialist is available in Canon, Sigma, Sony, Nikon, and L-mounts, making it compatible with a very wide range of cameras.
Essential info:
Type: 14mm prime lens for full-frame and APS-C sensor cameras.
Compatibility: Canon EF, Nikon F-mount, Sony E-mount, L-mount.
Focal range: 14mm fixed focal length.
Aperture range: f/1.8 – f/16.
Thread size: No filter thread.
Weight: 2.58 Ibs
The appeal of the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens for astrophotographers is immediately obvious. Its 14mm fixed focal length makes it ultra-wide, if you put much stock in the 500 rule which means you can shoot exposures of up to just under 36 seconds before suffering star trails. The large f/1.8 aperture will also save you a stop of ISO – so if you’re shooting ISO 12,800 on one of Canon or Nikon’s 14mm prime lenses, you’ll only be shooting ISO 6,400 on the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens. That’s a significant reduction which in some cases will be the difference between a printable and an unprintable image.
But what is it like to use the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens and how does it perform in the field? Perhaps even more importantly, can it justify its $1600 asking price?
Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens review: Design
2.58 Ibs weight
No filter thread
Bulbous front element
This thing is a lump. Not a very technical description, perhaps, but heft it out of the box and you’ll see what we mean. It’s wide, short, and squat: the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens has a large 95mm diameter and is 150mm from front element to mount. It’s heavy as well – 2.58 pounds makes it about twice as heavy as Canon and Nikon’s (slower) 14mm primes. If your chosen star-gazing site is located a decent walk away from your car this is worth bearing in mind – in combination with a full-frame camera, this is a heavy choice of lens.
The Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens is built of quality materials from front to back, though, so we can forgive the added heft. The slide-off lens cover has a thin strip of fuzzy material inside so the cap can’t slip off in your bag. The lens cover and some of the rest of the lens are made of hardy-feeling plastic; the rear of the lens and the brass mount are made of metal. As is often the case with ultra-wide lenses, the petal hood is permanently attached to the lens – it doesn’t make it much longer and affords a little protection to the front element so in our book, this is a good thing.
(Image credit: Sigma)
There are just a handful of compromises to bear in mind. The first is that the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens requires a little more care than bog-standard zooms and even than many normal-focal-length primes. The front element is a spectacular piece of engineering – curving gracefully outwards from the lens body in a gorgeous, bulbous arc – but that does make it a little hard to protect from the elements. Beware of sandy locations, we say. Normal advice for lens elements you want to protect is to bring a UV filter, but you can’t here – the front element of the lens protrudes so far from the body of the lens that there’s no thread in which to mount a filter. Not only does this give you a challenge in terms of protecting the lens but it also means landscape photographers, with their beloved neutral density filters and polarizers, will have a truly awkward time. There’s no option to add a square gelatin filter at the back of the lens.
(Image credit: Dave Stevenson)
On the plus side, this is a weather-sealed lens, although how much of a benefit that will be for astrophotographers – who can’t see the stars in inclement weather – is up for debate. If you’re going to shoot other subjects (we took ours storm chasing) it’s a distinct plus.
Otherwise, this is a comparatively simple piece of kit. There’s no stabilizer (astrophotographers will be on tripods anyway), so the only body-mounted control is the auto/manual focus switch, complete with a focus distance window on the top of the lens.
Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens review: Performance
Outstanding image quality
Bright maximum aperture
Obedient autofocus
(Image credit: Dave Stevenson)
If all the above sounds just a little awkward, that’s because it is. This is a high-performance lens with some specialist applications, and any keen astrophotographer will be delighted to forgo a lens filter as soon as they start using this absolutely spell-binding piece of equipment.
(Image credit: Dave Stevenson)
The Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens is ultra, ultra sharp. For astrophotography you’ll often be using this lens wide open, so we’ll start there: at f/1.8, this lens is a masterpiece. If you’re going somewhere to shoot the heavens, this lens should be either at or near the top of your list. Stars in the center of the frame are super sharp, and it’s only by cropping – heavily – into the corners of our astrophotography images that we were able to begin to discern a little comatic aberration creeping in; what there was was all-but unnoticeable.
Chromatic aberration (purple fringing) is also well controlled. This tends to be more of a problem at large apertures, but in images shot between f/2.8 and f/4, even in high contrast images of snowy scenes, you’ll have to really hunt before you can see it. In terms of creating publishable images that don’t need loads of technical workup before they’re ready, the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART doesn’t miss a trick.
(Image credit: Dave Steveneson)
We need to talk about distortion as well – at 14mm we’re well used to seeing lenses with bendy geometry, but the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens handles it exceptionally well. It’s a rectilinear lens – that is, not fisheye – and while the images it produces undoubtedly feel “wide”, they don’t distort. This might not be much of a concern with astrophotography, but the fact you can take pictures of people with this lens that don’t make them look distorted and strange is a huge plus, and elevates the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens from “astrophotography specialist” to “shoot anything, anywhere”. There is, admittedly, a slight vignetting effect at larger apertures, but it’s well-controlled, less than a stop (to our eye), and easily correctable in software.
Finally, there are a few lovely aesthetic touches that are fun to play with – stop down and you’ll see ultra-sharp star-points to the light sources in your images which make the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens a lovely architectural lens as well as an astrophotography specialist.
Should you buy the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens?
(Image credit: Dave Stevenson)
The Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM ART lens really is a phenomenal lens for night-sky photography. It’s not just that it shoots high-quality, technically excellent images (although it does), it’s not just that its ultra-wide field of view is perfect for incorporating foreground interest into your star shots (although it is), and it’s not just that the ultra-bright aperture allows you to shoot lower ISOs – or longer shutter speeds – than you might otherwise (although it does that too).
The fact that it bundles all those qualities into a portable, sturdy-feeling little package that excels in its niche is really what sells it to us. It isn’t an everyday kind of lens, although with its straight-as-an-arrow geometry you might be surprised how much you actually can use it for. But if you’re after a lens that will get you long shutter speeds without a star tracker, with technically excellent results throughout its aperture range, this is a piece of kit that will serve you well, particularly on those once-in-a-lifetime trips where quality of the results outweighs cost and weight considerations.
If this product isn’t for you
(Image credit: Dave Stevenson)
There are some great options out there at the moment for astrophotographers – many of which have been reviewed right here at Space.com.
In particular, we’d suggest thinking carefully about whether 14mm will do everything you need it to, because there are some excellent wide-angle zooms out there with big maximum apertures. Take Sigma’s own 14-24mm F2.8 DG HSM Art ($1,199.00), which is a stop slower in terms of aperture but allows you to go from ultra-wide to merely very-wide angle with its 14-24mm zoom range. Sigma also makes the 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art ($834), which is a little longer but is even brighter than the 14mm f/1.8.
If you want to stay on-brand, you could look at the Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8L IS USM ($2399). Pretty much as wide as the 14mm (you won’t be able to tell the difference between 14mm and 15mm) and a stop slower, but with a more practical zoom range which makes it more of an all-rounder for those who aren’t single-minded astrophotographers.
Nikon users might look at the AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED ($1,746), a frankly glorious piece of kit with lots of practicality for night photography. And Sony users should definitely keep an eye out for the arrival of the 14mm f1.8 GM FE.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
In a case that has sent shockwaves through the Vancouver Island art community, a local art dealer has been charged with one count of fraud over $5,000. Calvin Lucyshyn, the former operator of the now-closed Winchester Galleries in Oak Bay, faces the charge after police seized hundreds of artworks, valued in the tens of millions of dollars, from various storage sites in the Greater Victoria area.
Alleged Fraud Scheme
Police allege that Lucyshyn had been taking valuable art from members of the public under the guise of appraising or consigning the pieces for sale, only to cut off all communication with the owners. This investigation began in April 2022, when police received a complaint from an individual who had provided four paintings to Lucyshyn, including three works by renowned British Columbia artist Emily Carr, and had not received any updates on their sale.
Further investigation by the Saanich Police Department revealed that this was not an isolated incident. Detectives found other alleged victims who had similar experiences with Winchester Galleries, leading police to execute search warrants at three separate storage locations across Greater Victoria.
Massive Seizure of Artworks
In what has become one of the largest art fraud investigations in recent Canadian history, authorities seized approximately 1,100 pieces of art, including more than 600 pieces from a storage site in Saanich, over 300 in Langford, and more than 100 in Oak Bay. Some of the more valuable pieces, according to police, were estimated to be worth $85,000 each.
Lucyshyn was arrested on April 21, 2022, but was later released from custody. In May 2024, a fraud charge was formally laid against him.
Artwork Returned, but Some Remain Unclaimed
In a statement released on Monday, the Saanich Police Department confirmed that 1,050 of the seized artworks have been returned to their rightful owners. However, several pieces remain unclaimed, and police continue their efforts to track down the owners of these works.
Court Proceedings Ongoing
The criminal charge against Lucyshyn has not yet been tested in court, and he has publicly stated his intention to defend himself against any pending allegations. His next court appearance is scheduled for September 10, 2024.
Impact on the Local Art Community
The news of Lucyshyn’s alleged fraud has deeply affected Vancouver Island’s art community, particularly collectors, galleries, and artists who may have been impacted by the gallery’s operations. With high-value pieces from artists like Emily Carr involved, the case underscores the vulnerabilities that can exist in art transactions.
For many art collectors, the investigation has raised concerns about the potential for fraud in the art world, particularly when it comes to dealing with private galleries and dealers. The seizure of such a vast collection of artworks has also led to questions about the management and oversight of valuable art pieces, as well as the importance of transparency and trust in the industry.
As the case continues to unfold in court, it will likely serve as a cautionary tale for collectors and galleries alike, highlighting the need for due diligence in the sale and appraisal of high-value artworks.
While much of the seized artwork has been returned, the full scale of the alleged fraud is still being unraveled. Lucyshyn’s upcoming court appearances will be closely watched, not only by the legal community but also by the wider art world, as it navigates the fallout from one of Canada’s most significant art fraud cases in recent memory.
Art collectors and individuals who believe they may have been affected by this case are encouraged to contact the Saanich Police Department to inquire about any unclaimed pieces. Additionally, the case serves as a reminder for anyone involved in high-value art transactions to work with reputable dealers and to keep thorough documentation of all transactions.
As with any investment, whether in art or other ventures, it is crucial to be cautious and informed. Art fraud can devastate personal collections and finances, but by taking steps to verify authenticity, provenance, and the reputation of dealers, collectors can help safeguard their valuable pieces.
