Sigma prides themselves at being the largest independent manufacturer of photographic lenses in the world, but they've never before had a cine-specific offering. That all changed with the announcement that they are releasing Sigma Cine Lenses, starting with a high speed zoom line to be released this fall, followed in the spring by a set of prime lenses.
Sigma starts the party with the "High Speed Zoom" range with two lenses featuring a constant T2 aperture on both the wide angle 18-35mm and the telephoto 50-100mm. A consistent wide aperture matters to a cine shooter, who generally will want the option to shoot the entire scene at a given F-stop, and it's nice to see that the lenses maintain T2 all the way to 100mm, which is getting into the length range where even prime lenses sometimes give up half a stop at the wide end of the aperture. The wide zoom has a close focus of 11", with the long zoom having a close focus of 3' 2", impressive for a 100mm zoom, which should be good for a nice close-up.
Sigma FF Zooms Speed Sheet
Credit: Sigma
Sigma claims that the resolving power is high enough to be compatible with 6K and even 8K imagers, but the first two lenses out of the gate are only able to cover a Super 35mm imager (28.4), which limits it to 5K with the current generation Dragon sensor from RED. Right now, RED remains the most cost-effective method for getting to resolutions beyond 4K; when more Helium sensors are on the street giving 8K Super 35 capture we will have a platform to test these lenses to their fullest and see if their image resolving powers are really up to the marketing hype. The High Speed range is available in PL, EF and E mount.
Sigma FF PrimesCredit: Sigma
Sigma does have FF coverage lenses coming with the FF Zoom, a 24-35mm T2.2 hitting the street after the high speed zooms, but it's not available in PL, only in EF and E mount. This will be followed by a FF prime range, the 20mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm, all of which open to T1.5. These will initially be EF and E mount only, but there is a PL release planned, and it appears that the goal is for the PL mount to cover full frame as well. They are the FF glass, after all.
Sigma FF Primes Speed SheetCredit: Sigma
Pricing hasn't been announced, but is likely to be aggressive. Sigma has been long known for a great price to performance ratio in the still lens space, and they are coming into a market that is already somewhat full (Samyang and Schneider of course, but also lower end offerings from Cooke with the Mini S4s and Zeiss with their CP.2 line), so it's a good bet that they will at least partially be competing heavily on price. If you were thinking of buying new cine glass sometime this fall, I think these lenses are definitely worth testing.
Tech Specs (High Speed Zooms):
- T2 consistent aperture
- Super 35 image coverage
- 95mm front diameter
- 82mm filter size
- 6-8k resolving power
- PL, EF and E-mount
Be sure to check out more of our IBC 2016 coverage.
