Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN Contemporary review

The Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C lens has been designed for smaller format mirrorless cameras and was launched together with two other Contemporary lenses, the 16mm f/1.4 DC DN C and the 56mm f/1.4 DC DN C in 2016.

Initially, the three lenses were made available in Canon EOS-M, L-Mount, Micro Four Thirds and Sony E-mount fittings. The Fujifilm X-mount version arrived in 2022, followed by the Nikon Z mount versions in April 2023.

The effective focal length depends on the camera it is attached too. Used on a Micro Four Thirds camera, the 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C gives a 60mm equivalent field of view, while it comes in at around 45mm equivalent when used on Sony E-mount, Fujifilm X-mount, L-Mount, Nikon Z cameras with an APS-C-sized sensor, and 48mm on Canon’s EF-M cameras.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C – Features

Without having to create an image circle large enough to cover a 35mm full-frame sensor, the Sigma 30mm is relatively small and light, especially when you consider that it has an f/1.4 aperture. However, it’s physically somewhat long. Optically, the lens is constructed of nine elements in seven groups, with the two rear elements being aspherical. These should help provide edge-to-edge sharpness, as well as keep chromatic aberrations to a minimum, if they are visible at all. To reduce flare and ghosting, the lens features Sigma’s Super Multi-Layer coating.

There obviously isn’t much point in an f/1.4 aperture if you have horrible hexagonal bokeh, so sensibly Sigma has employed nine rounded aperture blades to ensure that when the lens is stopped down to f/1.8 and beyond, the out-of-focus areas show nice circular specular highlights and smooth transitions.

The lens is completely electronically controlled. There is no aperture ring and the focus ring is a fly-by-wire electronic affair. To make focusing fast and smooth, the lens employs a stepping motor that is both quick and quiet. Sigma promotes this as being especially useful when shooting video. Added to this, the AF system is fully compatible with Sony’s Fast Hybrid AF system.

The body of the lens itself feels cold to touch, and appears to be largely made of metal. However, Sigma states that some parts of the barrel, and the lens aperture, are made of Thermo Stable Composite (TSC). This material is ‘highly elastic’ and ‘exhibits minimal deformation’, according to the information in the manufacturer’s press material. The result is that these parts should cope better with wear and tear, and be less prone to the small gaps and shifts over time that can be caused by fluctuations in temperature.

The only other point to note about the construction of the lens is the brass mount that has been coated for extra durability. Rather usefully, Sigma will actually swap lens mounts over, so if you switch from Micro Four Thirds to Sony E mount, or vice versa, you can send the lens to Sigma, and the company will swap the mount. Based on its prices for mirrorless cameras, the conversion should cost around £85, which is far cheaper than buying a new lens.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C – Build and handling

Externally, the lens is nothing to write home about. It has the clean black aesthetic that we have come to expect from Sigma, ever since the company announced its Global Vision direction around four years ago. Besides the lens designation and reminder that it has a 30cm minimum focus distance, the only other marking of note on the lens is the silver ‘C’, which denotes is as being part of Sigma’s Contemporary range. As a reminder, the Contemporary range is designed to offer ‘High performance, yet [be] compact and lightweight’, whereas the Art lenses focus more on image quality.

We tested the lens with a few cameras, including a Sony Alpha 6000, the new Alpha 6300 and an Alpha 7R in its APS-C crop mode, and it felt nicely balanced on each. It is fairly large for the focal length. Most of the other lenses I mentioned previously are smaller, almost pancake, but then they don’t have an f/1.4 aperture, which obviously requires larger elements.

The lens measures 64.8×73.3mm and weighs 265g, which certainly isn’t going to inhibit your ability to carry it around with you all day. It has a 52mm filter thread, and usefully, the lens employs internal focusing, so should you use an ND grad or polarising filter with it, you will not have to worry about the front turning or extending when focusing.

The large ribbed focusing ring on the lens barrel is impossible to miss and is easy to find with your eye held to the viewfinder. I had no problem with manually focusing this lens, and I was able to get very accurate focus when using the magnified view offered by the Sony cameras. Even very slight nudges of the electronic focus ring were rewarded with precise shifts in focus. Highly responsive, a slow turn of the ring will shift the focus slightly, whereas a sharp shift could see you jump from a metre to infinity.

Overall, the lens was quick to focus. On the Alpha 6300 it seems slightly slower than Sony’s own lenses, but it was by no means sluggish. As Sigma claims, the motor itself is very quiet. You have to hold your ear to the lens to hear any slight whirring noise. However, there is an audible click or clunk as the lens engages focus. Again, the sound isn’t particularly loud, but if silent photography is your thing, or you plan to use AF while shooting video, then you may want to take note. The rest of us needn’t worry.

It should be noted that the lens isn’t optically stabilised, so care needs to be taken when handholding at slower shutter speeds. If you have sensor-based stabilisation on your camera, remember to switch it on. Otherwise, the rule for handholding at the closest shutter speed to the equivalent focal length applies, so don’t expect to get sharp results at speeds much slower than 1/50sec. If you have a camera with built-in image stabilisation, you’ll obviously be able to take this into account.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C – Image quality

Any lens with a large aperture is begging to be used wide open. Indeed, while I was interested in seeing how the lens performed at f/5.6-f/11, the larger apertures proved to be the most interesting.

Needless to say, the key is to get the focus absolutely spot on. An f/1.4 lens can be very unforgiving; with such a shallow depth of field, the slightest shift in focus can make a huge difference. The good news with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 is that, when you get the focusing right, you are rewarded with fantastic sharpness. Our real-life images shot with the Sony Alpha 6300 looked as sharp in the centre as they would with a proprietary 50mm f/1.4 DSLR lens. It really is excellent.

Stop it down to around f/4 and it’s even sharper, with very fine details wonderfully reproduced. At f/8 in our real-world tests the images look just as sharp, although our tests show a slight drop in sharpness.

The optical coatings of the 30mm f/1.4 work well, and even when shooting backlit images there were no signs of lens flare. Backgrounds are rendered nicely, with pleasing circular specular highlight and smooth gradations between out-of-focus areas. For full-length and mid-length portraits, the lens does a good job of separating the subject from the background, although I found facial features were slightly distorted when shooting head-and-shoulders shots.

There is a slight hint in some of our raw images of chromatic aberration. However, the colour fringing is very thin and not particularly noticeable unless viewed at 100%. Once again, it shouldn’t prove problematic in most situations, and I found it was easily removed after a quick play with the sliders in Camera Raw.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C – Test results

Resolution

The MTF graphs from our Applied Imaging tests show that the 30mm f/1.4 behaves very well indeed, despite its relatively low price. It’s very sharp in the centre, with peak resolution around f/4-f/5.6. The corners aren’t quite so sharp, but this is partially due to slight curvature of field throwing them a little out of focus with our flat test chart. Overall, though, this is an excellent performance.

Shading

Shooting at f/1.4 gives noticeable shading on Sony APS-C cameras, with the corners being about 1.2 stops darker than the centre of the frame. But stopping down to f/2.8 essentially eliminates this vignetting entirely. Micro Four Thirds users will also see less vignetting, due to the smaller size of the image sensor.

Curvilinear distortion

As is the way with modern lens design, the 30mm f/1.4 shows visible barrel distortion when looking at uncorrected raw files. Sigma advises Sony users to set distortion correction to Auto, which should fix this in the camera’s JPEGs. Micro Four Thirds cameras will always correct this automatically.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C X-Mount on Fujifilm X-S10

I originally reviewed this lens six years ago, in its Sony E-mount incarnation. As there, the Fujifilm X mount version offers a 45mm equivalent view, making it comparable to a standard 50mm f/1.4 lens. It is a useful focal length to have whether you shoot portraits, travel or documentary images and also video. At £289, it’s very affordable.

Again, the optical formulation is identical to the Sony version, as is the external design, with the exception of the lens mount. The lens is very sharp in the centre, and the f/1.4 aperture makes it such a useful lens to have in your camera bag. Like the other Sigma f/1.4 lenses, there are no surprises when using it on a Fujifilm body, except for the slightly better balance when mounted on the more SLR-style cameras.

In terms of competition, there is the classic Fujifilm XF 35mm f/1.4 R, which at £549 is getting towards being twice the cost of the Sigma. The latest XF 33mm f/1.4 R LM WR is pricier still, at around £729. Fujifilm offers two versions of its f/2 optic, with the XC 35mm f/2 costing just £169 thanks to its lightweight plastic construction. Alternatively, the more upmarket XF 35mm f/2 R WR gains an aperture ring and weather-sealing for £379.

Another interesting option is the Fujifilm XF 27mm f/2.8 R WR, which costs around £420. It has a smaller maximum aperture but has the advantage of being significantly smaller and lighter at 84g compared to 265g for the Sigma 30mm. It is also slightly wider and may be a preferable option for street photography.

Sigma 30mm F1.4 DC DN C for Z Mount

After its success with the other five mounts that this lens is available for, Sigma announced in April 2023 that it would also becoming to the Nikon Z mount. Alongside it, the company also introduced the 16mm F1.4 DC DN C and 56mm F1.4 DC DN C lenses for Z mount. Amy Davies has spent some time with each of the new lenses to see how they compare with other mount options.

None of the lenses in the new-line up have exact matching equivalents from Nikon itself. If you want to therefore shoot at this exact focal length, then realistically, Sigma is your only choice here.

The 30mm F1.4 lens gives you an equivalent of 45mm with a DX camera, such as the Nikon Z30, Nikon Z50 or Nikon Zfc. This makes it a good choice for several subjects, including environmental type portraits and street photography. The closest prime lens for DX from Nikon’s own-line up is the Nikkor Z DX 24mm f/1.7 lens, which with its equivalent focal length of 36mm is significantly wider than the Sigma option.

Although this lens is designed to be used mainly with APS-C cameras, it’s possible to use it with full-frame models such as the Nikon Z6 II. If you do so, the camera will automatically switch to crop mode to give you again the 45mm equivalent focal length. You might therefore consider the Sigma lens a good alternative to the Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S, which is a little more expensive, and a little bigger, than the Sigma.

We’ve been using the 30mm F1.4 with a Nikon Z30. It’s reasonably well-balanced with this camera, not being as large as the Sigma 16mm. It would also work very well with the Nikon Zfc or the Z50 too.

As already noted earlier in the review, this lens does not have optical image stabilisation. If you’re using it with a Fujifilm body with IBIS, then that’s not a problem, but, Nikon Z DX users don’t have that available to them. It’s worth noting here then that you might need to use faster shutter speeds or higher ISOs than you might with image stabilised bodies, particularly in certain conditions. It’s not a huge deal-breaker, but it’s certainly worth considering.

Otherwise, using the lens is more or less the same experience as working with it on a Fujifilm or other manufacturer’s camera. It benefits from fast, accurate and quiet autofocusing. It’s ideally suited as an everyday lens, and would make a reasonably good choice as perhaps your only lens for a day trip or similar outing.

Image quality is as we found with the Fujifilm and Sony mounts, great. It displays excellent levels of sharpness, with a lovely natural drop-off in focus at the widest aperture. I’d definitely recommend this lens to Nikon DX users, it offering something you can’t really get from Nikon itself. For full-frame users, the use-case is a little less obvious, with Nikon’s Z 50mm f/1.8 also being an excellent – if slightly more expensive and slightly larger choice. Amy Davies

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C- Verdict

With its reasonable size and weight, large f/1.4 aperture, superior build quality and a good price all mean that the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN C is worthy of serious consideration by APS-C mirrorless and Micro Four Thirds users. Factor in excellent image quality and its appeal is enhanced even further.

With a new retail price of around $339/£289 or pre-owned in the area of $180-220/£200-240, it is hard to really fault this lens. Sharp images at f/1.4 and edge-to-edge sharpness when the lens is stopped down make this lens very appealing and a useful addition to your collection. If you have a Canon EOS-M, Fujifilm X, APS-C L-mount or Sony APS-C E-mount camera, you should certainly consider it. If you are a Micro Four Thirds user, it should be at the top of your short-list.