de Young Museum | San Francisco | Use of the Sigma 12-24mm Lens

Statue at the de Young Museum of Art in San Francisco

Wide angle of de Young Museum of Art with Sigma 12-24 f/4.5-5.6

I admit that I would love to have the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 to use as a full-frame wide angle lens. I hear it is amazing, and not to mention the fast aperture for low-light use. However, it is extremely expensive and my use of it as a wedding and portrait photographer would probably not be enough to need it. As I already had the Sigma HSM 12-24mm (which is much slower at f/4.5 at 12mm which I use with my DX formatted cameras) I wondered how well it would work on a modern full-frame digital camera like the D700?

To be honest, I was surprised that the results were actually quite acceptable. There is of course, some distortion outside of the center of the frame when the lens is not centered, but for my kind of work it doesn’t really bother me too much. The nice thing about the lens is that it allows you to gather so much more of the scene than can be done with a wide 24mm lens. I ended up using it for a few shots at the San Francisco de Young Museum of Art in Golden Gate Park. It allowed me to get some perspectives that I didn’t think I would be able to capture. Because of this, I ended up using the lens for another commercial job that allowed me to capture images inside of a stairwell that would have been impossible to do with the standard wide angle lens. The results are sharp especially when stopped down a few stops (i.e., f/8 or so) and the results are quite nice.

The other benefit of using this slower lens on the newer digital cameras is that the sensors are much more forgiving in regard to using higher ISO numbers. As an example, a few years ago, using this lens on an older Nikon camera would have been challenging as the resulting noise would have to be overcome with noise reduction software. With the new sensors, I was able to shoot at much higher ISOs and still get a very nice image even when shooting indoors with no flash assist.

For those of you who would like to have a wider angle lens, and are not overly concerned with some potential distortion at the edges of the frame, the Sigma 12-24 f/4.5-5.6 HSM lens may be worth considering. It is currently available through Amazon (link is to my Amazon page) and other camera stores for around $725~$800 which is considerably more affordable than the $1799 price for the Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8 at the same locations. For my perspective, it is a good alternative at a much more reasonable price.