Review: Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN Contemporary

Introduction

With its Contemporary “i” series primes Sigma tries to find the balance between moderaly fast maximum aperture, moderate size and metal casing with external controls. I already reviewed the Sigma 17mm 4.0 DG DN C before, this time I will have a look at the Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C. There is strong competition in this field, so let’s find out who this Sigma lens is for.

Sample Image

Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.

Specifications

The Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN Contemporary has the following specifications:

• • Diameter: 70 mm
  • Field of view: 84.1° (diagonally)
  • Length: 74 mm
  • Weight: 359g (without hood[41g] and caps)
  • Filter Diameter: 62 mm
  • Number of Aperture Blades: 9 (rounded)
  • Elements/Groups: 13/11
    
  • Close Focusing Distance: 0.25 m
  • Maximum Magnification: 1:5.3 (measured)
  • Mount: Sony E-mount, L-mount

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Handling / Build Quality

Generally Sigma did not cheap out on the build quality and controls of this series. They offer an aperture ring as well as an AF/MF switch so compared to Sony’s later “G” and “GM” primes and most of Sigma’s “Art” lenses only the lens button is missing.  

According to Sigma’s marketing material the outer casings of these lenses are made from metal and they do feel solidly made. The focus ring has decent resistance but the coupling is not completely linear: when you rotate the ring fast it takes about 180° from the minimum focus distance to infinity, if you turn it very slow it can take a lot longer, up to 720° even. Not my preferred manual focus experience here.

Even the lens hood is made from metal. It can be mounted reversed for transport and personally I find this lens looks much nicer with the hood attached.

These Sigma “i” series primes also come with magnetic front caps (with felt on the inside). I don’t usually use lens caps so personally I don’t really care, but if you do these are pretty nice.

Compared to the one stop faster Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM this Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C is a bit shorter and 80g lighter.

AF performance

I am not shooting sports or fast moving animals/humans so if you want to know if the lens is fast enough for this, or how it compares to other lenses in this segment, you may have to look for a different review with a more detailed assessment of this aspect.

Generally the AF worked well, was reasonably fast and snappy and also completely silent. Also here I compared it to the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM and I did not notice much of a difference.

I tried using this lens with the Megadap ETZ21pro+, Neewer ETZ and Viltrox ETZ adapter on a Nikon Zf and that also worked well. The AF was best with the Megadap – as is usually the case. The correct flange focal distance is very important for internal focusing wide angle lenses like this one, so make sure to use an adapter which has the correct length. 

Vignetting

light falloff

As seems to be common for Sigma’s Contemporary “i” series primes also this 24mm 2.0 shows very strong vignetting. As it is unusable for anything with straight lines without the distortion correction, I decided to show the values with and without distortion correction here.

The values after distortion correction are very similar to the Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE. Stopped down this Sigma lens even has an half a stop advantage. The Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM has an advantage over the two slower lenses when stopped down to f/2.0 (only 2.1 EV falloff), but shows the same vignetting figures as the Samyang lens stopped down.

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

optical vignetting

Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.

Sony A7rII | 0.3 m focus distance

I did not shoot these lenses side by side, so the sizes of the circles are not directly comparable between different lenses.

Compared to other lenses with similar specifications, optical vignetting is strong here. Whereas other fast 24mm lenses like the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM or the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.8G hardly show any optical vignetting, this Sigma lens truncates off center out of focus highlights noticeably.

We also see that the polishing of the aspherical elements doesn’t seem to be particularly great, as we can see distinct onion ring structures here.

Sharpness

MTF Graphs

According to these MTF graphs we should expect an even across frame performance from f/2.0 with only very little astigmatism in the corners. Let’s see how they translate into reality.

Focus Shift

Sony A7rII | Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C | 33% crops

As we can see the depth of field mostly extends to the back so there is indeed a slight focus shift.

Because this is an AF lens and at wider apertures the modern Sony bodies focus at working aperture anyway this will hardly matter in the field.

infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)

Indeed this Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C shows a very good performance from f/2.0 at infinity and even does so in the corners. It looks a tiny bit less contrasty at f/2.0 compared to stopped down, but I wouldn’t mind using this lens at f/2.0 at all if needed. Peak across frame performance is reached around f/4.0 to f/5.6.

The Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE is a bit softer in the midframe and corners at its maximum aperture. The Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM shows a bit more CA at f/1.4, but stopped down to f/2.0 it performs same in the center and midframe area as this Sigma lens. The Sony’s corners benefit from stopping down a bit though.

I am also showing the results after distortion correction here, so despite that strong correction, resolution and contrast are very good, even in the corners. 

portrait distance 0.9 m (42mp Sony A7rII)

For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.

We will be looking at 100% crops from the 42mp Sony A7rII.

f/2.0 <—> f/2.8

0.9 m focus distance

Also at portrait distances this Sigma lens shows very high resolution and contrast everywhere in the frame. The same is also true for the Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE and the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM, so this isn’t exactly a stand out feature.

Still, this is good news if you are interested in using this lens for environmental portraits. I usually place faces or other detailed objects off-center for this, so a good performance in the midframe area is important to me.

close 0.25 m, 1:5.3 (42mp Sony A7rII)

100% crops from center, A7rII, refocused for every shot.

This Sigma 24mm 2.0 shows a typical minimum focus distance and maximum magnification for a lens with these specifications. At its maximum aperture it is a bit soft though, so for really crisp results it might be a good idea to stop down a bit.

The Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE shows a similar performance at its maximum aperture but also focuses a bit closer. The Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM actually performs better at its maximum aperture than the other two despite being the fastest.

Flare resistance

As always evaluating flare is a complex matter since you can get any lens to look bad if you push it hard enough and a slight change of scenario can affect results a lot.

Sony A7III | Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C | f/2.0

At the maximum aperture it is very rare to encounter any artefacts with this lens. This also held true during the blue hour with strong street lamps around.

Sony A7III | Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C | f/11

Stopped down the situation is a bit worse. While contrast stays on a high level, now some more obtrusive green ghosts can show up depending on the position of the light source in the frame.

This is still a good performance and similar to the Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE as well as the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM.

Coma

Sony A7rII | Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C | 100% crops from extreme corner

We can see some artefacts at f/2.0, already stopped down to f/2.8 these are mostly gone though. The Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE showed a similar performance whereas the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM shows less Coma at its maximum aperture despite being the fastest of these three lenses.

Distortion

Sony A7III | Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C | f/4.0

There is more to talk about here than I am happy with. Generally – and this seems to be the case for most if not all of Sigma’s Contemporary “i” series lenses – also this Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C shows very high distortion figures. I recommend to turn the distortion compensation to “auto” in camera when using this lens, as otherwise framing will actually be difficult due to the huge amount of distortion (this does work on my Sony A7III but not on my older Sony A7rII, be aware of that if you are using an older generation camera).

Furthermore, when shooting Raw and correcting the files in Lightroom, I found that the correction overshoots at closer distances, here manually adjusting the strength is needed, which is (annoying) additional work in post.

Bokeh

A fast 24mm lens allows for some interesting shots that can give a pretty cool impression of depth thanks to the combination of a wide angle view with some background bokeh – if used right.
If used wrong you will easily run into distorted objects and big noses though.

At close to mid distances this lens creates a decent bokeh but the faster f/1.4 lenses obivously have an advantage here.

With its specifications, at longer focus distances the subject separation simply isn’t that strong anymore and with objects like cars the perspective distortion can also easily lead to unnatural proportions when you try to get closer. This is why I personally prefer having a fast 28mm or even better 35mm over a 24mm for these tasks.

I found there is not much of a difference between this Sigma lens and the marginally faster Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE here. If you care about the bokeh in your 24mm lens I would definitely recommend to have a closer look at the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM instead, as it is obviously faster and at the same time has less optical vignetting and less onion rings.

Sunstars

Sony A7rII | Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C | 50% crops

Interestingly this Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C creates nicer sunstars than the Sigma 17mm 4.0 DG DN C of the same series. As both lenses feature 9 rounded aperture blades this might also be due to sample variation. Either way, here you can create decent, mostly symmetrical sunstars starting from f/11. With the Sigma 17mm 4.0 DG DN C on the other hand f/22 was needed, pushing you far into diffraction territory. 
If you want to learn more about sunstars have a look at this article.

Chromatic aberration

lateral

This Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C features a built-in lens correction profile for lateral CA that will also be recognized in most raw converters, so in the end: you won’t see any.

longitudinal

Sony A7rII | Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C | 100% crops

This Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C is definitely not free from longitudinal CA at wider apertures, as in high contrast scenes you can encounter green and magenta outlining in the out of focus areas. Stopped down to the f/2.8 the situation improves noticeably.

Sony A7rII | Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C | 100% crops

When it comes to purple fringing the situation is very similar.

For a lens with these parameters this is an average performance. The Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE showed a similar performance, the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM performed slightly better when stopped down to f/2.0.

Conclusion

After the Sigma 17mm 4.0 DG DN Contemporary this Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN Contemporary is the second entry of Sigma’s contemporary “i” series primes I reviewed and my conclusion is mostly the same. Also this 24mm lens is generally a well rounded device, just this time the are more and stronger competitors from other manufacturers available, making it somewhat harder to recommend.   

If you are looking for a compact affordable yet fast 24mm lens I’d say the Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE does a slightly better job at that. It is lighter, smaller and a fair bit cheaper yet it performs similar in most categories (and doesn’t have that awfully high uncorrected distortion).

Currently in the EU for 250 bucks more (comparing used prices) you could also get the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 G, still the best 24mm 1.4 lens I have come across so far. It is a stop faster, has nicer bokeh, only very little distortion and despite all that is only 80g heavier. 

As was already the case when having a closer look at the Sigma 17mm 4.0 DG DN C, also here the arguments left in favour of this Sigma 24mm 2.0 DG DN C are its nice metal casing and again I am not sure if that is enough for people to pick this lens over its competitors.

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Alternatives

Most of the alternatives are covered in our Guide to 20-28mm wide angle lenses for E-mount, so I will only talk about the most obvious ones in detail here.

Samyang  AF 24mm 1.8 FE: 
The Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE is your smalles and lightest option and also noticeably cheaper. It does not feature the nice metal build quality and controls but in terms of optical performance it is very similar. I compared these in most of the sections above so you should be able to decide between these two on your preferences.
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7Artisans AF 24mm 1.8:
Compared to the other lenses the 7Artisans has less vignetting but it also doesn’t perform particularly great at portrait distances and has rather bad flare resistance. Doesn’t look like a great option compared to some of the others listed here. It is the cheapest lens new but I would rather spend a few bucks more on the Samyang or a used Sigma.
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Viltrox 24mm 1.8 AF FE:
Generally a bit worse than the Samyang yet similarly priced so I don’t see a lot of reasons to recommend it.
buy from manufacturer’s store (use the code “PRNET” for 5% discount) | B&H | amazon.com | amazon.de for $379 (advertisement/affiliate links)

Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM:
This is still the best 24mm lens money can buy and as I already predicted when it was released: it can be found at very reasonable prices on the used market now. For me personally, I would rather get the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM lens over this Sigma 24mm 2.0. It is one stop faster, has less vignetting at wider apertures and significantly less distortion while only being 80g heavier. 
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Sigma 24mm 1.4 DG DN Art:
I haven’t reviewed the Sigma 24mm 1.4 DG DN Art yet, so I am not sure how it compares to these other lenses.
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Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.

Further Reading

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