CNET's key takeaways
Sigma's Art 14mm f1.8 DG HSM is a fast, wide-angle lens that can take amazing photos of the night sky.
It's fairly heavy at 1,120 grams (2.5 pounds) but compact for what it is.
The f1.8 aperture lets you take unique wide-angle photos with a shallow depth of field.
Taking photos of the sky at night is one of the most challenging types of photography. There's not a lot of light available (obviously, it's night), and to get truly epic images, you want a really wide-angle lens. Fast lenses aren't hard to find, and neither are wide-angle lenses, but fast wide-angle lenses are far rarer. Rare, and often really expensive.
The Sigma ART 14mm f1.8 DG HSM isn't cheap by any stretch, but it's reasonable considering how fast and wide it is. I traveled for years with a predecessor of this lens, the Art 12-24mm f4 DG HSM. That lens was amazing for many things, including the interiors of submarines and other tight spaces. While f4 isn't slow, it's not particularly fast either. I was able to get some cool photos of the Milky Way and star-filled skies, but none I really loved. On a recent trip to Death Valley National Park in the campervan I built, I rented the 14mm f1.8 and oh my.
My experience with the Art 14mm f1.8 DG HSM
You can see a million miles tonight, but you can't get very far. Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
One of the big challenges with astrophotography is that you don't have the luxury of time like you do in other low-light situations. The Earth is spinning, after all, so if you want pinpoints of starlight, you need to limit your shutter speed. For a wide-angle lens like my old Art 12-24mm f4, 30 seconds was pushing it. The 500 Rule says 41 seconds was the max for this lens, but I found that to be too long. Worse, most lenses can look soft when wide open (at f4 in that case), especially at the edges of the frame. So you often want to step down a few steps, which means your shutter time has to be even longer to get the same amount of light. Which is to say, it's a fine balance and one that I never quite perfected with the Art 12-24mm f4.
Visually, the Art 14mm f1.8 looks similar to my 12-24mm f4. It's a pretty big lens, nearly as big as the f4, and weighs a beefy 1,120 grams. On top is a distance scale with a depth of field indicator. It's not often you need to worry about depth of field with such a wide-angle lens. The autofocus isn't great, but for astrophotography, the camera is on a tripod, and there's a big manual focus ring to help make smooth adjustments. While the front element bulges outward, there are at least wings to avoid some disasters. You'll want to be careful, though.
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