G9 Lust List: Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8

At Gamma Nine, our arsenal of lenses has been pretty consistent: a walk-around, telephoto, wide, 50mm prime, and a 105mm macro.  The past few months, though, Sigma has made some waves in the photo industry that has also affected our equipment inventory.  Their 35mm prime is a solidly-built and beautiful lens that we loved for the atmospheric and edgy photography we shot for Uber.

With Sigma’s revolutionary and unrivaled 18-35mm f/1.8 lens, we lusted, and then gave into the temptation and added this super-fast zoom to our camera bag.  This lens will be a game-changer, and here’s why…

In case you needed to give those specs a second glance, yes, you did read correctly that the lens has a maximum aperture of f/1.8, AND is also a zoom with focal length 18-35mm.  Designed for crop-sensor DSLR’s, this gives an 35mm-equivalent focal range of approximately 28-55mm.  While our usual walk-around lenses (24-105mm f/4 or 24-70mm f/2.8)  would already cover this focal range, the f/1.8 aperture will gloriously take in more light when we are dim environments, e.g.  indoors during the day, inside restaurants, and the most challenging aspect of our event photography work, dim and dramatically-lit evenings.

What really has us excited, though, is the 11-inch “minimum focus distance”.  This spec wasn’t impressive or note-worthy when we considered and bought the lens, but upon experimenting and putting this black beauty through the ringer, we realized the distance was measured from the sensor-plane of the camera body, meaning we can focus on something that is just a few inches in front of the lens.  This gives us macro-like photography capabilities to fill the frame with food, event decor, or other details, while still having the wide-angle versatility of a general-purpose walkaround lens.

With the amazing combination of a wide aperture for low-light photography and a close-up minimum focus distance, the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 has us swooning.

All photos in this post are ‘Copyright 2013 Gamma Nine’, and were taken with the Sigma 18-35mm (except the image of the lens itself).