The Best Lens Ever, Yet Nobody Knows What To Do With It

The curious story of Sigma’s 40 mm 1.4 Art lens.

Sigma 40 1.4 Art. Photo by author.

Imagine building a perfect lens, no coma or chromatic aberrations, no distortions, and perfectly sharp from corner to corner, even wide open. The lens has almost infinite resolving power, easily carrying 100 MP or more, with an image circle that can support even medium format sensors, despite being sold for FF bodies. Yet, despite a fair price tag, which itself was almost halved two years later, it had to be discontinued, allegedly due to low sales.

This is the story of Sigma’s incredible 40 mm Art 1.4 prime lens. It is full of contradictions, but in the end it all makes sense. Let’s find out how.

Sigma presented the 40mm F1.4 DG HSM | Art as one of five new Global Vision / Art lenses at Photokina 2018 and described it as developed to cine-lens performance standards (aiming for very consistent optical quality across the frame and a distinctive bokeh/rendering). Reviews and hands-on pieces from that period emphasised the intentional “reference” character and strong wide-open imaging.

Now what does this “reference” character mean?

Simply put: it is a lens against which all others are compared, thus it has to be as neutral and as perfect as possible, no matter the cost.