Unfiltered emotion: a lens that changes everything

When I was offered the opportunity to test out this Sigma 35mm F1.2 II DG | Art, I was quite excited!

Over the years I’ve experimented with lots of wider-aperture lenses to help me achieve pleasing character and emphasis in my work but I’ve never been able to use a 35mm (which is my preferred focal length) that is capable of F1.2.

I’ve always very much been in the camp that the lens makes the camera rather than the other way around so it was a joy to use this on my Sony a7-series body and get started!

Winter in the UK is typically challenging because there aren’t many hours of daylight, so I decided to opt for a fifty-fifty split of indoor and outdoor tests.

I was a little nervous about working with such a shallow depth-of-field, particularly when it came to achieving sharp focus, as anyone who has used a fast lens wide open knows that the margin for error is tiny.

I needn’t have been concerned though, the joy of using this and then seeing the results as I flipped through my collection of photos was amazing.

It is sharp, and although that plane of focus is incredibly narrow at F1.2, the background simply melts away in such a beautiful way that slowing down and really nailing focus makes the results so worthwhile.

I deliberately wanted to try to photograph some of my dogs with this, and also some still life objects as a way to test out the difference between static and constantly moving subjects.

The latter is not something I’ve tried with such a shallow aperture before and I was thrilled with how beautiful the images turned out.

I love shooting more environmental style portraits, often indoors where every stop of light counts, especially at weddings when I’m often constantly challenged by low light or difficult light.

For this project I wanted to go back to basics a little and just concentrate on the beauty of ordinary situations and objects that can be brought to life by a lens that has such an amazing depth of feeling to it.

That painterly feeling to the images especially when you get closer to your subject is something that I particularly love about the Sigma 35mm F1.2 DG II | Art , and it’s a character that I think is very hard to achieve unless you have a lens like this.

What I especially liked about this lens was that feeling of being able to take an ordinary photo and making it look almost ethereal and dream-like.

Photography is hugely important to me as a creative outlet but also as my livelihood.

The wedding industry is ever-changing and evolving and often you can be limited in how much freedom you get to be creative, because time is always tight, and ultimately you are there to serve your client rather than yourself.

I think this lens is invaluable not only as a tool for portraits but also for wedding work.
It’s particularly useful during the quieter moments when you get to slow down and create something beautiful or capture a tiny ordinary moment and elevate it into something artful.

Even after using it for a short amount of time, it has highlighted to me that it’s something that I’ve been missing in my toolkit and I look forward to using it in a work environment to make me look at things in a different way and from a different perspective, which is never a bad thing.