Visceral Image Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Mine came in this afternoon. I have a shoot tomorrow and a wedding on Saturday. My copy was dialed in out of the box on the 5D4 and was nailing focus at f/1.4 at a variety of focusing distances, more so than my 50 Art does to this day. My 50 Art is about a 80% hit rate when the subject is within the normal working distances. It's almost useless at the infinity area...but then again, I don't use the lens for that.
Anyway, the 85A shows very obvious purple fringing still, but nothing worse than any other 85 on the market and absolutely better than both options from Canon. It's well controlled. While the Canon will create a GLOW of purple around contrasting edges, the Sigma will just have a thin line. Nice to see, easy to clean, and a big step forward from other 85s.
Bokeh appears to be exceptional and smooth - even when it's potentially busy. The cat eye bokeh balls creep a little far into the frame, unfortunately, and are around the same consistency as the 135L in this regard.
Snapped some portraits of my dog and girlfriend today when we took him to the dog park to test the AF out and run the little guy out of energy. It tracked a running dog toward me at 1.4 in servo very nicely worked great at 2.8, nailed in one-shot mode every time at 1.4, and melted away backgrounds into a gooey green mess of foliage.
I'm 100% certain in saying this is the best 85 on the market now and a worthy improvement over the outgoing Sigma model while destroying anything Canon makes from a technical perspective. The subjective opinion on which lens offers a better aesthetic will go on for years now, but I'll take my controlled purple fringe, faster AF, and lens design that won't break as you put it away in your bag any day.
Happy customer. Samples to follow.
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