coz i am too lazy here is a repost of my post on POTN forum...

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dropped into local camera shop today to check out the sigma 14mm they just got in, long story short my mate made me an offer i just could not refuse

so without further adieu here is the brick wall test everyone's been looking forward to :P

full frame:
Sigma 14mm f/1.8 ART Test by Tony, on Flickr

top right corner crop:
Sigma 14mm f/1.8 ART Test Top Right Corner Crop by Tony, on Flickr

centre crop:
Sigma 14mm f/1.8 ART Test Centre Crop by Tony, on Flickr

leveled to the best i could and shot on a tripod, shot from UNDER 1m away from the wall (sorry i don't have a big enough brick wall to stand further back from)

raw ran straight through lightroom to export as jpeg with no adjustments

so my findings:

- auto focus snappy and accurate
- build is excellent, typical of what you've come to expect from an ART lens, has rubber gasket around lens mount for weather sealing
- some of the best focus ring i've experienced that's not named zeiss, nicely dampened and very smooth
- lens is SHARP wide open, sharpness only falls off at the extreme corners and i'd say quite evenly around all 4 corners, i'd rate very sharp up to past mid frame and sharp up to the edges and soft at extreme corners (possibly slighest field curvature?)
- vignetting not too bad, practically gone by f/2.4 (or "2.5" on canon body)
- handles distortion very well (as pictured), especially considering how close i was to the wall (again, under 1m), simple barrel distortion, i am sure non-issue out in the field

only thing left for me to test is coma, planning to head out in couple weeks time at new moon, hopefully will be putting up some astro samples soon (or just in my backyard when i get a clear sky lol)

but for now assuming you get a good copy i think sigma's knocked it out of the park with this lens