From left to right: Rokinon 35mm 1.4, Rokinon 35mm 1.2, and Sigma 30mm 1.4

Background

For my upcoming to India, I bought a used Sony A7R mkII and the fantastic Sony 85mm 1.8, and now all I need is a fast 35mm lens to complete my arsenal of (two) lenses for portrait photography. I love 35mm focal length as it gives me room to put enough of environment with my subjects, but not too much. It also gives me the chance to get closer to people and take intimate portraits. Last time I went to India, I had the Voigtlander 40mm F2.0 lens, and I loved it, but at times I wanted it to be wider, faster, and I missed the autofocus. So this time, I’m going to go back with a fast 35mm lens, and nothing less!

Beware that this review is highly subjective, and based on some personal conditions and requirements: 1) I will mostly shoot wide open (read: shallow DOF), 2) I will almost exclusively use this lens for portraits, 3) I am doing backpacking, and carrying my gear in a Lowepro Passport Sling bag for 10-12 hours a day for two weeks, 4) I certainly won’t do video with this lens, 5) my portrait photography style is mostly asking the people in the street if I can take their photos, so not working with models or staged photos, 6) I care less about sharpness edge-to-edge, and more for the bokeh quality and the look of the photo. That doesn’t mean I can tolerate mushy glowy lenses though. The subject should be sharp and contrasty.

Also, note that this is not a comprehensive review by any means. I simply don’t have the time, desire and expertise to put these lenses through a thorough test. There are many fantastic reviews online for that purpose.

Options

There are a few options on the Sony lineup for a fast 35mm lens. There is of course the venerable Sony Zeiss 35mm 1.4, but it is large, heavy and way too expensive. There is Sigma 35mm 1.4 which is almost equally good, heavy, but not as expensive. And there is Rokinon 35mm 1.4 which is supposedly equally good, heavy, and the least expensive of the bunch. There are less mainstream options as well: You can either adapt other lenses like Canon, Voigtlander, etc, or you can use Sony’s APS-C lenses WITHOUT toggling the super-35mm option. The latter creates some minor or major vignetting, depending on the lens. Two options in this category are Rokinon 35mm 1.2, and the Sigma 30mm 1.4 (which I happen to own). 

So for the rest of the review, I am going to compare the three lenses pictured above, and decide which to take with me to India.

Rokinon 35mm 1.4

Pros:

  1. Autofocus

  2. No vignetting, i.e. no need to think about cropping later, and I can have the full size image.

Cons:

  1. BIG, BULKY and HEAVY. At 650 g, it’s not the heaviest of lenses, but it is the heaviest among these three options. Carrying it around attached to the lens is a bit inconvenient, and I certainly won’t have the camera dangling from my neck with this lens for longer than a minute. The lens doesn’t balance well on the small Sony A7RII body either.

  2. (A minor issue) most expensive option in this comparison.

Rokinon 35mm 1.2

Pros:

  1. Creamy bokeh, even slightly better than the Rokinon 35mm 1.4.

  2. I think it is the sharpest lens in this bunch. I haven’t done thorough testing, but to my eyes, this is even a tad sharper than the 1.4 lens.

  3. I also like the photos out of this lens better. I can’t put them in words, but they just look a tiny bit better in my opinion. Maybe I’m imagining though, because I know this is a 1.2 lens!

Cons:

  1. Manual focus. This is the biggest drawback about this lens: You can’t get the focus right unless you use the magnifier. No, the focus peaking doesn’t work. I tried many times, but you can’t get a reliably in-focus photo using the focus peaking alone, since the DOF is razor thin at 1.2. I even timed my shots, and on average, it takes 7 seconds to get an in-focus shot with this lens. That is way too long for portrait photography.

  2. Minor vignetting. Nothing unmanageable though. Interestingly, the closer the subject is to the camera, the smaller the vignetting becomes.

  3. Not the lightest lens at 420 gr. No major complaints though.

Sigma 30mm 1.4

Pros:

  1. It’s the smallest and lightest option at 265 g. It’s such a breeze to carry this lens around!

  2. Autofocus works perfectly.

Cons:

  1. It vignettes BIG TIME! You pretty much have to crop to either 1x1 or 4x5 aspect ratio. I personally don’t mind as much though, as I love those aspect ratios.

  2. The bokeh is slightly busier than the other two, but not too bad. You can certainly tell the difference when comparing the photos side-by-side.

  3. The perspective of this lens is 30mm and not 35mm. Again when you compare the photos side-by-side, you notice that the facial features are slightly different. I prefer the 35mm lens perspective for portraits.

So overall, thanks to the laws of physics (!), there is no clear winner. In my opinion, the Rokinon 35mm 1.2 is the best of the bunch in terms of image quality, but it is hard to use with manual focus, and it can potentially result in lost opportunities, and out-of-focus shots. The Rokinon 35mm 1.4 is the no-fuss option with both autofocus and no vignetting, but it is bulky and heavy. The Sigma 30mm 1.4 is the lightest of the bunch with autofocus, but it vignettes heavily, and the perspective is not exactly right.

At the end of the day, I think I would take my Sigma 30mm 1.4 with me. Photographically speaking, it is not the best, but it doesn’t that far off, and it is the most convenient with respect to size and having autofocus. I will have to crop the photos to 1x1 or 4x5 format, but thanks to the 42MP sensor of A7RII, I will still end up with more than enough pixels. The bokeh is not as nice, and the perspective is not as pleasing as the other two lenses, but I very much prefer to 1) carry a smaller lens, 2) have autofocus.

In the end, I leave you with three photos of the same subject taken with these three lenses. I have cropped them to 1x1 to have a fare comparison, and I let you figure out which one was taken with which lens!