The 20mm Born For People Who Are Active On Backstages

Harking back in my career as long as I can remember I’ve always preferred to pick up a wide prime lens over a zoom. I find zoom lenses both heavy and uninspiring. They don’t pull me in to pick up my camera. They don’t inspire me to shoot either the interesting or the mundane. A prime however, that can inspire me to shoot the seemingly boring. I find them nicer to use, they challenge me to zoom with my feet, they enlighten something within me that yearns to try new things. Different compositions especially. Wide angle zoom lenses make me lazy and I think it’s a mix of the weight and, equally, the zoom option. I’m not just a more creative photographer with a prime, I’m more ‘photographer’ as well! My favourite focal length has long been the 28mm, I also enjoy the 24mm focal length but it feels too similar at times and falls in that in between category for me where I’m wider but not quite wide enough. When we get down to a 14mm prime, it’s a lens I have but rarely use, it’s an extreme use case lens for someone like me photographing bands on stage and on tour. So, that leaves a gap between my favourite focal length and my extreme wides, a gap that once was, a gap now filled.

SIGMA have long had the 20mm focal length sewed up with their fantastically sharp SIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG HSM | Art. It’s a great lens, but it has two downfalls for me. One is no option to screw on a filter. I love to play with filters on my lenses, whether it’s a glimmer glass or an ND so I can still shoot wide open but at slow shutter speeds. Two, the fixed lens hood, which, for a lover of flares, is a moot point. So, when I had a chance to try out the new SIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG DN | Art made specifically for mirrorless cameras, I of course said yes. When it arrived and I opened the box I was greeted with a lens I knew I’d use for years to come. No fixed hood, the option to screw on filters and a much lighter, smaller lens to boot. On further inspection my video brain kicked in and rejoiced at the view, aperture stops on the lens AND the option to decline them.

20mm is a fun focal length. Most assume it’s a landscape lens. You’d pull it out the bag to grab a photo of a beautiful scene in front of you. I, however, am often in small spaces. Backstage in dressing rooms, in a studio, stuck between a drummer and a stage backdrop. So many times I shoot in an environment that begs for a wider lens. Sometimes I don’t even carry them. The 14mm lens I have is heavy, takes up a lot of room in my bag and at F2.8 doesn’t inspire me to ‘play’ with it. The SIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG DN | Art really did tick all the boxes, and that was before I’d seen the quality of the glass perform. Attached, and beautifully balanced on my Leica SL2, I started picking off shots at home, testing the AF first, then some filming, even some manually focussed photos, it just worked. It’s light, but not toy-like in its feel, it feels robust, it feels like a lens I would be able to trust. The bokeh is lovely, it’s quiet, it’s not too busy or too funky, the lens seems incredibly sharp edge to edge, which is nice to have. It’s not a way I tend to shoot, as I prefer to stay wide open when I can, but of course there will always be times you need to stop down and knowing the lens can handle that is extremely comforting.

On my first shoot with the lens I photographed a pianist recording in a London studio and had a lot of fun without the lens hood. The lens flares so nicely, you can make it really flare if you want to, or of course you can control the flare with the detachable hood. When we went into the control room I had about 4 feet to work with behind Duncan, much like when I photographed Harry at a show a few days later, the SIGMA 20mm F1.4 DG DN | Art let me capture the scene with minimal distortion, great separation and tack sharp focus. It’s in those situations when I can’t control what’s in front of me that I go to a wider lens, when I’m too close for anything longer, when I still want to give context to the photo, when I still want the option to have some separation.

It’s a lens that at the end of the day is often still already on my camera. That may be because it’s new, but I tend to think it might just be because it’s great.