I am a frugal man, my friends prefer to call me tight. Why am I telling you this? Well, I don’t spend money that often, and when I do I research the thing I want to buy no end and even then I’ll be hunting everywhere for it cheaper. My Nikon 85mm f/1.4 D AF has been in my faithful companion for 5 years now. It’s been drenched, dropped, knocked, covered in ice in Iceland and left on a beach overnight in Cyprus and that little lens has carried on chugging along. That is until my camera strap snapped and it face planted glass first into the concrete. Since then it’s given me issues. I knew it had to be replaced. Being an owner of the Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art I had held out on buying a new 85mm in the hopes that they would release an 85mm and finally, they did. I perhaps didn’t expect the price that it was, however that’s the scrooge in me. Will this be another case of me having buyers remorse after spending, what for me is, a fair old chunk of change?

My main set up for wedding photography is switching between the 35mm and 85mm focal lengths. I don’t rock a dual camera set up, because I don’t want to turn my spine to dust. However I’m pretty quick at lens changes and can anticipate when I’ll need what focal length. I was a little hesitant at buying the 85mm Art to start with, my experience with the 35mm Art had slightly marred my opinion of Sigmas build quality. Within a couple of months of using the 35mm the mount has started to come loose and the lens would rattle quite a bit. I also had an issue with the contact strip coming out of its socket. I took it to Fixation in London and they tightened everything up for me, and since then it has been fine. However needs must, and given my Nikon 85 was on it’s way to the camera shop in the sky I thought I’d take the plunge and order it as soon as it was available.

I managed to find one from Calumet in the UK. Ordered on the Wednesday and it was with my Friday. The shipping box it came in was huge! I assumed this was just a case of them padding it out for protection, however when I finally unpacked it, I thought I had ordered the wrong lens, this thing was way bigger than I thought it would be. The Sigma 85mm Art comes in the standard white box with the black band across it. Inside I found a padded carry case with a strap, and inside that was the lens and lens hood. The filter size of the lens is 86mm, as soon as I saw the size of that front element I jumped on amazon and ordered myself a UV filter. I’m not precious about my gear and it gets abused quite a bit, but there’s no way I’m letting this thing get scratched up as soon as I get to a wedding.

My first impressions, this is one big and heavy lens. At 1.13kg it’s not the lightest of lenses to be hanging off your neck. At 126mm in length its quite a bit longer than my old D lens too. It’s finished in the same way the 35 Art is. Although its plastic it feels sturdy and not at all cheap. If you’re bothered by looks, I would say this lens has that “Pro” look about it when it’s attached to a body. On my D750 it feels very well balanced if a little heavy.

I’ve had two weddings since the 85 turned up, so the images in this review are going to be from those two weddings. I’m not going to go into great technical detail, just my experience of actually using the lens at weddings. So how does the lens fair in the real world? Short answer, wonderfully. The focus was tack sharp straight out of the box, I didn’t have to use the Sigma dock or FoCal to calibrate the lens like I did the 35 art. Over the course of the weddings I shot with the 85 I shot back-lit scenes, busy scenes, dark rooms, straight into the sun and other scenarios that might test it.

Whilst I was going through the images editing them, I did notice that there were times when I had missed focus by a hair. At the same time, this was when my shutter speed had been around 160 or slower. I personally don’t think this is a case of the lens missing, I think it’s way more likely to be me being a bit shaky and missing it, or that I was focus/recomposing at F1.4 and I had moved the lens out of focus myself. The weight of the lens, I think, was a contributing factor to this. Anything shot at 200th or faster was perfect at F1.4.

Anyway, enough waffling lets look at some photos.

I like the 85 focal length for the ceremony. It lets me get nice up close shots without being a distraction, or getting my arse kicked by the Vicar. This was quite a challenging ceremony, the sun was beaming in through the windows and the bride was stood partially in the light, so I had to choose my moments carefully so that I didn’t end up with a ton of hot spots on her

Original with a 100% crop of the shot. How sharp is that!

The 85 is perfect for candids. Shooting across a crowded room I noticed that the 85 didnt struggle to focus. There was no hunting or getting distracted by anything in the foreground.

As a portrait lens, this lens is a dream. The bokeh is beautiful and given how sharp it renders scenes it produces stunning scenes. As a focal length, I like 85 for portraits. You can get some nice lovey dovey shots without making people feel too conscious about being affectionate like you possibly would if you were all up in their face with a 35mm.

Speeches. This was a pretty dark room, backlit with a setting sun. Not the most optimal conditions for any lens, however it handled it like a champ and focus was snappy enough to capture the emotions that so often show themselves.

I don’t normally touch my 85 when it comes to the dancing action, choosing instead to shoot wider and use a slower shutter speed. The lens slightly missed focus here, again it was a dark room. I think the fact it missed was my error more than the lens.

The next wedding I shot, was a church one. As ever it was dark. As you can see in the first image, the focus was just off, I feel this was definitely down to my shaky hands with the weight of it. I upped my shutter speed and it carried on with much sharper shots

The sun was just starting to set by the time we got to the reception. Its setting behind the couple in these next few shots, slight bit of CA as you would expect, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted out.

Although not a macro lens, its minimum focus distance is 85mm. It can make for some nice detail shots.

Back to the candid stuff for speeches. The sun had all but disappeared by this point and the marquee was a weird mix of lighting. The DJ had up lighters everywhere, there was orange lights on the ceiling and some flood lights from outside coming in. Again the 85 handled it all very well.

So there you go, a few shots from 2 weddings I’ve shot using this lens. Do I have buyers remorse? Not at all. Coming from the old Nikon 85mm D lens, this was a whole new world. I perhaps would have hesitated if I had the Nikon 85mm F1.4 G but all in all I am very happy with the performance of this lens. All in all it performed like a champ. The added weight is a pain in the…well, in the back, and if it had had IS built into the lens it would have probably saved some of my out of focus/blurry shots. However it just meant slightly adjusting how I shot and making sure that I was shooting with a fast enough shutter speed. I would definitely recommend getting a UV filter for the front of it, its a huge piece of glass. All in all, I am very happy with this lens and if you’re in the market for a new 85, I don’t think you could really go wrong with this beastie