Getting Your Nifty Fifty-ish Fix: The SIGMA 30mm (45mm Crop Equivalent) f/1.4 Art

This is a new series. Over time I have tried a large number of 50mm-ish (full frame equivalent) lenses. This includes crop lenses from larger or smaller image-capturing surface areas. I will keep these at a very high level. Just a paragraph or two about why I like them and sample shots. There will be no talk of a “best” lens. I find something to appreciate in nearly any 50mm-ish lens.

Now let me nearly immediately contradict myself for this first post in this series. I was curious about what lens I had used the most. There are lenses I had assumed would have the highest keeper count. A few DSLR lenses, or maybe some MFT or other mirrorless selections. But I was very wrong. By quite a large margin the lens with the highest Flickr count is <imagined drum roll>…

…the SIGMA 30mm f/1.4 Art… A discontinued SIGMA SA crop lens has the highest count? This was not expected.

I first thought this made little sense. It is an odd mount. It is a crop mount. Relatively to other lenses that came to mind, I have not owned this lens for long.

But the more time I spent thinking about it this actually made sense. Will lump my thoughts into two categories.

Flexibility

An SA mount would seem to be a limiting factor as far as flexibility but no. Courtesy of a Sony adapter, film SIGMA SA mount cameras, a removable IR cut filter, and the ability to cover a full-frame image circle this lens has quite a few use cases.