I didn’t notice any barrel or pincushion distortion with the 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM at any aperture, as expected from a 50mm lens. This is usually the nature of using a nifty-fifty. It will result in close to an invisible error in perspective. I compared my Sigma directly to my Nikon 50/1.4G and my Micro-NIKKOR 55mm f/2.8 AF on the test range at infinity.

When shot in the real world, any 50mm lens is going to be extremely sharp, and sharper than than a 24-70mm f/2.8 pro zoom. Before you go spending a lot of money on a super-duper 50mm lens, try any 50mm lens, especially the f/1.8, first. Sigma also clarifies that any DC lenses where the image circle is made to match APS-C sensors is used, the EOS R won't automatically switch to its built-in 1.6x crop shooting mode, meaning it will have to be set manually. A future firmware update, expected to be 'announced at a later date,' will make this switch automatic and add support for the EOS R's Scene Intelligent Auto mode. Lateral chromatic aberration is entirely negligible throughout the entire aperture range, even out at the edges and corners of the image frame. Axial chromatic aberration or ‘bokeh fringing’ is often problematic at very wide apertures with fast lenses, but it’s very minimal in this case. I give credit to sigma. their first lens 35mm 1.4 art from 2012 set a new bar the big companies didnt give users. nikon and canon 35 1.4 were trash. so sigma forced them all to up their game. even the new mk2 werent as good. people paid through the roof for oem and today its not needed with art lenses. even f2 contemporary are excellent.This Sigma has no measurable distortion at distances of 1 meter or more. It has slight barrel distortion at its closest focus distance.

This Sigma prime lens won the EISA Award for the Best Product Category in 2015. And after all that time, it still holds its place among the best lenses on the market. The Nikon version should work perfectly on every digital Nikon ever made, both FX and DX, from the best Df, D4s, D810 and D610 to Nikon's cheapest digitals like the D40, D40x, D60, D3000, D3100, D3200, D3300, D5000, D5100, D5200 and D5300.

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Small white plastic ball on the outside, and a red dot painted into an engraving in the lens mounting flange.

Lateral chromatic aberration is even better controlled in the DN lens compared with its forebear, which was already very good. As such, there’s virtually no color fringing to be seen towards the edges and corners of the frame. Axial chromatic aberration is also minimal, so there’s very little fringing around high-contrast edges in scenes that fall just in front of or behind the plane of focus. Resistance to ghosting and flare is again impressive. Bokeh is lusciously soft and dreamy. We noticed some ‘onion ring’ effect with the DG lens in defocused lights and bright spots but this is much more minimal in the DN lens.

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When shooting at f/1.4, vignetting is noticeable towards the corners of the image frame. That’s not an altogether bag thing, as it can give an attractive look to many types of image, including portraits and still life shots. And if you’d rather have a more uniform level of peripheral brightness, in-camera correction for vignetting is available. The lens relies more heavily on in-camera correction for distortion, as is the case with the majority of recent lenses designed for mirrorless cameras. Whereas the previous DG edition was essentially a zero-distortion lens, the DN exhibits noticeable pincushion for a 50mm prime, when auto correction is disabled. All in all though, image quality and all-round performance are absolutely fabulous. Believe it or not, the autofocus speed can also be improved. Sigma told us that with most lenses the speed of the autofocus motor inside a lens is actually restricted slightly. This is to aid AF acquisition by giving the system slightly more time, and to ensure that continuous focusing is smoother and less jittery, particularly when shooting video. However, if you want to get faster single AF performance, increasing the motor speed is now an option.