very useful and very cheap w/a for A7rii video shooters

[oscar]

First post from a long time lurker as I wanted to share a lens that I have found to be great, cheap and can find very little reference to online.

 

As a documentary maker, I often use my A7rii as b camera on productions  and I use the photography side for my own stuff. 

 

I already own a few quality primes but was on the lookout for something that would work well as a standard w/a for video in the sharp super 35 4k mode.

 

Stumbled across a second hand Sigma 19mm f.28 EX DN E mount for 65 UK£ and for the money thought why the hell not?

 

Delighted to say it absolutely rocks as a very compact, nifty 28mm equiv w/a for video, with vignetting and distortion corrected in camera and what's more (probably as it's native E mount- correct me if I'm wrong)  the (increasingly useful for film makers) autofocus seems to work as well as the sony zeiss primes.

 

For fun I shot a few stills on it in full frame mode and here's the thing; the vignetting is not as huge as I thought it would be for an aps-c lens. With 42mps there's obviously room to crop and I estimate, with a bit of sympathetic correction, you can get a clean image that equates to roughly 22- 23mm focal length.

 

While the 18mm batis and the manual focus 21mm loxia are going to be far superior in every way- sharpness rendition etc (and yes diff focal lengthss), they also cost over 10 times the price and I don't tend to shoot very wide that often. Adapted lenses, inc sigma 20mm (which is problematic for video filtration without a matte box) tend to be pretty large and also quite costly. 

 

So there you go. 2 uses for a very cheap lens! 

 

I fully expect cool story bro after this but sharing for those who might be on a similar look out on the video side cheers!