Canon 35mm f/2 IS vs Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art bokeh comparison

J A C S wrote:

Focusing too close makes small AF differences more significant. It seems that your Sigma shot is slightly front-focused compared to the Canon, for example. That would increase the blur radius. It may also change the character and the size of the blur.

Well, being the impatient kind I couldn't wait until tomorrow so I setup my own "scene" with some backgrounds to mimic complex foliage - well, to the best of my ability with what I had to hand, that is.

I took your advice and this time setup the tripod at approx. 2m (actually, it's around 1.5m if I think about it) from the focus point but you can see from the helmet shot that the frame size isn't far off. Both lenses were manually focused on the chess piece in the helmet and ETTR exposure was used once more. As there's no natural light (it's dark here) or strong foliage, I've cropped the images cinematically to fill the width of my screen to try and better show the differences. (Incidentally, the pseudo "foliage" in question in this scene is the orange cushion and the patterned jacket - although as it turns out the hem of the seat is a good illustrator of the bokeh too)

Anyway, here you go... You'll really need to view the original size images for this one.

Here's where they were focused

Canon @ f/2

Sigma @ f/2

Sigma @ f/1.4

Sigma @ f/2.8 - looks closer to the Canon when at f/2 in my opinion

As it's harder to see than the backlit foliage, here's a 100% crop @ f/2 for both

Same as above - both at f/2 but on the coat detail

Canon (left) @ f/2 and Sigma (right) @ f/2.8. It's still blurrier at a higher stop!

Finally, the difference the extra stop has for the Sigma @ f/1.4 over the Canon @ f/2

Constructive thoughts always welcome but obviously "THE SIGMA BOKEH CAN'T MATCH THE CANON 35mm f/1.4L II!", that aside, I think it looks pretty darn smooth to my eyes. Certainly a massive step-up from the f/2 IS. If anything I think this scene illustrates it even better than the original post...?

Cheers,

Mark.