The Sweet Spot

Alastair Norcross wrote:

RLight wrote:

Alastair Norcross wrote:

Excellent review. My only major disagreement is with the portrait score. I give it 5/5 for that. I much prefer primes over zooms for portraits, and the Sigma 56 is simply a stellar portrait prime for APS-C. The 32 and 22 are also good for portraits (depending on the style). The combination of the excellent eye AF of the M6II and the available fast primes (for longer working distance, the adapted 85 F1.8 works really well) makes the M6II an excellent portrait camera.

I’ll agree to disagree here; my main complaint with the Sigma 56 is that it’s 90mm effective when cropped. Had Sigma done a EF-M specific offering, not adapt their existing homework and made a 52mm making an 85mm effective, I’d own one. Canon and or Sigma are free to fix that problem as they are to fix the lack of a native near f/2.8 zoom of some kind. Right now they’re both lacking. The Sigma 56 is like shooting the EF 35 f/2 is usm adapted: too tight to be a nominal focal length which drives me nuts. It’s a good option absolutely, both adapting the 35mm or using the Sigma 56, but for the 35mm you can do the native 32mm both reducing the bulk (no adapter) and having a happy true 50mm. Right now with the Siggy 56, it’s a compromise.

Contrast this to say the Sigma 56 on a Sony (1.5x crop making it 85mm) or the Fuji 56 also being 1.5x, either the Fuji 16-55 f/2.8 or now Sony 16-55 f/2.8... That’s how I end up giving it 3 stars.

So the difference between a FF equivalent FOV of 85 and 90 is why you give the M6II 3 instead of 5 stars for portrait? It seems to me that you are obsessing over numbers here. I suspect that, had the Sigma been branded 52mm, instead of 56mm, you would never have noticed. For many portraits, I find anything from 80-140 (FF equivalent) to be just fine. You do realize that, for most portraits, backing up less than half a step will give you the same framing on a 56 as on a 52?

You can’t always back up in tight quarters. Yes, you can argue that’s why. 85mm is the traditional head and shoulders for a reason.

Shooting inside a classroom is very different than say a 3 or 4 bedroom house in terms of space to backup. If it works for you (it does) great. However there’s a reason Canon makes many focal lengths, to suit different situations and subjects. To your own point, in reverse, you can step in with say the 32mm (what I do now) but that’s a compromise too.