Sigma 16mm f/1.4 or just keep the Canon 22mm f/2

Hey everyone, I currently take alot of landscape, but also love to carry my camera around for some street and travel photography. I love my Canon 22mm for its low light performance but I was wondering if it would be worth having the Sigma for the extra bit of light it would let in. Of course alot of photos would be in the daylight, but I don't really want to put the camera away when walking around outside at night. Would it keep my ISO down much lower?

ScentedOrange wrote:

Hey everyone, I currently take alot of landscape, but also love to carry my camera around for some street and travel photography. I love my Canon 22mm for its low light performance but I was wondering if it would be worth having the Sigma for the extra bit of light it would let in. Of course alot of photos would be in the daylight, but I don't really want to put the camera away when walking around outside at night. Would it keep my ISO down much lower?

The Sigma lens would provide you 2 stops more light wide open for example you'd be able to drop from ISO 3200 to ISO 800 and get the same exposure/light.

The disadvantage is that the Sigma is much heavier and larger making it more obvious if used for street photography. I don’t have the Sigma so can't comment on differences in photo quality.

ScentedOrange wrote:

Hey everyone, I currently take alot of landscape, but also love to carry my camera around for some street and travel photography. I love my Canon 22mm for its low light performance but I was wondering if it would be worth having the Sigma for the extra bit of light it would let in. Of course alot of photos would be in the daylight, but I don't really want to put the camera away when walking around outside at night. Would it keep my ISO down much lower?

depends

if shooting motion, yes

if shooting stills, the 11-22 with IS is what I would use

the 16 is a big lens - you have a small m200 - many use the 16 on bigger m bodies like the m6II or m50 II

I view the 16 f1.4 as a party lens to photograph kids indoors at f1.4 - sharp in the center at f1.4

outdoors at night, for stills, use the IS on the 11-22

outdoors at night, for motion, the 16 f1.4 would give you 1 stop of light, iso 3200 versus iso 6400, over your 22 f2

geru wrote:

ScentedOrange wrote:

Hey everyone, I currently take alot of landscape, but also love to carry my camera around for some street and travel photography. I love my Canon 22mm for its low light performance but I was wondering if it would be worth having the Sigma for the extra bit of light it would let in. Of course alot of photos would be in the daylight, but I don't really want to put the camera away when walking around outside at night. Would it keep my ISO down much lower?

The Sigma lens would provide you 2 stops more light wide open

There is only one stop between f/1.4 and f/2.0. 😉

for example you'd be able to drop from ISO 3200 to ISO 800 and get the same exposure/light.

ISO 3200 to ISO 1600

The disadvantage is that the Sigma is much heavier and larger making it more obvious if used for street photography. I don’t have the Sigma so can't comment on differences in photo quality.

I agree. Two very different lenses. I love the 22mm. It's my most used lens.

But the 16mm is also very nice. It is an excellent party / family gathering lens and also very good for landscapes. But it is much larger and heavier. So for street I would take the 22mm.

So it is impossible to recommend only one. I would say: Get both ! 😄

I have the 10-18 EFS that I use on the adapter. I'm not too worried about the size of the lens, I wont be capturing people really, just things we se on our journeys. I was just thinking the f1.4 would produce a sharper less noisy image, unless you think IS with a longer exposure time would do all the same.

ScentedOrange wrote:

I have the 10-18 EFS that I use on the adapter. I'm not too worried about the size of the lens, I wont be capturing people really, just things we se on our journeys. I was just thinking the f1.4 would produce a sharper less noisy image, unless you think IS with a longer exposure time would do all the same.

the f1.4 @ f1.4 is sharp in the center, but across the frame, for scapes (stills), yes, you'll want to stop down and use a longer exposure - the 16 doesn't have IS which is the issue when stopping down in darkness - so the 11-22 with IS will win handheld

Sigma 16mm F1.4 DC DN Contemporary Lens Image Quality (the-digital-picture.com)

yes, a longer exposure with the 11-22 would work

I gave away my 10-18 to get the 11-22 so I'm bias on IQ across the frame

Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM Lens Image Quality (the-digital-picture.com)

ScentedOrange wrote:

Hey everyone, I currently take alot of landscape, but also love to carry my camera around for some street and travel photography. I love my Canon 22mm for its low light performance but I was wondering if it would be worth having the Sigma for the extra bit of light it would let in. Of course alot of photos would be in the daylight, but I don't really want to put the camera away when walking around outside at night. Would it keep my ISO down much lower?

Hello,

for a long time I hesitated with the Sigma 16mm because of its size, but now I am owning it for about six months.
But my focus is rarely on low light, more on landscape, travel and family photography.

To my mind, it is a great lens concerning IQ, sharpness and color rendering. The large aperture is just an additional "bonus" for me. The more I use it, the more I like it. And the size is no more an obstacle.

From my prime lenses (16mm, 22mm, 32mm, 56mm), the 22mm is the least used one.

Of course, the decision for/against a certain lens is always quite subjective, but I can highly recommend the 16mm, if you like that FL.

StrugglingforLight wrote:

MAC wrote:

ScentedOrange wrote:

Hey everyone, I currently take alot of landscape, but also love to carry my camera around for some street and travel photography. I love my Canon 22mm for its low light performance but I was wondering if it would be worth having the Sigma for the extra bit of light it would let in. Of course alot of photos would be in the daylight, but I don't really want to put the camera away when walking around outside at night. Would it keep my ISO down much lower?

depends

if shooting motion, yes

if shooting stills, the 11-22 with IS is what I would use

the 16 is a big lens - you have a small m200 - many use the 16 on bigger m bodies like the m6II or m50 II

I view the 16 f1.4 as a party lens to photograph kids indoors at f1.4 - sharp in the center at f1.4

outdoors at night, for stills, use the IS on the 11-22

outdoors at night, for motion, the 16 f1.4 would give you 1 stop of light, iso 3200 versus iso 6400, over your 22 f2

Re: 22 f2 vs 11-22 f4-5.6 IS

Your saying the 11-22 would be better than the 22 outdoors at night, for stills? IS would help that much with both at 22mm?

11mm = f/4.0
12-14mm = f/4.5
15-18mm = f/5.0
19-22mm = f/5.6

Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM Lens Image Quality (the-digital-picture.com)

handheld, with the 11-22 you get 3 stops of IS

that is the difference between f2 on the 22 and f5.6 on the 11-22

so then it becomes can you handhold the 22 at the slower ss

I have extensively tried both the Canon 22mm f2 and the Sigma 16mm f1.4 at night for extreme low-light photography, in conjunction with DxO Photolab and its DeepPRIME de-noise.

The 22mm f2 is a great lens because it is 'very good' optically, and so small and light. it gives sharp images in the daytime and is so small it fits in the camera bag without a second thought.

I do railroad photography and video, and what I've found is that the Sigma 16mm f1.4 lens is optically a class above the Canon 22mm f2 lens. It has much better flare control and gives cleaner, contrastier images in very low light than the Canon 22mm f2 lens.

My videos shot with the 22mm in very low light are washed out enough (poor contrast) to be unusable, where the 16mm f1.4 results look great. The Sigma 56mm f1.4 is in the same class as the 16mm f1.4, and the Canon 32mm f1.4 is even a cut above those two due to its incredible sharpness wide open.

I am currently experimenting with the Sigma Contemporary (EF) 150-600mm f5-6.3 extreme telephoto lens, for more reach beyond the EF-M 55-200 and EF-S 55-250 IS STM lenses. I"m comparing them all, and unsurprisingly, it's looking like the Sigma is optically superior to the Canon kit telephoto zooms when used at the same focal lengths. It is really large, quite a beast of a lens, though --- not a lens that's going to be carried around regularly!

With Sigma, it looks like optical quality is a very high priority, and the 16mm f1.4 lens is larger and heavier so that the optical quality will be uncompromised.

On my recent vacation, when walking at night in the city, I did carry the M6ii with no EVF and the 22mm f2 on a strap around my neck, inside my jacket. This way it didn't look like I had a camera, but I had it when needed, and the 22 is good enough to shoot city scenes in well lit areas at night. So there definitely is a place for both lenses for me.

The other 'great' wide night lenses I use are the Rokinon 12mm f2 and Laowa 9mm f2.8 lens. Both are also excellent low light lenses in the same class as the Siggy 16, quite sharp wide open. They are manual focus lenses, but at that wide a focal length, you can reliably set focus using the focus scale much of the time, plus they have a deep depth of field, and because they are so wide you can use slightly slower shutter speeds, making them as useful as the Siggy 16. The Rokinon 12mm f2 in particular is a fairly inexpensive lens compared to the other fast, wide options.

In my eyes those two lenses are very different. I was thinking about 16mm, but 16mm is not wide enough and 22 is more versatile focus length for portraits than 16mm. If I would consider to change 22 f2 than I would take Viltrox 23 f1.4. It is not as sharp as sigma, but it has his own look and very versatile as 22mm.

My favorite options on canon crop would be 9 (laowa) to 13mm (viltrox but not for efm), 22-23mm, 50-56mm and 300+mm. I do not see much usage of 16mm and 32mm (I have). On FF I would take 16mm, 35 and 85mm primes and some telephoto.

Icagel wrote:

In my eyes those two lenses are very different. I was thinking about 16mm, but 16mm is not wide enough and 22 is more versatile focus length for portraits than 16mm. If I would consider to change 22 f2 than I would take Viltrox 23 f1.4. It is not as sharp as sigma, but it has his own look and very versatile as 22mm.

I find the 22mm focal length to be a very useful 'sweet spot', and really would love a good 22mm f1.4.  I have read many reviews of the Viltrox 23mm f1.4 and based on those I do not think it would be any better than the Canon 22mm f2 lens for my purposes.   I use the Siggy 16mm f1.4 as I have no other close options, but would prefer something a little less wide for all around-night shooting.

My favorite options on canon crop would be 9 (laowa) to 13mm (viltrox but not for efm), 22-23mm, 50-56mm and 300+mm. I do not see much usage of 16mm and 32mm (I have). On FF I would take 16mm, 35 and 85mm primes and some telephoto.

Makes sense to me too.  Of all my lenses I use the Canon 32mm f1.4 the least, even though it is optically the best lens on the mount!

Sittatunga wrote:

in poor light I get better images from that 11-22mm than from the 22mm f/2 hand held (as long as I don't need to stop movement),

^this

The 16mm might be a better lens for people in the image though, but it's too big for me to consider on EOS M, and it's not available in RF mount.

it is a very good people lens for environmental photos that gives context and handles movement shutter speeds with the f1.4

but size is indeed big for an m200

that said, if you do parties indoors with the m system, this is your lens

Thats the thing, Im also always asked if I can use my "fancy camera" to capture family photos outside when everyone is leaving, having the wide angle plus the ability to shoot a bit faster might be useful.

Im mostly concerned about being able to take photos of shops and buildings in the dark, so not totally low light. (personally im night blind, if I cant see I know the cameras sure cant lol)

MAC wrote:

that said, if you do parties indoors with the m system, this is your lens

It really is !

ScentedOrange wrote:

Thats the thing, Im also always asked if I can use my "fancy camera" to capture family photos outside when everyone is leaving, having the wide angle plus the ability to shoot a bit faster might be useful.

Im mostly concerned about being able to take photos of shops and buildings in the dark, so not totally low light. (personally im night blind, if I cant see I know the cameras sure cant lol)

actually, you bring up a point where your m200 in low light would struggle achieving auto focus by 3 stops worse than the m6II and by 2 stops worse than the m50II

if buildings in the dark are your application, I'd be concerned about the -2 versus the better low light bodies (-5 and -4)

M200

EV -2 - 18 (room temperature, f/1.4, ISO 100,

M6II

EV -5–18 (at room temperature, ISO 100, f/1.4,

M50II

Working Range EV -4 – 18 (ISO 100 equivalent with F1.4 lens attached)

note - your m10 is even worse at EV of 1 at f2 which would be EV of 0 at f1.4  -  that is a whopping 5 stops worse than m6II

Working RangeEV 1-18 (at 23°C, ISO 100, with EF-M 22mm f/2 STM)

MAC wrote:

ScentedOrange wrote:

Thats the thing, Im also always asked if I can use my "fancy camera" to capture family photos outside when everyone is leaving, having the wide angle plus the ability to shoot a bit faster might be useful.

Im mostly concerned about being able to take photos of shops and buildings in the dark, so not totally low light. (personally im night blind, if I cant see I know the cameras sure cant lol)

actually, you bring up a point where your m200 in low light would struggle achieving auto focus by 3 stops worse than the m6II and by 2 stops worse than the m50II

The M200 is only one stop worse than M6II and same as M50II

if buildings in the dark are your application, I'd be concerned about the -2 versus the better low light bodies (-5 and -4)

M200

EV -2 - 18 (room temperature, f/1.4, ISO 100,

That is not true. It is EV -4 - 18 (room temperature, f/1.4, ISO 100, One-Shot AF)

I don't know why you post stuff like that?

M6II

EV -5–18 (at room temperature, ISO 100, f/1.4,

M50II

Working Range EV -4 – 18 (ISO 100 equivalent with F1.4 lens attached)

note - your m10 is even worse at EV of 1 at f2 which would be EV of 0 at f1.4 - that is a whopping 5 stops worse than m6II

Working RangeEV 1-18 (at 23°C, ISO 100, with EF-M 22mm f/2 STM)