I was told that this lens was just a remake of the old Sigma 12-24 for full frame cameras, but there’s more to it than that (although the big bulging front element will certainly remind you of it). First and foremost, let’s be clear: 8mm is significantly wider than 10mm, so I consider this lens somewhat different than the other ultra-wides. At 8mm you can get your shoes in the picture if you tilt the lens down just a bit. It’s wide.

It’s also quite sharp, especially in the center and especially at 8 to 10mm, which is probably what you’re getting this lens for anyway. More surprisingly, it doesn’t have horrible barrel distortion at 8mm, which is pretty amazing. It’s not quite as sharp at the longer end, and, at any focal length, the corners and even the edges are a little mushy. Chromatic aberration is pretty well controlled.

So, I’m surprised: I expected to say it was a useful lens, if you really want the widest you can get, but otherwise had a lot of weaknesses, which is what I said years ago about the 12-24 full frame lens. But, really, this one not only lets you get ultra, ultra wide, it can compete with all the other ultra wides from 10 to 20mm too. It gives up some aperture to most of the others, but, except for that, it’s very comparable to them. And from 8mm to 10mm, well, there’s no comparison at all. This isn’t the lens for everyone, many people will never shoot this wide, but if you think that you might, this is a great choice and I can recommend it without reservation.

Ultra-wide comparison

Comparing the ultra-wide, crop sensor camera lenses is an extremely difficult task, so I’ll put the summary first: they all deliver excellent image quality and you can’t go wrong with any of them. To my “just taking pictures” assessment, they are all excellent. There are some differences though, so I’ll try to point those out (that way you can better choose the one that’s best for you.)

• The Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 is the widest (and remember, 8mm is 20% wider than 10mm, so it’s a very real difference). Not quite as sharp in the corners as the others, and lower maximum aperture, but it’s really pretty good, especially considering it’s the widest of the wide.

• The Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 has a bit more distortion than the others but delivers very nice images. It has a great build quality, and does pretty much everything well.

• The Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 gives you the widest aperture if you’ll be working in low light (with ultra wides, depth of field is rarely an important point), but it’s a bit soft at f/2.8, so the aperture advantage isn’t huge (I usually shoot it at f/3.5 if I can to get it sharper). It has very little vignetting and distortion, probably the least of the group. Unfortunately, it does show quite a bit of chromatic aberration at times. Overall it may be the best image quality of the group.

But like I said above: they’re all excellent. We hardly ever get anything but happy comments about any of them.