Here’s another in what is a bit of a pattern with “II” releases: it’s not a clear improvement, but more of an improvement with some tradeoffs. In this case, the II is clearly sharper and resolves better, particularly in the corners, than its predecessor. On the other hand, distortion is clearly a bit worse, with barrel distortion from 12-15mm or so and pincushion at the long end. I think it’s a good trade-off: those of us who postprocess can correct some distortion easily enough, but you can’t create resolution that isn’t there.

But really, that’s kind of nitpicking on my part. What we have here is a rectilinear lens that goes as wide as 12mm on a full frame camera. If that was an easy thing to do, Sigma wouldn’t be the only company trying it. And it’s a fun lens: the difference between 12 and 14mm is really quite significant.