Sigma has unveiled the 50mm f/1.2 Art for full-frame cameras, which promises optical brilliance and superb AF performance in the thinnest and lightest chassis available.

“Each piece of glass is as thin as possible, using glasses with a high refractive index and four aspherical lenses.” The high degree of production technology at Sigma’s lone manufacturing base, the Aizu factory, provides the fine precision required for processing extremely thin glass elements and enabling mass production,” Sigma claims.

In addition, the floating focus assures good performance while reducing total length, resulting in a small lens. The mechanical design phase focused on weight reduction. Through the meticulous reduction of individual components, SIGMA developed the lightest lens in its class, weighing only 745 grams.

Sigma’s new 50mm f/1.2 lens consists of 17 elements organized into 12 groups (including four aspherical lenses) and has an aperture range of f/1.2 to f/16 via a 13-bladed diaphragm. It also has multi-layer coatings, an aperture ring, and high-precision HLA (High-response Linear Actuator) motors that allow for fast and silent autofocus. It also has an AFL button that can be set to a variety of purposes through the camera’s menu, as well as an aperture ring lock switch and a declick switch.

Sigma claims that its optical formula, together with the aperture, is intended to deliver rich, circular bokeh with no color bleeding and reduced flare, ghosting, and focus breathing.

“By correcting spherical aberration, sagittal coma flare, axial chromatic aberration, and other aberrations, the lens produces natural bokeh images that blur smoothly without color bleeding from the focal plane.” Sigma adds that double-line bokeh has been suppressed, allowing customers to use the mellow bokeh effect in their expression.

Sigma also added floating focus to boost short-range performance, claiming it will offer stable, high-level image quality across the whole range from the shortest focusing distance to infinity.

Here are some sample pictures: