Sigma 85mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM (Nikon F)

Wide open, this lens renders skin like it was dipped in cream. The plane of focus is razor thin at f/1.4, and everything past it dissolves into a smooth, slightly clinical blur with no nervous edges and no onion-ring artifacts in the out-of-focus highlights. That was the whole pitch in 2010: deliver the look of a Nikon 85mm f/1.4 portrait lens for roughly half the money. Sigma mostly pulled it off.

This is the old EX DG generation, before Sigma split into the Art line and started winning lens-of-the-year awards. It came out around 2010 and stayed in the catalog into the middle of that decade, with the matte-crinkle EX finish and the ring-type HSM motor that focuses fast and dead quiet. Optically it is a fast medium-tele built for one job, shallow-depth portraiture on full frame. On a 35mm body the 85mm focal length gives you the classic head-and-shoulders working distance where faces stay proportional and the background goes to mush.

The rendering is the reason you buy it. Stopped to f/2 or f/2.8 it picks up real bite, and by f/5.6 the corners pull even with a center that was already strong. Bokeh holds together right out to the edges, color is neutral leaning warm, and contrast is moderate rather than punchy, which flatters film. Flare is reasonably well controlled for its era thanks to the Super Multi-Layer coating, and it shrugs off most contra light, though a hard point source dead in the frame can wash a little veiling across the contrast. Keep the deep hood on outdoors and you rarely see it.

The honest weakness is the focus. The HSM is fast but this generation of Sigma autofocus was notorious for front and back focus that varied copy to copy, and on a film SLR you cannot dial in a USB-dock correction the way later Art lenses allow. At f/1.4 with a focus plane that thin, a body that misses by a few centimeters puts the eyelashes sharp and the iris soft. Test your copy. The other catch is weight. This is a chunk of glass, front-heavy on a small body, and the 77mm filter thread means your good ND and polarizer are not cheap.

Where it sits now, this is the value pick people cross-shop against Nikon's own AF-S 85mm f/1.4G, the contemporary native flagship that arrived the same year in 2010, plus the older and cheaper 85mm f/1.4D and the later Sigma 85mm Art. The G is sharper wide open and corrected better, and so is the Art, but both run bigger, heavier, and pricier, and plenty of portrait shooters still prefer this older EX rendering for being a touch gentler on skin. On the used market it is one of the cheapest ways into a fast 85, which keeps it moving in wedding and portrait bags.

One metering note. At f/1.4 in dim church light or a candlelit reception, this is the lens that lets you keep shooting where slower glass quits. Meter wide open in Zone Light Meter and let the aperture buy you the shutter speed, then watch your focus, because the thin depth of field that makes the look is the same thing that punishes a soft frame.