Daan Verhoeven has published a review on Behance of the Sigma Art 20mm 1.4 lens on a Sony a7R II underwater. The lens has a minimum focus distance of 28mm in this set-up and is well known for creating creamy, blurry backgrounds and buttery bokeh. Verhoeven says that he was interested in purchasing the lens to use for underwater portraits.

“As an experiment, i also cranked the f-stop up to f14 and worked with a shutter of 1/15th. As a fast lens this is not its natural habitat, but i wanted to take it and myself out of the comfort zone. It held up, but this might be more for wider, slower lenses.

Overall, i think this is a great lens to have in your collection if you want to do portraits underwater, or add diversity to fish-eye and 16 mm shots. It fitted into my existing Nautical housing with dome and extension for a 16-35mm Zeis, even though the Metabones adapter added a good 3 cm to the already enormous lens. If you play to its strengths and let it do its f1.4 magic, it is unique and will yield gorgeous results. I have yet to try it in low light, but so far the vignetting is not too bad so i reckon that won’t be much of a problem. It won’t replace my 16-35 for action shots, but as it says on the box and on the lens itself, this is an ‘art’ lens. State of the art, if you ask me. Brilliant piece of kit.”

Read the full review here and see all of the accompanying images as well. You can also follow Daan on his Instagram @daanverhoevenfreediver