The Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM ART Lens is one of the most exciting lenses for astrophotography enthusiasts in recent years and here are some of the first real world Milky Way images taken with the lens that also answer the big question: How's the coma?

For photographers that focus on sky images, one of the biggest concerns for any lens is how the stars look in the corners when shooting wide open, and I have to say that the new Sigma 14mm Art lens is looking incredible. Coma or comatic aberration occurs when off axis points of light, like stars, are not sharp due to the optical formula of the lens. Coma tends to look like each star has wings instead of being a point of light like the stars in the center of the image.

The image in this article was taken by Tony Liu with a Canon 5D Mark III with the Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM ART Lens at f/1.8, 2500 ISO and 10 second exposure.

The image above is zoomed into the top left corner of the main image.

The image above is zoomed into the top right corner of the main image.

My biggest concern when this lens was announced was if Sigma would keep things the same with coma in the corners of the lens as it had with the 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART and 20mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART lenses or if it would return to the optical formula that was closer to the 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART lens. The answer is that Sigma seems to have landed oh so short of the 35mm Art perfection, but it is much better than the 20mm and 24mm Art lenses. I say this because we are talking about a lens that is a full 1 1/3 stops wider than its competitors, and it looks like Sigma is finding a balance in its optical formula that allows such a wide aperture with fairly well controlled coma.

Is the Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM ART Lens perfect? No, but it's close and maybe worth another look if you shoot the stars.

Images by Tony Liu and used with permission. You can see more of his work on his Flickr and Instagram.