50mm F1.4 EX DG HSM Announced

As you probably have already read elsewhere on sites such as DPreview.com, photozone.de and so on, Sigma has announced their 50mm 1.4 HSM prime lens. Though I am sure it will be a fantastic lens, I have already read far out claims as crazy as "The new standard in prime lenses".

Come on now, is it REALLY such a good idea to make such a claim without further field testing (when I say testing I don't mean standing inline at a booth to snap a couple frames). Lets read from Sigma's Announcement shall we?

• Standard lens with large maximum aperture of F1.4.
• It creates sharp images with high contrast and ensures superior peripheral brightness.
• Incorporates molded glass aspherical lens, perfectly correcting coma aberration and creating superior image quality.
• Super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting.
• Hyper Sonic Motor (HSM) ensuring silent, high-speed AF.

"This is a large aperture prime lens with a standard focal length of 50mm, ideal for digital cameras. This lens is perfectly suited for a wide range of subjects enabling outstanding, sharply defined images against a nicely blurred background. The fast, F1.4 aperture makes this lens desirable for use with Digital SLR cameras. This lens effectively becomes an 80mm medium telephoto lens on digital cameras with APS-C size image sensors. The optimum optical design and molded glass aspherical lens elements provide excellent correction for all types of aberrations. This lens has superior peripheral brightness and provides sharp, high contrast images even at the maximum aperture. Superior optical performance is also ensured throughout the focusing range. The super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting. This lens has a minimum focusing distance of 45cm (17.7”) and has maximum magnification of 1:7.4. It creates a very attractive blur, even when a small aperture is used.
This lens incorporates HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor), which ensures a quiet and high-speed AF as well as full-time manual focus override. "

I will however admit that HSM on a 50 would be rather nice, seeing as how my Nikkor 50 has one of the noisiest focusing mechanisms hands down (even over my Tokina glass). But let's face it, it is going to be damn hard to compete with the big guns of Nikon/Canon when it comes to prime lenses, though I am not saying the lens isn't what Sigma or any review site claims to be. I just want people to wait for a release before claiming what they have. I won't lie, I'm going to give it a test run myself, so stick around for that.

-Kyle