The war of the 24 mm - Sony vs Canons

This text will compare the following four different lenses at 24 mm aperture:

• Canon FD 24mm 2.8
• Canon EF 24-105mm L
• Canon EF 17-40mm L
• Sony 18-55mm kit lens

First the Center crop:

Note that the Canon EFs are wide open at f/4, because of heavy vignetting caused by the adapted when closing its iris control. We'll have a look at the effect of the iris in a follow-up post.

Upper Left crop

Upper Right Crop

Lower Left crop

Lower Right crop

The results shows again the lower quality of the Sony 18-55 kit lens compared against the Canons. Unsurprisingly, the FD 24mm prime is the sharper of the bunch, and maintains good performance even in the corners. Amongst the two EF zooms, the 17-40mm looks sharper and with less chromatic aberration, especially in the Upper Left and Right corners. The 24-105mm L it's a bit disappointing, considering its cost.

Canon FD 50 mm f1.4 vs Sony 18-55 kit lens

This test compares the Canon FD 50mm f/1.4 against the Sony 18-55 kit lens, both stopped at f/5.6, using the above reference points for center and corners. The FD lens was focused manually with the help of Sony's Nex-7 focus peaking and magnification features, the Sony lens was set in default Autofocus mode.

This test was very unfair for the humble Sony 18-55 kit lens: there's no way a cheap kit lens like this one could compete with the classic FD 50 prime. If anything, it demonstrates how inadequate the kit lens is for the very high resolution Nex-7 sensor. There's no need to spend lots of money to get an expensive "german glass": even an affordable Canon FD it's enough to improve a lot over the Sony 18-55 kit lens. It's very interesting to note how an almost 40-years design like the Canon FD 50, can still offer very good quality today.