Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM Lens Review

Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM Performance

Sharpness is already excellent in the centre of the frame at maximum aperture, although the performance of this lens towards the edges of the frame lets it down, only achieving fairly good clarity. Stopping down improves performance towards the edges of the frame, although it never reaches excellent levels of sharpness, peaking at very good levels between f/4 and f/11. Sharpness in the centre of the frame remains high, peaking at outstanding levels at f/4.

MTF @ 14mm

How to read our charts The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. For this review, the lens was tested on a Canon EOS 5D Mark III using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are reasonably controlled, just exceeding three quarters of a pixel width at f/2.8, f/4 and f/22. Still, this low level should cause few issues, even in large prints and harsh crops from the edges of the frame.

CA @ 14mm

How to read our charts Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. For this review, the lens was tested on a Canon EOS 5D Mark III using Imatest.

As is typical with lenses of this focal length, falloff of illumination towards the corners of the frame is quite pronounced at 14mm. Here the corners of the frame are 2.65 stops darker than the image centre and illumination isn't visually uniform until the lens is stopped down to f/8.

Distortion is well controlled for a lens of this focal length. Imatest detected 3.7% barrel distortion which will certainly be noticeable, but as the distortion pattern is uniform across the frame, it should be relatively simple to correct in image editing software afterwards.

Due to the extreme wide angle view of this lens, the permanent hood does little to shade the lens from extraneous light that may cause flare. Even so this lens performs pretty well for this type of lens, retaining good contrast, even when shooting into the light.

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