Zhongyi Freewalker 24mm f/1.7 Lens Review

Zhongyi Freewalker 24mm f/1.7 Performance

Even though this lens is sold as an alternative lens, more for the effect it can deliver, rather than for out and out sharpness, performance is as you may expect for a wide angle lens with a fast aperture. Sharpness is good in the centre of the frame at f/1.7, increasing to excellent levels as the aperture is stopped down to around f/4. Towards the edges of the frame, clarity isn't quite as good at fast apertures and the lens really needs stopping down to f/8 or beyond to achieve very good sharpness edge to edge.

MTF

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 Sony Alpha 5000 using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are a little high towards the edges of the frame, exceeding one pixel width between f/1.7 and f/4. Care may need to be taken when shooting scenes with high contrast areas near the edges of the frame as a result.

CA

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 Sony Alpha 5000 using Imatest.

Falloff of illumination towards the corners is quite well controlled for a lens with a fast maximum aperture. At maximum aperture, the corners are 1.87 stops darker than the image centre and illumination is visually uniform by f/4.

Imatest detected 1.65% barrel distortion, which is fairly typical for a wide angle lens with a fast maximum aperture. The distortion pattern is uniform across the frame, so applying corrections in image editing software should be relatively straightforward.

Contrast is lacking with this lens, especially when shooting into the light. In a way, this helps to enhance the effect produced by this lens, although it's worth taking note of if you were expecting performance similar to what you'd get with a more mainstream optic.

Value For Money

With a price of around £230 direct from ZYOptics, the price of this lens is comparable to other similar optics. For example, the SLR Magic 23mm f/1.7 lens (which looks similar) costs around £250.

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