Samsung 16mm f/2.4 NX i-Function Pancake Lens

Samsung 16mm f/2.4 NX i-Function Pancake Lens Performance

Sharpness at maximum aperture is good in the centre, but only fair towards the edges. Stopping down improves performance, with peak centre sharpness being realised at f/5.6, but the edges don't reach good levels of clarity until f/8.

Resolution @ 16mm

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 Samsung NX200 using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are quite high for a moderate wide angle lens, reaching 1 pixel width towards the edges of the frame at f/4. This level may become visible in high contrast areas towards the edges of the frame and may require attention in image editing software.

Chromatic aberration @ 16mm

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 Samsung NX200 using Imatest.

Falloff of illumination toward the corners is quite pronounced at maximum aperture with the corners being 1.74 stops darker than the image centre. Illumination isn't visually uniform until the lens is stopped down to f/5.6 or beyond.

Distortion is very well controlled, with 0.471% pincushion distortion being present, which is only very slight and should pose very few issues in real world images. What little distortion is present is uniform across the frame, so should be relatively easy to correct in image editing software afterwards.

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