A fair review, and it does allude to the compactness "...baffling considering the immense front element that we have seen on other ultra-wide lenses in this speed class." This point is not elaborated further, but it is quite significant in the mindset of "the lens you have with you". I owned the 14mm f:2.8 L II, and while a wonderful lens it was bulky, heavy and you could not put a filter in front of the huge frontal element. If I wanted a wider angle capability for travel photography to complement the 24-105L, it was like having another zoom in the bag (645g, 80mm wide, 94mm long). Fine if ultra-wide angle is going to be used frequently (architecture / travel / confined spaces), but as an occasional item it was tough to lug it along. This 16mm is just that lens, with of course its limitations as a $300 lens, but I find for street photography and other such uses for which one is not pixel-peeping at corners, in the words of the review "A 16mmm f/2.8 for this kind of money is an insane bargain even with the mentioned limitations."
At this point, the only use I'd have for my old Bower (Samyang) 14/2.8 would be to use the ND adapter - I'm not even sure if that old lens, once corrected, would be appreciably sharper either.
Of course, the bigger concern with the RF 16/2.8 is that bokeh. It's not something you'd expect to see often but it is certainly jarring!
For years my uwa 21/3.5 Zuiko. Paid about $300 used IIRC. Most if not all metal construction. Looked it up apparently only 185g vs 165g for 16!! I think Tokina mf 17/3.5 used to be $179 new.
So, no, I don't think 10% distortion, the size, or $300 is that amazing. I don't really want to trash people's gear, if you are using it happily keep on going, but it looks pretty stupid to me
I didn't really need 16mm, 17-20 might have been fine, f/3.5-4 too. You'd think they'd be able to make it perform better on digital and overall vs older ~$300 uwa given 30+ years.
AmbientMike wrote:
For years my uwa 21/3.5 Zuiko. Paid about $300 used IIRC. Most if not all metal construction. Looked it up apparently only 185g vs 165g for 16!! I think Tokina mf 17/3.5 used to be $179 new.
So, no, I don't think 10% distortion, the size, or $300 is that amazing. I don't really want to trash people's gear, if you are using it happily keep on going, but it looks pretty stupid to me
I didn't really need 16mm, 17-20 might have been fine, f/3.5-4 too. You'd think they'd be able to make it perform better on digital and overall vs older ~$300 uwa given 30+ years....Show more →
That's not really a fair comparison. First, it's 21mm vs 16mm, which is a very large difference in UWA width. Second, it's 2/3 of a stop faster. Third, the Zuiko may go for $300 on the used market 30 years after it was launched, but it certainly didn't launch at that price. According to this, the 21mm f/3.5 sold new at a retail price of approximately $500-$570. The lens launched in 1972. $500 in 1972 is equivalent to $3,300 today, so let's not pretend that the Olympus 21mm was this super cheapo lens designed to hit a price point. Even if that $500 wasn't the launch price, but say was the price in 1985 (which is unclear given the source), that's still $1,300 today. Even if we take it as the price from the last year OM lenses were sold new (which seems unlikely to be the price reference), that was 2002, and $500 in 2002 would be $780 today adjusted for inflation. So at BEST it was 2.5x the price of the Canon 16.
The 16mm is certainly an imperfect lens, but it is really only the corners that get hit from the distortion correction. For the price and size it's very good, but you have to consider that for the price and size. It's not meant to be an UWA for professional architectural photographers.
I bought the 16mm 2.8 very early on, as soon as it was available in my local store.
I have it permanently on my walk around R5, and find that the lens is plenty sharp in the center and that the edges are less sharp.
I don't do meticulous landscape or technical photography, so am not bothered by less-than-perfect corners which are not where I'd position my subjects, and in all likelihood the corners of my photos would be out of focus anyway.
Jpeg images are corrected in-camera, and raw images (I shoot raw) need software correction, so far pretty common knowledge.
Out of camera, the raw images are wider than 16mm, I am guessing about 14mm, and I like that, and when using Adobe Raw lens correction the resulting image is still a bit wider than the corresponding and corrected jpeg.
Capture One (STILL!!!!) has no profile for this lens, shame on them, but manually one can correct the lens' distortion pretty close to where it should be.
Cheap, lightweight, small, pretty much a disposable lens. Did I say I like it?
I am more than happy with my R16. Will it replace a tilt-shift for demanding architectural projects. Nope.
But it's very good lens, and when you factor in its size and price, it's downright great. Klaus can keep looking, I have found my everyday carry WA lens...
Jman13 wrote:
That's not really a fair comparison. First, it's 21mm vs 16mm, which is a very large difference in UWA width. Second, it's 2/3 of a stop faster. Third, the Zuiko may go for $300 on the used market 30 years after it was launched, but it certainly didn't launch at that price. According to this, the 21mm f/3.5 sold new at a retail price of approximately $500-$570. The lens launched in 1972. $500 in 1972 is equivalent to $3,300 today, so let's not pretend that the Olympus 21mm was this super cheapo lens designed to hit a price point. Even if that $500 wasn't the launch price, but say was the price in 1985 (which is unclear given the source), that's still $1,300 today. Even if we take it as the price from the last year OM lenses were sold new (which seems unlikely to be the price reference), that was 2002, and $500 in 2002 would be $780 today adjusted for inflation. So at BEST it was 2.5x the price of the Canon 16.
The 16mm is certainly an imperfect lens, but it is really only the corners that get hit from the distortion correction. For the price and size it's very good, but you have to consider that for the price and size. It's not meant to be an UWA for professional architectural photographers. ...Show more →
I pulled out a mid 90's issue of popular photography and the 21/3.5 Zuiko was $269.95 new from B&H. If you wanted a cheap lens, others sold for less, including the 17 Tokina I mentioned, which apparently had sample variations but was popular for adapting to ff even on digital. The 18mm vivitar even less expensive.
I think that was maybe even my point. The 21mm wasn't a cheap lens. And yet still under $300. So yes if you look at inflation like you should it's more but it's still hard get excited about a $300 uwa. That's about the price you used to have to pay. Even more recently used mf 20mm nikkors about $200. No plastic or very little, no 10% distortion, no cropping required on the 21 Zuiko, or probably a lot of these, either.
Like I mentioned above it is a fair comparison. I don't really need 16mm, 17-20 at f/3.5-4 is probably good enough. If they could have used tech on older lens and improved the design so it's better in general or on digital that might have been great, but instead they used it to fix a bad lens in the computer. If you like your lens and are happy with it by all means go use it, might be fine. But I'm not really sure what they were thinking, here
AmbientMike wrote:
For years my uwa 21/3.5 Zuiko. Paid about $300 used IIRC. Most if not all metal construction. Looked it up apparently only 185g vs 165g for 16!! I think Tokina mf 17/3.5 used to be $179 new.
So, no, I don't think 10% distortion, the size, or $300 is that amazing. I don't really want to trash people's gear, if you are using it happily keep on going, but it looks pretty stupid to me
I didn't really need 16mm, 17-20 might have been fine, f/3.5-4 too. You'd think they'd be able to make it perform better on digital and overall vs older ~$300 uwa given 30+ years....Show more →
I recently tried a tokina 17mm. Corners never got very sharp at any aperture. It was a low end lens 30 years ago. The 16mm (with the lens profile applied) is significantly better in every way. 21mm is not nearly as wide. If you are going to dismiss all that FOV, then might as well just use the wide end of a 24mm zoom
The Tokina AT-X 17/3.5 was significantly better than the RMC SL, and better than the Tamron 17/3.5 SP (both versions). The Olympus 18/3.5 OM is the best of the lot. SMC Pentax 18/3.5 was a disappointment, probably because of the built-in filters (same for the early SP).
I have the 16/2.8 and really like it for backpacking and casual use. Go to crop mode and get 24mpx/~17mpx. This is the perfect hiking camera at <200grams.
I really like optical limits however:
1) OL tests uwa by bringing the image in close to the lens until the target fills the page. Thus centre is proportionately way closer than edges. This is a broken method.
2) Similarly I am only interested in performance at infinity. Which is not tested.
3) They test corrected. The lens is really 14mm at uncorrected. For landscape. The vignetting can be cropped out at 16mm. I will shoot uncorrected and the IQ will be much higher. Most times I crop anyway to 16x9. Unless you are shooting architecture this conclusion is misleading. Uncorrected the iq at corners is much higher (albeit distorted).
Although they conclude its a great lens for the price. I think they need to improve their UWA methodology and give reflect the subject.
Great lens for backpacking / Hiking. Who would expect it to be good for more at $300.
[OL comes to the same oversimplified conclusions for 24-104 f4-7.1. This is misleading. They need to up their game and be consistent (they ignore this issue when reviewing earlier Sony cheap lens).]
Allow me to comment, especially on our methodology
Scott Stoness wrote:
I really like optical limits however:
1) OL tests uwa by bringing the image in close to the lens until the target fills the page. Thus centre is proportionately way closer than edges. This is a broken method.
No, this is how all MTF tests are done, and there is simply no alternative to it. Interestingly, it's never an issue for lenses with good results, but always a reason to question our testing approach for lenses with fairly low resolution numbers.
Lenses have a flat image field (theoretically). So testing a flat target is the natural approach. For wide angle lenses, yes that brings up the issue that we're not testing at infinity (you can't, really), but if you happen to have a lens with a distance scale (the RF 16 doesn't qualify here), you can still see that with our typical test distance we're still closer to infinity on the lens' scale than to its MFD.
Scott Stoness wrote:
2) Similarly I am only interested in performance at infinity. Which is not tested.
As I wrote already: this is simply not possible. Unless you happen to own a landscape you can fill with a giant MTF test target.
Scott Stoness wrote:
3) They test corrected. The lens is really 14mm at uncorrected. For landscape. The vignetting can be cropped out at 16mm. I will shoot uncorrected and the IQ will be much higher. Most times I crop anyway to 16x9. Unless you are shooting architecture this conclusion is misleading. Uncorrected the iq at corners is much higher (albeit distorted).
We test corrected in this case, and it's clearly stated in the text that results without distortion correction naturally show higher resolution in the image corners. Testing without distortion corection simply would not have been possible due to the massive vignetting. The corners are pitch black, there is nothing to measure there for Imatest. Testing with cropping would have led to results that are simply not comparable to all other RF reviews, since the resolution of the test image would be different.
On top, as also clearly stated in the review: this lens is very obviously designed to be used with software correction enabled. Still, we're interested in the native performance of a lens, since software correction never comes for free. Many manufacturers heavily rely on software correction nowadays, true, but no other manufacturer currently offers lenses that are underdesigned to such a degree as Canon does. I think it's fair to point that out and demonstrate it by numbers.
It's a very personal decision if you can live with the drawbacks of such a lens. And as we also pointed out, it's definitely a price/performance king. On the other hand it's also fair to ask, if the lens could have been significantly better (optically) for a slightly higher price. Personally, I think a $400 oder $450 lens, that under the hood fills the sensor to the corners and is not a hidden fisheye would have sold similarly well.
freedolin wrote:
Allow me to comment, especially on our methodology
No, this is how all MTF tests are done, and there is simply no alternative to it. Interestingly, it's never an issue for lenses with good results, but always a reason to question our testing approach for lenses with fairly low resolution numbers.
Lenses have a flat image field (theoretically). So testing a flat target is the natural approach. For wide angle lenses, yes that brings up the issue that we're not testing at infinity (you can't, really), but if you happen to have a lens with a distance scale (the RF 16 doesn't qualify here), you can still see that with our typical test distance we're still closer to infinity on the lens' scale than to its MFD.
As I wrote already: this is simply not possible. Unless you happen to own a landscape you can fill with a giant MTF test target.
We test corrected in this case, and it's clearly stated in the text that results without distortion correction naturally show higher resolution in the image corners. Testing without distortion corection simply would not have been possible due to the massive vignetting. The corners are pitch black, there is nothing to measure there for Imatest. Testing with cropping would have led to results that are simply not comparable to all other RF reviews, since the resolution of the test image would be different.
On top, as also clearly stated in the review: this lens is very obviously designed to be used with software correction enabled. Still, we're interested in the native performance of a lens, since software correction never comes for free. Many manufacturers heavily rely on software correction nowadays, true, but no other manufacturer currently offers lenses that are underdesigned to such a degree as Canon does. I think it's fair to point that out and demonstrate it by numbers.
It's a very personal decision if you can live with the drawbacks of such a lens. And as we also pointed out, it's definitely a price/performance king. On the other hand it's also fair to ask, if the lens could have been significantly better (optically) for a slightly higher price. Personally, I think a $400 oder $450 lens, that under the hood fills the sensor to the corners and is not a hidden fisheye would have sold similarly well.
Personally, I think a $400 oder $450 lens, that under the hood fills the sensor to the corners and is not a hidden fisheye would have sold similarly well.
Very much agreed, even though at Canon it will be in the $700 range. But then Canon would have emphasized the rather pedestrian raw optical performance of the f4 14..35mm zoom on the wide end, requiring SW correction, and this for €1800.
I would appreciate if your review could indicate at which cropped focal length the lens performs decent on R5.
AmbientMike wrote:
I pulled out a mid 90's issue of popular photography and the 21/3.5 Zuiko was $269.95 new from B&H. If you wanted a cheap lens, others sold for less, including the 17 Tokina I mentioned, which apparently had sample variations but was popular for adapting to ff even on digital. The 18mm vivitar even less expensive.
I think that was maybe even my point. The 21mm wasn't a cheap lens. And yet still under $300. So yes if you look at inflation like you should it's more but it's still hard get excited about a $300 uwa. That's about the price you used to have to pay. Even more recently used mf 20mm nikkors about $200. No plastic or very little, no 10% distortion, no cropping required on the 21 Zuiko, or probably a lot of these, either.
Like I mentioned above it is a fair comparison. I don't really need 16mm, 17-20 at f/3.5-4 is probably good enough. If they could have used tech on older lens and improved the design so it's better in general or on digital that might have been great, but instead they used it to fix a bad lens in the computer. If you like your lens and are happy with it by all means go use it, might be fine. But I'm not really sure what they were thinking, here...Show more →
So I was curious about the Olympus, despite the fact that it was a more expensive lens at launch by a considerable margin, given inflation, and despite that it's a much easier lens to make at 21mm vs. 16mm....But what I found shows that it is highly likely that the Canon 16mm is a significantly better lens.
See this review, for instance:
The OM 21/3.5 has horrific corner sharpness on a modern full frame body, especially at distances where you'd be shooting a test chart like in this review, where even at f/8, the corners are effectively mush. The 16/2.8 certainly loses a fair bit of corner sharpness to distortion correction, but nowhere near as bad as the Olympus at the corners. Also, overall image contrast and the central 80% is quite sharp on the Canon as well.
Also, as I noted in my review of the lens (which you can read here if you like...which is a more real-world usage review), for landscape use you very often don't need to correct the distortion, which gives you not only a slightly wider lens, but also much improved edge and corner sharpness.
For instance, here's a full size shot I took with the 16/2.8, and it has quite decent corner sharpness with the distortion uncorrected (just slightly cropped in to the 16mm field of view)
So, in short, ultimately, I'd say the 16mm is a better lens than the Olympus overall.
freedolin wrote:
Allow me to comment, especially on our methodology
No, this is how all MTF tests are done, and there is simply no alternative to it. Interestingly, it's never an issue for lenses with good results, but always a reason to question our testing approach for lenses with fairly low resolution numbers.
Lenses have a flat image field (theoretically). So testing a flat target is the natural approach. For wide angle lenses, yes that brings up the issue that we're not testing at infinity (you can't, really), but if you happen to have a lens with a distance scale (the RF 16 doesn't qualify here), you can still see that with our typical test distance we're still closer to infinity on the lens' scale than to its MFD.
As I wrote already: this is simply not possible. Unless you happen to own a landscape you can fill with a giant MTF test target.
We test corrected in this case, and it's clearly stated in the text that results without distortion correction naturally show higher resolution in the image corners. Testing without distortion corection simply would not have been possible due to the massive vignetting. The corners are pitch black, there is nothing to measure there for Imatest. Testing with cropping would have led to results that are simply not comparable to all other RF reviews, since the resolution of the test image would be different.
On top, as also clearly stated in the review: this lens is very obviously designed to be used with software correction enabled. Still, we're interested in the native performance of a lens, since software correction never comes for free. Many manufacturers heavily rely on software correction nowadays, true, but no other manufacturer currently offers lenses that are underdesigned to such a degree as Canon does. I think it's fair to point that out and demonstrate it by numbers.
It's a very personal decision if you can live with the drawbacks of such a lens. And as we also pointed out, it's definitely a price/performance king. On the other hand it's also fair to ask, if the lens could have been significantly better (optically) for a slightly higher price. Personally, I think a $400 oder $450 lens, that under the hood fills the sensor to the corners and is not a hidden fisheye would have sold similarly well.
Let me reiterate - I really appreciate OL. They provide great reference material. I go there often to check on lens. I just understand that the UWA tests need to be taken with a grain of salt outside of centre given the methodology.
re 1. Lensrentals does test at infinity - it can be done and really needs to be done to test UWA lens. If you compare their tests in their blog vs your tests of 11-24 Canon you will see dramatic differences, for example on 5dsr.
re 2. Testing at perhaps 10% in from corner uncorrected would at least give a better appreciation of how good the lens is. No one is going to use the lens with vignetting in at 14mm - they will all crop but some may not correct distortion. But someone (many including me) will use it uncorrected for landscape where distortion is not a significant factor.
I really appreciate you participating here. Testers should be accountable for their product.
[and note you fixed your method after the 24-104 test where the lens got less resolution on 45mpx than 30mpx which is nonsensical I suspect a mislabling somewhere.]
Scott Stoness wrote:
Let me reiterate - I really appreciate OL. They provide great reference material. I go there often to check on lens. I just understand that the UWA tests need to be taken with a grain of salt outside of centre given the methodology.
re 1. Lensrentals does test at infinity - it can be done and really needs to be done to test UWA lens. If you compare their tests in their blog vs your tests of 11-22 Canon you will see dramatic differences, for example on 5dsr.
re 2. Testing at perhaps 10% in from corner uncorrected would at least give a better appreciation of how good the lens is. No one is going to use the lens with vignetting in at 14mm - they will all crop but some may not correct distortion. But someone (many including me) will use it uncorrected for landscape where distortion is not a significant factor.
I really appreciate you participating here. Testers should be accountable for their product.
[and note you fixed your method after the 24-104 test where the lens got less resolution on 45mpx than 30mpx which is nonsensical I suspect a mislabling somewhere.]
Lens rentals tests at infinity using an extremely expensive optical bench tester that is simply not available to most people doing testing.
Is anybody actually surprised at the results of the 16mm f2.8? I know I am thoroughly unsurprised at its performance given the price point and aggressive digital corrections.
Jesse Evans wrote:
Lens rentals tests at infinity using an extremely expensive optical bench tester that is simply not available to most people doing testing.
Is anybody actually surprised at the results of the 16mm f2.8? I know I am thoroughly unsurprised at its performance given the price point and aggressive digital corrections.
My point is not that we should expect a $300 lens to be less than a $3000 lens, the point is that even when OL tests a $3000 lens (canon 11-24) it has the same issues - so the edge measurements of OL on UWA are not as useful as they could be.
Perhaps OL could focus near edge and provide the reading at extreme and edge, to supplement the ones they have presented, for UWA so we would at least get the maximum possible (useful) resolution. This would not fix the focus close vs far issue but it would fix the edges way further than the centre issue.
Scott Stoness wrote:
My point is not that we should expect a $300 lens to be less than a $3000 lens, the point is that even when OL tests a $3000 lens (canon 11-22) it has the same issues - so the edge measurements of OL on UWA are not as useful as they could be.
Perhaps OL could focus near edge and provide the reading at extreme and edge, to supplement the ones they have presented, for UWA so we would at least get the maximum possible (useful) resolution.
Why is your assumption that the 11-24 suffers from a testing methodology problem? Why does the Sony 12-24 G fare so much better using the exact same testing methodology?
If anything, I would assume it could be a copy variation issue.
