Today I compared the 2 lenses at 17mm. This was just a test of the sharpness. Other aspects like CA, vignetting, contrast, colors, flare etc. were not tested. The aim of this test was to check, whether my new 17 TSE lens has any faults.
The test-object was the wall of an ancient military building in my home-town. The test was done with a Canon 5D II on a Gitzo series 5 tripod with a burzsynki head, mirror lock-up and manual focus with 10x live view on the wall at the center of the image. All pictures were shot in raw at ISO 100, converted with LR with the sharping parameters (50, 0.8, 100) and then exported to jpg with 100% quality setting and no further sharpening. The 17mm TSE was first not shifted and then in a second series shifted to the maximum. The Nikon 2.8/14-24 lens was adapted to the Canon 5D II with a 16-9-adapter. All apertures were tested, but I will show only pictures at f/4.0 and f/11.
Summary:
Both lenses are very good. The performance at f/4 is very close to the performance at f/11. At f/16 diffraction starts on both lenses and f/22 should be avoided. Without any shift of the 17mm TSE there is nearly no difference between the 2 lenses. To my mind the Nikon lens has a slightly better center contrast and the TSE has a slightly better corner sharpness at f/4. Both lenses are pretty usable at f/4.
Shifted to the maximum the 17mm lens has, as expected, a weak corner performance at f/4, but is perfectly good at f/11.
Thanks for this Boris - very interesting. I'm curious if you can comment on any similarities or differences in the way the two lenses handle flare from the sun (or other point light sources) when either in or outside the frame?
Daan: I agree, I have not been disappointed with the TS-E 17 and have wondered how it stacks up against the 14-24. I hope though that Canon will soon get around to proving that they can also produce topnotch super wide zooms in addition to the recent highly regarded wide primes.
Half of the reason I got the 17 was due to a certain degree of disappointment with the performance of the 16-35 II when using it near wide open in somewhat technically challenging situations. Therefore my intention is to use it not just for architecture type work but also for many everyday applications. So far it has worked quite well for that, but I do miss the flexibility of the zoom.
rscheffler wrote:
Thanks for this Boris - very interesting. I'm curious if you can comment on any similarities or differences in the way the two lenses handle flare from the sun (or other point light sources) when either in or outside the frame?
I have not enough experience with the 17mm TSE in these situations. But I can compare the 14-24mm with the 24mm TSE II regarding flare. The 24 TSE II handles flare much better. Although the 14-24mm is not bad for a zoom lens with a huge front element either.
I had both, I found that 99.9% of the time I picked up the 14-24, it was to shoot it at 14mm. I also found that a vast majority of the time I shot at 14mm, I really wanted to be able to shift. So now the only Nikon lens I really miss is the 200-400, I hope Canon fixes that eventually.
I have seen other tests of the 17mm TSE vs the Nikon at 17mm. The conclusions are quite similar. However, the one thing is there seems to be less distortion with the Canon.
The other thing I might add is the Nikon is still quite hard to deal with on a canon. I am now using the sigma 12-24 which is quite good on the wide end at f11-16 except for the extreme corners. I have the 24mm TSEII and have the 17mm coming Mon or Tues. The former is so fantastic and the best wide i have seen canon make. THey finally got the formula right.
Thanks for the comparison, Boris! Indeed, I am also glad that Canon could come up with not only an excellent UWA lens but also a TS-E lens to boot at that! I am about to pull a trigger on that lens . Concurrently, it also shows that the Nikkor is truly an outstanding lens since it is a zoom lens.
dcmiller wrote:
As a 14-24 owner, I will point out that the Nikon lens is much better at 14mm that the 17TS/E.
On the 5DII diffraction is evident at f11. Some lens sharpness is hidden by that setting.
Perhaps the Nikkor is better at 14mm (do you mean it has 14, or that it's sharper at 14 than at 17?)... but does it shift? As esoteric as an UWA shift lens might seem, I'd argue shift capability becomes more valuable and more applicable to 'everyday' situations the wider the focal length. But as I already mentioned, I'd still like to see Canon release a zoom or two similar in performance to the Nikkor.
Based on my own preliminary tests with the 17, it appears the lens is sharpest at around f/8 and I noticed some slight loss due to diffraction at f/11, so both lenses probably perform quite similarly in real world applications at equal f/stops. I've noticed the 17 improves in shifted corners at f/11.
dcmiller wrote:
On the 5DII diffraction is evident at f11. Some lens sharpness is hidden by that setting.
Yes, that's true. The best performance of the 14-24mm is around f/5.6. But in my opinion you won't see the differences (of sharpness) between f/5.6 and f/11 in a print. All appertures from f/4 to f/11 are perfectley usable on both lenses (TSE unshifted).
If someone is interested, I colud also post some 100% crops at f/2.8, f/5.6, f/8.0 or f/22. Just tell me, what you want to see.
cameron12x wrote:
I'm considering buying the Nikkor 14-24mm zoom to mount on my Canon 5Dmk2.
Where can I purchase the requisite converter ring? Is that all that is needed? Thanks!
16-9.net now is advertising V3 adapters which sound great and would mean using any Nikon G lens will be easy on Canon. Also adapter is backward compatible with non-g lenses.
Also Tokina is releasing a 16-28 f/2.8 for FF in September for Canon which hopefully will offer excellent performance and give us even more choice. Best of all you get AF.
. Concurrently, it also shows that the Nikkor is truly an outstanding lens since it is a zoom lens.