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AmbientMike
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 Re: Optical Limits reviewed Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 STM | |
Jman13 wrote:
AmbientMike wrote:
Jman13 wrote:
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.
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 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
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.
Leica lenses have corner smearing issues. Not sure why lenses often don't seem to perform on digital compared to film but, like I basically said above, if they'd used tech to make an older lens play better on digital might have been much better off. And I might be looking at going digital now. $300 fairly light uwa's have been around for years.
I tried the video but 2 min in he is still talking about the 21mm vs 50mm fov. Having used these for years I am pretty sure I already knew that  OM lenses can vary. I know some of the 21mm OM popular to adapt, probably later mc (rightly or wrongly ) and had a commensurate high price. So I didn't stick with the video long enough to see the version but I doubt they came to be high priced if they had bad corners. Mine isn't particularly good on digital, either (possibly in part due to a canoeing incident, another story I suppose)
I realize that it is probably harder to design and manufacture a 16mm. As I believe I mentioned in both previous posts, I don't really need 16mm. I had 17 Tokina AF ATX before the 21 OM, and really didn't notice the difference going to 21mm. The 17mm has poor extreme corners, Ken Rockwell has an excellent page on it, but I don't need the extreme corners. Probably need into the corner some, though. Landscape FL mostly. And 17 atx is a good lens. I had assumed that the less expensive mf version no good, but apparently some copies better than 17 Tamron, IIRC reading on here. Of course no one tested lenses on film to the same degree , or not many people did, it seemed, because you had to spend money on film vs zooming in during pp, and it's much more interesting to take photos. So I can't tell you how the 17 vs 21 compare really. Looked at your site some , so you are actually able to use the lens sans distortion correction at times?
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| Feb 22, 2022 at 12:54 PM |
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