Canon nFD 35mm F/2.8 - Review
Canon FD lenses introduced in 1971 have a certain feel to them, maybe its the manual focus, there's just something I like about shooting FD's. It's good to see lenses produced 30-40 years ago still stand up against modern lenses or mounted to modern camera's, maybe the possibility that 35mm film could never reach the potential of the glass at the time, or maybe modern photographs with old lenses look exactly the same as they always did, its just modern post-processing with the help of uncompressed RAW files in a digital format have changed our perception of what our "camera" can do. Nonetheless I think there's always room for older lenses whether it's used on modern Mirroless type or DSLR cameras.
Canon FD 35mm F/2.8
Features
F/2.8 maximum Aperture
Crisp image quality
Light weight
Small size
Full Frame format
Perfect street photography
Tech Specs
Focal Distance - 35mm
Optical Formula - 6 elements in 5 groups.
Aperture Range - f/2.8 - f/22
Angle of View - 63
Minimum Focusing Distance - 0.3 m
Lens Mount - Canon nFD
Weight - 0.165 kg
Filter Thread - 52mm
Manual focus
Build Quality
Plastic housing
Metal mounting
Dust sealing
Good quality
The solid construction of the FD lenses combined with the smaller size gives this lens a comfortable feel through the focus range around 100 degrees from 3m to infinity, definitely a viable option for the budget orientated Mirrorless user. Use on the A7 full frame series of camera's with the advantages of focus peaking and focus magnification make this lens quite easy to use. A perfect walk around lens.
Personalised test charts in a controlled environment for image sharpness - nothing else. none of the following photo's have been post-processed in any way - no output sharpening.
As I started testing lenses for my own information (whether or not that 1.2 Canon really produces a higher overall image quality then a $50 helios) I did not do true 100% crops, Just enough to show Image sharpness differences, all test will be the same for every lens. As there is high quality text and lines in the image that easily show when an image is not sharp. They are Not a representation on a pixel level, but enough to show image quality. With the representation of the first image, you can see how much cropping has been done to zoom into the centre of the map.
Original Shot
Centre crops
Centre crops
Centre crops
As you can see from the centre crops wide open @ F/2.8 like most lenses it isn't tack sharp, lacking contrast, as we step down through F/4 - F/5.6 this lens really picks up in both contrast and overall sharpness, leading to better image quality. At F/16 the lens tends to sway back towards the weaker side in terms of quality.
And the Edges?
Through my tests and my sample of this Canon FD 35mm 2.8, the edges pick up around F/8, F/16 is slightly better then F/11.
My overall impression of this lens is quite good, I don't think it would disappoint any photographer, considering the amount of cropping I do for these tests is ridiculous for the fact that image sharpness is only a fraction of a great photograph, as I said, it's purely to pit lenses against one another to see how they stand up and for my own personal interest.
