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Canon 5DS R & 20mm f/2.8 USM

versus

Sony A7R II & LEICA 21mm f/3.4

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Canon 20mm f/2.8 USM
LEICA 21mm f/3.4

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Canon 5DS R
Sony A7R II

 

October 2015   Canon   Sony   LEICA Lenses    Better Pictures   All Reviews

 

Introduction         top

I shot my LEICA SUPER-ELMAR-M 21mm f/3.4 ASPH on my Sony A7R II on my Novoflex adapter, and the results weren't very good, same as I discovered adapting lenses to the old Sony A7.

I wondered how well a basic $500 Canon 20mm lens, introduced in 1992, would work on a Canon camera, compared to the world's sharpest 21mm lens, the $2,700 LEICA SUPER-ELMAR-M 21mm f/3.4 ASPH (introduced in 2011) would work on a German-made Novoflex adapter on my Sony A7R II.

It turns out my LEICA M9 was worthless, because its sensor had failed.

I had wanted to see how well the LEICA SUPER-ELMAR-M 21mm f/3.4 ASPH compared as shot on the lower resolution 18 MP LEICA M9, whose sensor works much better with LEICA lenses than they do on the Sony A7R II. I've already shown how great the LEICA 21mm looks as shot on LEICA, but really did want to compare it here. Oh well, here's a 24MP file of how great this LEICA 21mm looks shot on a LEICA camera; you have to look at it on your desktop computer and you can see how extraordinary is this lens when used on a LEICA camera.

I compared:

A:) LEICA SUPER-ELMAR-M 21mm f/3.4 ASPH on Sony A7R II mit Novoflex adapter.

B.) Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM on Canon 5DS R.

All were shot at f/8 at 1/40 at ISO 100 at my usual color settings, which are Auto White Balance, Vivid color and maximum saturation.

 

Full Frames

Click anything for the same camera-original © JPG file for your own analysis on a desktop computer.

Sony A7R II and Leica 21/3.4

LEICA 21mm f/3.4 ASPH on A7R II. bigger or camera-original © file.

Canon 5DSR and 20/2.8 USM

Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 on Canon 5DS R. bigger or camera-original © file.

The Canon looks natural.

The Sony is too magenta (reddish purple); its auto white balance was fooled by all the green. As typical for adapted lenses, the Sony has no idea what lens is on it, so AWB has to do a lot more guessing than if we used a real Sony lens. In any case, the Sony picture is inferior because it's the wrong color.

Also there is much more falloff on the Sony and much less on the Canon. The Canon has a lens profile even for the 20-year-old lens, so it corrects for any falloff, while there is no correction in the Sony for this rangefinder lens.

Rangefinder wide lenses have much more falloff than SLR lenses, but they are also much sharper.

 

Center Crops

Click anything for the same camera-original © JPG file for your own analysis on a desktop computer.

These are all shown at the same print size.

If these are 6" (15cm) on your screen, then printing the complete image at this same high magnification would result in gigantic 90 x 60" (7 x 5 feet or 2.2 x 1.5 meter) prints!

Sony A7R II and Leica 21/3.4

Canon 5DSR and 20/2.8 USM

These are about the same sharpness, with the difference being more in anti-alias filters and how each camera prefers to process the image.

The Canon seems to emphasize moderate detail more (it looks eversharpened because I set it that way), while the Sony + LEICA combination doesn't emphasize the moderate detail so we can see the finder detail better. If I had shot the Canon as CR2 raw I'm sure I could have made it sharper, while the Sony seems to be doing pretty well on its own.

 

Bottom Crops

These are from the bottom center.

Click anything for the same camera-original © JPG file for your own analysis on a desktop computer.

These are all shown at the same print size.

If these are 6" (15cm) on your screen, then printing the complete image at this same high magnification would result in gigantic 90 x 60" (7 x 5 feet or 2.2 x 1.5 meter) prints!

Sony A7R II and Leica 21/3.4

Canon 5DSR and 20/2.8 USM

The Sony is way too magenta since its AWB is often fooled by green. Since the Sony has no idea what the lens aperture is, it can't tell that you're outdoors and it's thinking you're probably under fluorescent light; that's what happens with adapted lenses.

Yuck! The Sony is very blurry. You might suspect that this was simply out of focus, but remember this is a 21mm lens at f/8; everything is in focus. If you have any doubt, look at:

The 20mm f/2.8 USM and Canon 5DS R combo are much sharper; as sharp as the center.

Obviously the Sony A7R II's sensor does not work well with this LEICA lens on the sides; Worse, this isn't even the sides, it's simply the bottom 12mm away from center.

The corners are almost twice as far away.

 

Corner Crops

These are from the top left.

Click anything for the same camera-original © JPG file for your own analysis on a desktop computer.

These are all shown at the same print size.

If these are 6" (15cm) on your screen, then printing the complete image at this same high magnification would result in gigantic 90 x 60" (7 x 5 feet or 2.2 x 1.5 meter) prints!

Sony A7R II and Leica 21/3.4

Canon 5DSR and 20/2.8 USM

Whoa! The Sony has wild lateral color problems with this lens, which we know is extraordinarily sharp.

When shot on the A7R II, the brilliant SUPER-ELMAR-M 21mm f/3.4 ASPH looks horrible! It's dark, blurry and loaded with color fringes. Yuck!

The 20mm f/2.8 USM and Canon 5DS R combo are much, much sharper, have no significant chromatic aberrations and aren't all dark, Heck, look at the detail in the leaves, completely absent on the Sony.

 

Recommendations

Don't mix lens and camera brands. Mixed unions, even with state of the art high-resolution bodies and the world's very finest lenses, rarely work as well as rank-and-file lenses used on the same brand of camera. The Sony + LEICA combo doesn't simply get softer at the sides, it gets downright blurry.

The Canon 20mm f/2.8 USM is not a very good lens. It's nowhere near as sharp as Canon's far better 16-35mm IS or 11-24mm L, but this humble lens on its own brand of camera still completely wipes the far superior LEICA lens when adapted to a state-of-the-art Sony.

Even though the Canon 20/2.8 is not that great, the 5DSR has a lens profile for it to correct lateral color and vignetting. The 20/2.8 also tells the camera which lens it is, so the exposure and auto white balance systems can work far better.

The moral of this story is to use the lenses sold by the camera maker. Not only will they have advanced corrections, they will autofocus and have diaphragms that open and close by themselves so you're not trying to focus the Sony at f/8, or having to flick the diaphragm open and closed manually for each shot.

In this case, the plain $500 lens on a camera of the same brand outperforms the exotic $2,700 on the world's fanciest mirrorless camera of a different brand. Oh yes: I bought the LEICA lens new, and the Canon only cost me $300 from some random stranger used over eBay.

If you want to use LEICA lenses, don't waste them on other brands of cameras. A LEICA M9 goes for about $2,500 used over eBay, if you know How to Win at eBay. Therefore, an M9 sells for less than an A7R II, will make much better pictures, and lets you focus properly without needing to twiddle with the aperture manually to focus well. Yes, my M9 had died, but LEICA is going to replace the sensor for free.

I just saved you a couple of thousand dollars, and the photos are far better.

 

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Mr. & Mrs. Ken Rockwell, Ryan and Katie.

 

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30 September 2015