Introduction

While Nikon is somewhat famous for their 28mm 1.4 lenses, when it comes to 24mm lenses as fast as f/1.4, Canon beat them by several decades, as they released their first Canon FD 24mm 1.4 S.C.C. Aspherical in 1975. Canon also kept the fans of the 24mm 1.4 lenses happy with regular updates: a New FD lens in 1979, the original Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM in 1997 and then this updated Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM in 2008. Let’s see in this review how it compares to the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G (released in 2010) and to today’s mirrorless designs like the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM.

Sample Images

You can find many of the sample images in higher resolution here.

Specifications / Version History

There have been two different Canon 24mm 1.4 lenses during the EF era:

• Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM
  550g, 11/9 design, 1 aspherical (hand ground) + 1 UD element, 7 aperture blades, 1997-2007
• Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM
  649g, 13/10 design, 2 aspherical (glass mold) + 2 UD elements, 8 aperture blades, 2008-?

This is a review of the later Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM. It has the following specifications:

• • Diameter: 84 mm
  • Field of view: 84° (diagonally)
  • Length: 87 mm
  • Weight: 649g (without hood[39g], without caps)
  • Filter Diameter: 77 mm
  • Number of Aperture Blades: 8 (rounded)
  • Elements/Groups: 13/10
    
  • Close Focusing Distance: 0.25 m
  • Maximum Magnification: 1:5.6 (measured)
  • Mount: Canon EF

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Disclosure

This Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM was kindly provided free of charge by one of our readers for reviewing purposes, thanks a lot!

Handling/Build quality

This Canon E 24mm 1.4L II USM features the typical Canon L build quality, same as e.g. the Canon EF 50mm 1.2 L USM or the Canon EF 135mm 2.0 L USM. The lens seems to be made from a mix of high quality polycarbonate and metal. The few markings seem to be only printed on though.

The focus ring is mechanically connected to the helicoid (no focus by wire) and it takes ~140° rotation from infinity to the minimum focus distance (0.25 m) – just like the Canon EF 50mm 1.2 L USM. This is an internally focusing lens with floating elements.

On the side of the lens is a small AF/MF-switch.

There is an official bayonet-style hood (EW-83K) available for this lens and it even has felt on the inside. From what I know it was included with the lens, which isn’t the case for all of Canon’s lenses. It makes an already big lens even bigger though.

The size is very typical for a fast wide angle prime from the DSLR era. While mirrorless designs are similarly sized, they are at an advantage, as they do not need a bulky adapter to be used on a mirrorless camera.

I tried the lens with the Sigma MC-11 as well as the metabones MK IV and it worked well with both of them. I also tried it with the Fringer EF NZ II adapter on a Nikon Zf which worked just as well.

Vignetting

light falloff

High vignetting figures are not untypical for lenses with these parameters, at its maximum aperture this Canon 24mm 1.4L II shows even about half a stop higher vignetting than its competitors (Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G, Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM) though.

Stopped down it matches the vignetting figures of the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G. The (D)SLR designs actually have an advantage here, whereas the mirrorless designs like the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM show about 1 EV stronger vignetting stopped down to f/8.0 or f/11 – a price to be paid for the smaller dimensions.

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

optical vignetting

Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.

All lenses where shot at 0.3 m focus distance, but not side-by-side, so the size of the circles is not directly comparable.

Optical vignetting is generally well behaved and all the 24mm 1.4 lenses I reviewed so far perform very similar, the main difference being that the Sony creates the roundest highlights when stopped down to f/2.0, thanks to its 11 aperture blades versus 9 of the Nikon and 8 of this Canon lens.

All these lenses make use of aspherical elements and can therefore show onion ring structures in out of focus highlights, the Sony is by far the best in that regard and this Canon actually the worst of the three.

Sharpness

MTF-Graphs

Thanks to Lensrentals.com we have measured MTF graphs of this Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM (DSLR, 2008), the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4 G (DSLR, 2010) as well as the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM (mirrorless, 2018) and I thought it might be a good idea to compare these here.

Compared to the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G this Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM shows a slightly better performance with a little less Astigmatism. Those differences are not huge and it is surely debatable if they are actually field relevant.

If we compare their performance to a more recent mirrorless design they don’t stand a chance though. The Sony lens easily beats them everywhere in the frame with a very even performance and an almost complete absence of Astigmatism.

Once more we see that the shift to mirrorless allowed to design smaller lenses that are more capable than the bigger ones from just a few years before.

Focus Shift

With some lenses on stopping down the focal plane shifts to the front or back, which can be an issue on (D)SLRs, as here the focus is usually obtained with the lens set to its maximum aperture.

While the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G was one of those lenses, I do not see any field relevant focus shift from this Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II here.

infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)

The center is a bit softer at f/1.4 but already looks good from f/2.0 and also the midframe benefits from stopping down one or better two stops. The corners at wider apertures are nothing to write home about. Peak across frame performance is reached at around f/5.6 to f/8.0, which is a bit worse than what I have seem from the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G.

The Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM easily outperforms it and looks about as good at f/1.4 as this Canon lens at any aperture and also the compact Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE performs on a similar level between f/1.8 and f/8.0.

portrait distance (0.9 m, 42mp Sony A7rII)

For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.

This is what I did here, I refocused for every shot and aperture to get the best possible result at different locations in the frame (center, inner midframe and outer midframe).
Focus distance was roughly 0.9 m and the circle of the dollar bill is more or less the size of a human eye.

f/1.4 <————> f/2.0

At portrait distances I found the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G to be a strong performer and indeed this Canon is a bit softer at f/1.4, not a big difference though. For a lens from 2008 this is still a good performance.

close (0.25 m, 1:5.2, 42mp Sony A7rII)

Nikon is actually quite famous for their CRC (close range correction, another term for floating elements) design, but comparing this Canon 24mm 1.4L II USM and the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G, the Canon clearly looks better as it is noticeably less soft at f/1.4 and still so at f/2.0.

Unsurprisingly also here a modern lens like the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM shows a better performance.

Flare resistance

As always evaluating flare is a complex matter since you can get any lens to look bad if you push it hard enough and a slight change of scenario can affect results a lot.

At the maximum aperture I was positively surprised at first, as I didn’t see a lot of obtrusive ghosts – a problem with the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G. With the sun outside the frame some rather big and annoying ring flares can appear though.

Stopped down we can create massive ring flares with a strong point light source in the center of the frame and now not only ghosting but also some kind of internal reflections appear.

Compared to the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G the Canon shows different kind of artefacts in different situations, I don’t really see one being better than the other.

The Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM also has some issues in this category, the better performers are the Samyang AF 24mm 1.8 FE and the Nikon AF-S 28mm 1.4E.

Coma

For (D)SLRs there hasn’t been a single 24mm 1.4 lens that is actually well corrected for Coma at wider apertures. The manual focus Samyang 24mm 1.4 is probably the best, followed by the Sigma 24mm 1.4 and behind that you can find the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and the two Canons.

I didn’t know how this Canon 24mm 1.4L II USM and the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G compare until now, but as we can see this Canon is actually about one stop worse than the Nikon at wider apertures.

Distortion

The Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM shows a low amount of slightly wavy distortion. A correction profile in Lightroom is available, but it doesn’t fix it perfectly.

Bokeh

Traditionally fast wide angle lenses were not exactly known for their pleasing rendering of out-of-focus areas. The Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G from 2010 has been praised by many owners and reviewers for its pleasing bokeh though and I have always been wondering, how this Canon lens would compare. Let’s have a closer look.

Close distance

The short minimum focus distance of 0.25 m of course helps creating a thin DoF here. While contrast and resolution are high at these distances, with complex backgrounds like in the two samples directly above I don’t exactly like its bokeh rendering.

Towards the corners, points of light take on very weird shapes, we see a lot of outlining and also the transition zone looks a bit messy.

Mid distance

At mid distances the situation is similar. The bokeh can look really nice when there are no structured elements close to the edges like in the first sample above, or distracting like in the third sample.

Long distance

At longer focus distances a wide angle lens will simply not yield as much bokeh as a longer lens with the same maximum aperture, but this is actually the strength of fast wide angle lenses: creating an impression of depth while still retaining enough background information to tell a story about the subject. This is why a fast wide angle lens is what you will find attached to my camera most of the time. For further reference see: How to: Create Environmental Portraits. 

When it comes to the bokeh rendering I prefer the results from the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G and also the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM, as both create smoother and more appealing backgrounds to my eyes.

Sunstars

While Nikon lenses from the DSLR era usually feature 9 or 7 aperture blades, many of Canon’s lenses feature 8 blades and that makes a big difference here, as between f/8.0 and f/22 this Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM produces distinct and well defined sunstars, something you won’t be seeing from Nikon’s lenses.
If you want to learn more about this topic have a look at this article.

Chromatic aberration

lateral

Lateral CA are on a rather high level, but luckily the digital correction in post is doing a good job at getting rid of this aberration. The same was already the case for the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G. Today’s lenses hardly perform better here, but often feature built-in correction profiles so you may think they look better.

As I have been using the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G for years, I always wondered how Canon’s EF 24mm 1.4L II USM compares. After all, this was already Canon’s fourth 24mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/1.4.

Generally, these two lenses perform very similar. Depending on what you are looking for, you may still prefer one or the other. If you care about nice sunstars and good sharpness at close distances you may prefer this Canon, if you care more about nice bokeh and a little less vignetting you may prefer the Nikon lens.

For a lens with these parameters there is a big advantage when designing it for a mirrorless camera, so the latest fast 24mm lenses are more capable while being smaller. So if you are using a mirrorless camera, buying this lens only really makes sense if you are on a budget and you really need that f/1.4 maximum aperture though.

buy from Amazon.com | Amazon.de | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for $1.549 (new) or $500+ (used)

Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G:
I already compared these two lenses in all of the sections above. Generally they perform similar. The Canon has higher vignetting at wider apertures, even worse Coma and I personally prefer the Nikon’s bokeh rendering. This Canon lens is sharper at close distances and features nicer sunstars.
buy from Amazon.com | Amazon.de | B&H | ebay.com | ebay.de (affiliate links) for $1.999 (new) or $550+ (used)

Sample Images

You can find many of the sample images in higher resolution here.

Further Reading

• Guide to 20-28mm wide angle lenses for Sony FE cameras
• Review; Laowa 10mm 2.8 AF
• Review: Canon EF 50mm 1.2L USM
• Review: Canon EF 85mm 1.2L II USM
• Review: Canon EF 200mm 2.0L IS USM

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BastianK

My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

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