RF 24mm f/1.4 VCM

[Kyle Jones]

Jim is a bad influence. He left me no choice but to buy the new Canon 24mm f/1.4L VCM lens and try it out for astro photography. As the two of us have discussed, there aren't a lot of great 24mm lens choices for Canon and Nikon mirrorless cameras and I wanted to know if this was the one. We've had mostly cloudy days in Kalispell since the lens arrived. but I had a brief break in the clouds this evening to see how it performed. Here is the result...

1) Here is the full frame image, captured at 24mm, f/1.4, ISO1600 and 10 seconds and completely unedited (brought into lightroom at its default settings, no sharpening and no noise reduction). This incorporates the lens corrections and I'd say that at this resolution it looks pretty darn good.

2) This is a 100% crop of the top left corner. You can see some coma in the brighter stars, but I can completely work with this.

3) 100% crop of the top right corner. There were some brighter stars here and the coma is a little more pronounced. But at f/1.4 I still think this is a keeper.

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice new toy - looking forward to seeing what you do with this one.

Canon has been slow to open up the market for third party lenses in the full frame R series so choices are a bit limited.

 

[JimFox]

Ha ha.... I am glad I could help.

I would declare this a winner. At f1.4 to have the corners not only sharp but almost no star distortions. There is the very slightest hint of an X in a couple of the brightest stars, but it's so minimal. It's better then the 14mm f1.8 Sigma which we call the gold standard for Astro lenses.

I have a couple of Milky Way lenses that aren't this good in the corners, so I would hands down declare this a winner.

Now if only I could find a 24mm f1.4 that was this sharp for the Nikon Z.

 

[Kyle Jones]

I've been adding to my blog post on my website with more images comparing the RF 24mm VCM to the other lenses I've tended to use at 24mm for night photography (the Samyang 24/1.4 and the Canon RF 15-35 f/2.8). Follow this link if interested.

https://www.imageskylejones.com/?p=8454

I have more comparisons on my site, but here is the scene that I used for comparison. This was taken wide open with the RF 24mm f/1.4 VCM with distortion corrections applied but no corrections for vignetting, sharpening, or noise.

Here is the 100% corner crop comparison wide open against the Samyang. This is why I have always stopped down the Sammy and why I wanted a better, faster lens at 24mm.

And here is the comparison of the 24mm lens at f/1.4 against the 15-35 zoom at f/2.8

 

[Jameel Hyder]

I have the rokInon 24/1.4 I have used for MW. It’s ok not great and not bad. Focused once for sharp stars and then taped the position. Haven’t used it much. That RF lens looks attractive.