Photography News - Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM Lens Review

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM Lens Review

For full-frame digital SLR or film users, the 20mm ƒ/2.8 shows off its poorer performance issues, especially for sharpness and light falloff. Whether this performance is poor however, depends on your point of view; if you’re looking for a lens which isolates a centrally-located subject by means of sharpness and light falloff, the lens does it spectacularly. If you need even light distribution and even sharpness, the 20mm prime will disappoint, especially at ƒ/2.8. At other apertures, you have a better chance of getting what you need.

For subframe digital SLR users, the lens performs a bit better, but at ƒ/2.8 image sharpness is still poorer than we’d like. At ƒ/4 and smaller, the lens performs wonderfully, so if you don’t mind using it at this setting, you really can’t go wrong.