Regular readers may recall that I have been shooting film again and it has been great fun going out with a single camera and a single lens. My camera of choice is my Olympus OM4 with the Olympus OM Zuiko 35mm f2 lens. That combination is over forty years old and I’m a bit worried that it may give up the ghost because there will be no chance of repairing it. I had thought of getting another OM4 body or even the later OM4 Ti, but they are all getting on a bit. I do have another film camera body that I can use and that is the Canon EOS 30, also known as the Elan 7E in North America and EOS 7 in Japan. I’ve been using it with either my Canon EF 24-70mm f4 or my Canon EF 50mm f1.8. The zoom lens and camera combination is a bit on the heavy side heavy for an every day carry and while the 50mm was suitably lighter it’s not a focal length I particularly like. So I had the bright idea of buying a Canon EF 35mm f2 lens. They have the benefit of being small and light while being cheap second hand. So I scoured EBay and found that Map Cameras had a suitable copy rated as “B – Has been used preciously. Showing a few marks, scratches of cosmetic surface. Functions perfect.”. When it arrived it looked like it was new, there were no marks on the lens barrel, front and rear lens elements, and the mount looked pristine.
Canon introduced their autofocus EF lens mount in 1987 and it took them until October 1990 to introduce a basic 35mm lens – the EF 35mm f2 a no frills prosumer grade lens. It’s got a plastic body with a metal lens mount. There’s a focusing ring and a switch to put it into manual focus. The lens extends as you focus in and out, but, the front element doesn’t rotate which is a boon if you like to use polarising filters. It feels quite dense in the hand, but it doesn’t exude quality.
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Specifications
| Focal Length | 35mm |
| Maximum Aperture | F/2 |
| Angle of View (diagonal) | 63° 26′ (for full-frame format) |
| Optical Construction | 7 elements in 5 groups |
| Minimum Object Distance | 0.25m |
| Maximum Magnification Ratio | 0.23 |
| Filter Size | Φ52mm |
| Maximum Diameter | Φ67.4mm |
| Length | 42.5mm |
| Weight | 210g |
| Diaphragm Blade Number | 5 straight blades |
| Minimum Aperture | F/22 |
| Standard Accessories | Lens caps |
| Compatible Mounts | Canon EF |
Performance
Sharpness
Wide open the centre of the image is soft, but has reasonable contrast. The corners were far worse – low contrast mush. At first I thought I had a lens that was decentered, but, when I checked all four corners they were equally bad so it was field curvature . This is, apart from a lens by Holga, the worst lens I’ve ever tested. Two stops down from wide open is where a lens traditionally hits optimum performance, well someone forgot to tell the Canon optical design team that as although there had been a slight improvement in the centre the corners were still very mushy. At f5.6 the centre of the frame is as good as it gets, but the corners still aren’t sharp and lack contrast. The best performing aperture is f8 in terms of the full field of view. By f16 diffraction starts to kick in degrading the image and that just gets worse at f22.
Now this is a 36 year old design for a consumer grade lens so is this performance to be expected. Well the Olympus OM Zuiko 35mm f2 was designed was introduced in 1972 a full 18 years before the Canon EF 35mm f2 and it has a better optical performance and better bokeh – more about that later. The only advantage the Canon has over the Olympus is that the Canon manages flare a lot better. We’re also told that primes are better than zooms so I compared the Canon EF 35mm f2 to my Canon EF 24-70mm f4 IS L at 35mm, and the zoom is better. Not surprising really. An old consumer grade design compare to a more modern professional grade. So I wouldn’t look to replace a good zoom lens with the Canon EF 35mm f2 unless you were considering some other metric of comparison such as size and weight.
Bokeh
Wide open the Canon produces nice large round bokeh balls that have no onion rings – the lens has after all no aspheric elements. At the edges the balls take on a more elliptical shape caused by mechanical vignetting. As you stop the lens down to f2.8 the balls cease to be balls and become pentagonal thanks to the five straight aperture blades. They become defined the further you stop down.
Flare Resistance
A specular light source within the frame will produce quite pronounced veiling and reflective flare. The effect becomes more pronounced as you stop down. It is a good argument for a lens hood, but Canon never supplied their non ‘L’ lenses with one, you had to buy it separately. It would be worth looking for a second lens that came with one. The diffraction spikes or sunstars are ugly with little definition.
Chromatic aberration
Axial chromatic aberration, also known as longitudinal chromatic aberration is present wide open with magenta and green fringing. This is difficult to remove in post, the best way to deal with it is to stop down.
Transverse or lateral chromatic aberration is present and considering the age of the design and the fact there are no fancy glass elements it does remarkably well. If using the lens on a digital camera this is easily dealt in post.
Distortion
As with most wide angle lenses there is barrel distortion, but it is very mild. Again shooting on digital this can be fixed by applying the profile for this lens.
Vignetting
There is some vignetting when shooting wide open and this clears up pretty quickly as you stop down. The Canon EF 35mm f2 lens profile in Lightroom also removes it.
Autofocus
When this lens was designed autofocus systems were a lot more primitive than they are now. Firstly these first generation auto focus lenses have according to Canon “an arc form drive for focusing. This is a conventional small motor unit, shaped to fit inside the curved barrel of a lens.”. Consequently they are slow and noisy. When I say say noisy I mean it. Racking the lens back and forth produces a sound that is akin to angry wasp trapped inside a bottle. It is very noticeable. There is no full-time manual focus, as found on later lenses that used USM and STM motors, you have to switch to manual focus using the switch on the lens barrel. Talking about manual focus there is a narrow ribbed focus ring and a focusing scale. While the lens is in AF mode the ring spins freely and does nothing. Throw the switch and the focus ring drives the lens elements back and forth. There are hard stops at either end so repeatable focus moves are possible. While not the most pleasant focusing ring to use it’s not unpleasant either. It gets the job done.
For stills this lens was made when a camera with seven AF points clustered in the centre of the frame was considered sophisticated. Single point AF was usually a matter of keeping the subject in the centre of the frame or focusing and recomposing. The AF on the lens is adequate, mostly it is accurate, but it can be a little slow and hunt in low light or with low contrast subjects. Continuous AF is much the same story.
This lens was not designed with video in mind, but I gave it a go. I tried it on an 80d the Dual Pixel CMOS AF but it wasn’t the best performance. Finally I bunged the lens on my Sony A7r2 via a Metabones adapter and to some extent the AF was a little better but the lens really struggled and made some awful noises as it focused.
In Use
From the above you’d think that this lens isn’t much chop. In photography there is a tendency to obsess about specifications and lens resolution charts, but they don’t tell the whole story. Wide angle retrofocus lens for SLRs don’t really perform well at close distances unless they have a floating rear element which the Canon EF 35mm f2 does not. That may explain some of the results. Also answer these two questions. How many times do you compose a photo with the main subject in the extreme corners? Short of very precise copy work how many images do you take that require corner to corner sharpness? I know I don’t do any of those two things. The attributes this lens brings to the table are that it is small and light and is sharp enough where it counts. It is ideal on a compact SLR as an everyday carry. Although I primarily bought it to use on my film EOS 30 to date I’ve not done so preferring to use it on either my Canon 5d or 6d. It’s been a very pleasant experience and I’ve enjoyed using for landscape, urban landscape and street photography.
Conclusion
If like me you want a small compact lens to walk around with on a film or digital Canon SLR and you aren’t bothered by not having a red ring, the best specs and best optical performance then this lens is perfect. There are loads of them out there which makes it easy to pick up a reasonably priced second hand example. If you want something to shoot video I’d look for the Canon 35mm f2 IS, the Canon 35mm f1.4 L, or a Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art. They will all have more modern motors which will make the autofocus experience more pleasurable. If you want to adapt the lens to shoot on a modern mirrorless again look for something more modern.
paulamyes 