Shootout: Voigtlander FE Nokton 21mm f/1.4 Aspherical vs Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8: Mosaic (Sony A7R IV)
Related: Sony, Sony A7R, Sony A7R II, Sony A7R III, Sony A7R IV, Sony mirrorless, Voigtlander, Voigtlander FE, Voigtlander FE Nokton 21mm f/1.4 Aspherical, Voigtlander Lenses, Zeiss, Zeiss Distagon, Zeiss Lenses, Zeiss Loxia, Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 Distagon, Zeiss mirrorless lenses
This series evaluates the Voigtlander Nokton 21mm f/1.4 Aspherical from f/1.4 through f/8 against the Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 on an extremely demanding target: a planar subject with exceedingly fine detail. This target is among the most demanding any lens can face, mercilessly showing most all lens weaknesses.
Sony A7R IV 4-shot pixel shift was used to capture the best possible detail. Results with pixel shift will always look notably better than without (assuming no checkerboarding issues).
Field curvature is of particular interest because at 60MP, small deviations across the field are not so small, and stopping down past f/4 begins to degrade micro contrast from diffraction. Also of interest is lens symmetry, which is hard to find among most lenses on a 60MP sensor, which mercilessly shows the slightest flaw. However, lacking stated specifications from Sony, there is no way to be certain that any particular lens skew is the fault of the lens, or the sensor/flange parallelism being off a few microns.
Includes images from f/1.4 to f/8 at up to full camera resolution.
Sony A7R IV + Voigtlander FE Nokton 21mm f/1.4 Aspherical RAW: vignetting corrected, USM {8,50,0}
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