Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM macro - Review / Test Report - Analysis |
Lens Reviews -
Canon EOS (APS-C)
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Distortion
As expected for a fix-focal lens and especially for a macro lens the level of distortion is
absolutely negligible.
The chart above has a real-world size of about 120x80cm.
Vignetting
Vignetting is a little bit of a mixed bag with this lens. At macro distances the lens
delivers an exceptional performance here even at max. aperture. However, the situation
isn't quite as rosy at infinity focus where the average edge shading exceeds 1EV which
will be visible in many scenes. Stopping down helps to resolve the problem here with
good results at f/4 and negligible vignetting from f/5.6 & up.
MTF (resolution)
Typical for most macro lenses the EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM macro performed very good to excellent in
the lab. The center performance is nothing short of superb scratching and probably exceeding
the 8MP sensor limits at medium aperture settings. Even the borders (~70% off the center) as well
as the extreme borders (~85% off the center) are only slightly worse with very good to excellent
results. As such this lens is an exception to the rule - most reduced image-circle lenses
perform much worse towards the borders. All lenses suffer from diffraction at very small aperture
settings and the EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM macro cannot be an exception here. At f/16 the results
are still very impressive but at f/32 there isn't much image quality left so this setting should
be generally avoided.
Please note that the MTF results are not directly comparable across the different systems!
Below is a simplified summary of the formal findings. The chart shows line widths per picture height (LW/PH) which can be taken as a measure for sharpness.
If you want to know more about the MTF50 figures you may check out the corresponding Imatest Explanations
Chromatic Aberrations (CAs)
Similar to most other fix-focal lenses chromatic aberrations (color shadows at harsh contrast transitions) are
very low to low at all but very small aperture settings and usually nothing to worry about.
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