The Canon EF 35mm F1.4 II vs. The Zeiss 35mm F1.4 Distagon

Ask any Canon photography enthusiast to list the best 35mm camera lenses every produced, and you’ll likely find the same two lenses on the short list:  The Canon EF 35mm F1.4 II and the Zeiss 35mm F1.4 Distagon.  I already own another lens most people include on this short list as well – the Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art lens.  I’ve always loved how sharp this lens is, but I don’t like the background blur and bokeh, And I tend to think that it blows out highlights too easily.  I’ve recently had the opportunity to audition both the Zeiss and Canon lenses.  The Canon I received on a week long loan from Canon Professional Services (CPS) while the Zeiss I purchased from KEH.  KEH has a generous return policy so I knew if I concluded in my testing that the Canon was the winner, I could return the Zeiss.  But, as I recently wrote about, I was on a quest to find the very best fast 35mm lens produced.  “Best” is of course subjective – I’m looking for the best lens that meets my particular criteria.  I ‘ve done objective, stand-alone reviews of both of the Canon and the Zeiss.  But this comparison isn’t intended to be purely objective.  Instead, this will be a completely indulgent, self-serving comparison based on my own needs and preferences.  Hopefully you’ll find it both interesting and informative.

Before I jump into the testing and image comparisons, let me state that I fell in love with the aesthetics and build quality of the Zeiss.  It has austere, all-metal construction that is vintage lens inspired with a sleek, modern aesthetic.  Canon lenses for the most part won’t win any beauty contests, and this one is no exception.  The lenses are very close in height, weight, and diameter (same 72mm filter size) – enough that you won’t notice the difference when carry them in your bag or around your neck.

METHODOLOGY

Both of these lenses were manufactured for the Canon EF lens mount, so I’ll be using the fantastic Canon EF to RF adapter on my Canon R5, switching back and forth between each lens.  The test images below were shot in Canon Camera RAW and converted to .jpg format.  No lens corrections or edits have been made to the images – they’ll be straight out of the camera.  Except where otherwise noted, I’ll be shooting each lens at their widest aperture setting of F1.4.  Most of the significant differences between these lenses tends to disappear when stopped down to F2.8 or so.   The three areas that I’ll be focusing on our sharpness, bokeh, and overall image quality.  You’ll see the test images are mostly automotive photography because I tend to use a 35mm mostly for taking car photos.

BACKGROUND BLUR/BOKEH

I researched both the Canon and the Zeiss quite extensively prior to obtaining each for testing, and the Zeiss is consistently praised for its buttery smooth bokeh.  So much so in fact that I assumed it would dominate the Canon by comparison.  Was I right?

Let’s start out by looking at this car photo taken with both lenses:

I’m reasonably pleased with the rendering on both of these photographs, but much to my surprise I prefer the background of blur of the Canon lens.  To my eye, the blur on both the people that are in the middle ground portion of the photo as well as the trees in the background are smoother and less busy in how the blur is rendered.  It’s a subtle difference, but significant for me.  Less subtle are the rather pronounced chromatic aberrations present in the Zeiss photo.  If you look at the right headlight in both car photos, you will see A substantial amount of purple fringing in the Zeiss photo.  I see no evidence of purple fringing in the Canon version of the photo.  Here’s another photo I took stopped down to F2 to see if the purple fringing was still present and to compare the background blur:

Vignetting is evident in both lenses, as seen in the sky – which I like.  Background blur is far less pronounced in both lenses, but I give I find myself preferring the rendering in the Canon lens which looks cleaner to my eye.  Purple fringing is still present, though less pronounced in the Zeiss version of the photo (on the horse sculpture).

I tried to induce some flaring in this set of photos:

You can see I was able to induce some flaring in the Zeiss version of the photo.  It isn’t what I would consider to be bad and in fact, some shooters do consider being able to induce some flaring under certain conditions is favorable for artistic reasons.  The flaring appears for more controlled on the Canon version of the photo.  But the chromatic aberrations are absolutely out of control on the Zeiss version of the photo, as nearly all of the cars are replete with purple fringing.  In contrast, the Canon version of the photo is virtually absent of any chromatic aberrations.  Let’s see what the photos look like stopped down to F4:

Here we see some flaring in the Canon version of the photo in the upper corners, but very well controlled.  The Zeiss photo shows flaring more toward the bottom center of the photo and is more pronounced.  Purple fringing is absent in both versions.  Stopped down those two lenses perform more similarly than differently and I can’t really point to one being stronger than the other in overall image rendering.

SHARPNESS

Sharpness is an area where again I did not expect to see a significant difference between the two lenses, and yet again I was incorrect.

The center of the steering wheel was the focus point for both of these photos, and I did note that the canon version of the photo exhibited more sharpness at the focus point.  The Zeiss version of the photo isn’t bad per se, it’s just not as good as the Canon version.  Additionally, when I compare the rendering of the controls behind the steering wheel, I find that the background blur is more busy and “dirty” than the Canon version which is smoother by comparison.

Given that I was manually focusing with both lenses, I wasn’t entirely sure the sharpness difference I was seeing on the interior shots above weren’t caused by an error on my part.  However, in the photo above you can definitely see how the Canon resolves some finer details more sharply when you look at both the “M” logo on the grill and the headlight and compare the two photos.  Purple fringing is again present in the Zeiss photo (albeit less severe than in some of the above photos) while absent in the Canon photo.  There’s also some differences in the sky and trees in the backgrounds of these photos which I didn’t see in other photos I shot with both lenses. It’s possible that the sun was somewhat more obscured by clouds in the Zeiss photo.

CONCLUSION

My testing concluded that there are substantial differences in sharpness, flaring, and chromatic aberrations between these two lenses, very much in favor of the Canon.  The flaring doesn’t bother me.  Even the sharpness delta wasn’t huge until you pixel peeped photos side by side.  But wow the purple fringing on the Zeiss was really bad.  I’ll be using this lens mostly for automotive photography and some product photography (watches).    In both of these use cases, the purple fringing of the Zeiss would be something I would constantly have to battle to correct.  Both lenses exhibited some vignetting – that’s a different issue because you can click a check box in Lightroom and all but eliminate vignetting in both lenses.  Not so much with purple fringing.  I have a friend who has the version one of the Canon 35mm F1.4 and he has said that the lens exhibits purple fringing similar to the Zeiss.  Clearly Canon corrected the issue in the Canon 35mm F1.4 II.  The purple fringing on the Zeiss does dissipate substantially at F2.8 and seems to be gone entirely by F4.  But given that I’ll be shooting with this lens primarily wide open to maybe F2, the purple fringing really is a deal breaker for me which is disappointing.  The Canon was a welcome surprise.  All around image quality seemed to trounce the Zeiss at the aperture settings I’ll most commonly use – again, both the differences in sharpness as well as the chromatic aberrations fade away as you stop down the lenses.  But what’s the point of buying a wide-aperture lens if you’re going to shoot it stopped down?

WINNER:  The Canon EF 35mm F1.4 II