I’ll admit, first, that my expectations for this lens may have been unreasonable. I was expecting perfection. This is a very good, very wide aperture prime. But not perfect.

I’m not calling this lens bad: it’s excellent. It’s as sharp in the center as anything you can shoot with. Nearly Zeiss 21mm sharp, which is the gold standard. It’s a bit soft in the corners wide open, but still excellent compared to most 24mm lenses and even the corners are sharp by f3.5. It’s got gorgeous bokeh, great color and contrast, and even the corners have very little astigmatism.

But the autofocus speed, while not a critical feature of a lens this wide, is best described as leisurely. More importantly, it’s got some very detectible barrel distortion and interestingly the closer you focus, the more severe the barrel effect. It’s pretty noticeable and not at all what I’d hoped for. I wouldn’t shoot architecture with it unless I was planning to shoot raw and post-process out the distortion. It’s still a very, very good lens but I’m less excited about it than most.