Sony RX1R 35mm f2.0 versus A7RII with 28mm F2.0 and 35mm F2.8 - Sharpness Comparison

Marc Heijligers, 05-03-2016

On this page you’ll find a detailed comparison between the sharpness of both setups.

Summarized Results

The tables below show the summarized relative performance of the different setups.

Close-by, for the bookshelf, the A7RII outperforms the RX1R in all aspects, besides the 35mm f2.8 on the left side due to the tilted lens element. There is also definitely a resolution advantage of the A7RII that helps to give it better sharpness results (42Mpix instead of 24Mpix).

For the city scene, the 28mm show less advantage resolution wise (because it is not scaled and we look at smaller pixels), and the 35mm shows stronger performance. The 35mm F2.8 lens is overall still be sharper choice. The question is if that would also remain true for the RX1RII, having the same lens as the RX1R and the same resolution sensor as the A7RII.

Test Conditions

The 28mm f2.0 and 35mm f.28 lenses are tested on an A7RII. The A7RII pictures have been scaled to 24 Mpix resolution, with the exception of the 28mm city scene, that has been cropped (for the same scene: 6000/7953=76%, for a different scene 28/35=80%).

The first test is to judge the field sharpness of the setups. For this I use a bookshelf, which has a flat surface and a lot of books where the text on the book spines can used to test the subjective sharpness at a distance of 1.5 to 2m (not fully scientific, but sufficient to represent practical use cases for most of us). The cameras are put on a tripod, where care is taken that the camera is perpendicular to the bookshelf (using the level indicator of the camera, visually checking the camera is in the middle, the bookshelf plates are symmetrical in the viewfinder, and double check with LensCal that the book spines are within the DoF range). The focus point for all photos is always in the centre (though other focus points have been checked for sanity, as well as multiple pictures to exclude focus differences). For lenses with different focal length, the camera is moved such that the composition of the scene remains the same in the viewfinder. Photos on the A7RII have been made with Steadyshot turned OFF, Silent Shooting turned ON, and a timer (but the differences are hardly visible with complementary settings in this specific setup). Pictures are taken in RAW, and processed in Lightroom with the Camera Neutral setting, and with Lens corrections enabled. For sanity, I’ve checked the difference between JPG, and RAW with corrections turned off, but the results are similar. Three regions are considered in the tests, one in the centre, one at the bottom-left, and one at the top-right. To investigate color fringing, tests have also been done closer to some books that have a high level of contrast.

The second test is to test the setups for sharpness at further distance. For this purpose I photographed a (boring cloudy) city scene from the balcony. This rules out the problem with the cameras not being absolutely perpendicular to the bookshelf in the previous test. Furthermore, the larger distance increases the depth-of-field for distant objects, hence if there are internal or shifted lens elements, it also reveals unsharpness in those conditions. Also here three regions are considered the centre, the left, and the right side.

Detailed Comparison

Use the filter button below to select which cases you want to see and compare in detail (the buttons will limit the selection), and use the slider to compare the Sony A7RII on the left (either with the 28mm F2.0 or 35mm F2.8) and the Sony RX1R on the right.