Now that the Sony A7r II has 42 megapixels of madness, it’s a good idea to look at how it handles diffraction with a few lenses.
The consensus is that your aperture and megapixel count will impact your image detail due to diffraction. Shooting higher apertures like f16-f22 will result in softer images vs shooting at f4-f8. Also, more megapixels will impact how your images look at higher apertures.
However, based on various diffraction tests with different cameras and lenses, it’s not only aperture and megapixel count that affect diffraction.
Diffraction: It’s Not Just About Aperture
I have seen several things contribute to diffraction.
– The more megapixels, the more diffraction at higher apertures.
– It seems dusty lenses can contribute to diffraction.
– Different lenses handle diffraction better than others.
– The higher the aperture, the more diffraction there is.
I noticed the Sony ZA 16-35mm f4 lens handles diffraction very well. My Zeiss Sonnar 35mm f2.8 handles it a little less.
I’ve also noticed that as lenses get dustier and dirtier over the years, they get hit harder by diffraction. My Canon 16-35mm f2.8L II lens used to be fantastic; now, after years of dust, it performs very poorly for landscape photography at higher apertures, and I was finally forced to upgrade to the Sony 16-35mm.
Diffraction Chart – Sony A7r II, Vario-Sonnar 16-35mm F4
Shot RAW 100% crop.
The sweet spot for this lens is f8, but you could still get away with shooting at f11 without any significant quality loss.
Diffraction Chart – Sony A7r II, Zeiss-Sonnar 35mm F2.8
I skipped F2.8 since it’s not influenced by diffraction.
Shot In RAW
Shot In JPEG
It looks like the Sony A7r II adds a little sharpness to compensate for diffraction in the JPEGs. I know Fujifilm does this on their cameras. They add a sharpness algorithm, depending on the aperture you’re at, to counter the effects of diffraction.
Diffraction Chart – Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 Heliar III
This all-around great lens works fantastically with the Sony A7r II.
Again, f16 and f22 are pretty nasty. It might be a little worse on this lens than on the 16-35mm and the 35mm.
The Vario-Sonnar 16-35mm handles diffraction a little better than the Sonnar 35mm, especially the Voigtlander 15mm. Either way, all three lenses are still usable between f5.6 and f11, even with all the megapixels packed into the Sony A7r II sensor. I was expecting much worse.
Sony also stacks on some nice sharpness when shooting JPEG, making diffraction less of an issue. This is great for those HDR photographers who like shooting 5-7-shot JPEG sequences. This will allow you to shoot at those apertures to get sun stars and more DOF while still maintaining pseudo-sharp images.
The good news is that diffraction does seem to help eliminate moiré patterns. So, if you’re having problems with moiré, you can just close down your aperture at a stop or two.
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