Update and Correction Regarding the Canon 14mm f/1.4L VCM Review

In February, PetaPixel published its review of the Canon 14mm f/1.4L VCM lens and found some issues with its performance in astrophotography. There were many theories from readers and viewers of the YouTube channel as to why this happened, but none of them were right. The truth is a little more interesting.

In the original review, PetaPixel noticed that corner performance when photographing stars was particularly poor.

“At f/1.4, the stars would often streak towards the center of the frame, and although heavy cropping can cut this out, it reduces the utility of having such a wide lens to begin with,” Chris Niccolls wrote at the time. “I think this issue stems largely from the compact design of the lens. In order to maximize space, the lens gives up on image circle coverage and the corners become a problem. I’d happily use this lens for astrophotography shots, but I would either stop down or crop, both of which are less than ideal.”

This lens should be ideal for astrophotography but the corners suffer.

PetaPixel readers suggested that this could not be expected performance and perhaps there was an issue with focus, how long the exposure was, or perhaps it was due to using the wrong RAW profile in post production.

None of these suggestions were correct (Jordan Drake, who photographed the stars, didn’t make any errors). Instead, the problem was determined to be a misaligned sensor.

“Due to the issues that we discovered with corner sharpness, specifically when shooting astrophotography, the people at Canon reached out to try and help explain the problems. We constantly strive to exhaustively test the lenses we review as accurately as possible. It turns out, that our testing was sound, but we did have an R5 camera with a slightly misaligned sensor. This exacerbated the corner issues that we were getting,” Niccolls explains.

“We retested a new lens with a newly-certified R5 II and lens and confirmed that the sensor issue was no longer a factor. It’s important to be clear that we did still see the same issues with vignetting, and the field curvature of the lens does cause stars at the periphery to streak. However, the lens does a good job at handling astrophotography situations with a little bit of care.”

So, while the lens isn’t perfect, it is a significantly better performer than it appeared in our review. We have updated the review and published a new video with the findings.

Additionally, the first round of astrophotography images that were included in PetaPixel‘s Sample Gallery for the lens have been replaced with a new set. PetaPixel Members can download that new gallery today.

Thank you all for your suggestions and to Canon for helping PetaPixel get to the root of the problem.

Image credits: Photographs by Jordan Drake for PetaPixel