Sony 35mm f/2.8 ZA compared to Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 Ai ~ part One

I must enjoy the pain, the strain, the bloodshot eyes.

Not leaving well enough alone, I wanted to see if it's worth keeping a pretty little Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 Ai that I have.  I wanted to see how it compared to the Sony 35mm f/2.8 ZA and see if I need to try, say, something else, something modern, something AF.

Setup ~ 

• Camera - 
• Sony A7, 100ISO, 2sec timer, "A" mode
  
• Lenses - 
• Sony 35mm f/2.8 ZA
• Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 Ai
  
• Bogen tripod
  

• RawTherapee to snug up the curves, with and without "Capture Sharpen"
  

Comparison ~

As always, click on the image and enlarge to 100percent to see whatever there is to be seen.

 

 

Comments ~

Looking at the center crops from f/2.8 on down there's not much difference between the new and old lenses.  Incredibly (to me, at least), both look nice and sharp.  This continues to hold true after Capture Sharpening.  

 

Wide open at f/2.8 the Nikkor does not show the common under-corrected spherical aberration that Nikon seems to have deliberately designed into their old SLR lenses.  Wide open is where the original Nikon "magic pixies" live.  But in the center this c.1980 24mm "feels" very modern.  It clearly keeps up with a lens 40 years newer.

The corners OTOH show clear differences between the newer Sony and the older Nikkor.  The Nikkor's edges never really clean up, though I can see that stopping down does help edge performance in the old lens.  I didn't even try to Capture Sharpen the edges for this comparison.

The f/5.6 Nikkor corners don't look exactly bad.  It's mainly in comparison to the Sony 35mm that I get the "feeling" that the Nikkor isn't quite as "modern" as I first hoped.

At this point in my Massive All Consuming Roto-Till of old Nikon manual focus glass into New Modern Wowy Zowy AF Must Have To Be In With The In Crowd, it looked like maybe the Nikon 24mm Ai is a candidate to be tilled into something else.