Canon New FD 24mm f/2.8

This is the wide-angle most FD shooters end up with, and most of them never feel the need to replace it. Canon built the New FD 24mm f/2.8 from 1979 to the end of the manual-focus line, and what it does well is the boring stuff: it is rectilinear, with low but not zero distortion that takes on a slight wave on long straight runs, the kind of thing an architecture shooter will catch on a brick wall and a landscape shooter will never see. Illumination is even across most of the frame and the field stays flat enough to hold infinity into the corners. It is a quiet lens to use and an easy one to trust.

Optically it is a retrofocus design, which any 24mm on an SLR has to be to clear the mirror box. Wide open at f/2.8 the corners are soft and contrast drops a touch, the usual price of a fast wide from this era. Stop down to f/5.6 and it sharpens edge to edge in a way that surprises people who only know it by reputation as a cheap kit wide. By f/8 it is genuinely excellent and holds that to f/11 before diffraction starts pulling it back. Meter the scene, stop down to your landscape aperture, and it delivers.

Color is neutral and runs slightly cool, contrast moderate rather than punchy, which suits color negative and reversal both. Flare resistance is actually decent for the age of the glass; Canon's Super Spectra coating handles most of what you throw at it, and you have to provoke the failure. Shoot straight into the sun without the hood and you will catch some veiling glare and the odd ghost, so fit the hood and the problem mostly goes away. The 52mm filter thread is the friendly part of the bargain, shared across half the FD prime range, so one set of grads or a polarizer covers your 28, 35, and 50 as well. If you are stacking an ND grad to hold a bright sky, meter the foreground in Zone Light Meter and let the filter pull the top of the frame down into the curve.

Who shoots it: anyone on an FD body doing travel, street, environmental portraits, or landscape who wants one wide that weighs nothing. It is small, the focus throw is short and well damped, and it focuses to about a foot, close enough for that low-and-wide foreground-object look 24mm does so well. Documentary shooters leaned on the FD wides for exactly this, an aperture fast enough to grab a frame indoors and a depth of field at f/4 that forgives sloppy focus.

Where it sits now is cheap, and it stays in demand for a reason. The New FD 24mm f/2 exists, faster and pricier and well regarded in its own right (some FD users rate it the best 24mm of the line), but the f/2.8 wins on size and price, which is why it is the one most people actually carry. On a mirrorless body with a dumb adapter it makes a clean manual 24mm with full aperture control and no electronics to fail. The natural rival is the Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI-S, and the two land close enough that it really comes down to which mount is already in your bag. Find a clean copy, put the hood on it, and it will be the wide you stop thinking about.