I am still trying to sort out how to try to wrangle the flares on this lens. What this lens really needs is a flare reduction dial so I can dial in the flare. I am sure that the flare magic isn’t random but the flaring seems almost random at times. Shooting with the sun at a 45 degree frontal angle seems to create the most problems. Performance according to specs isn’t great, but the lens has some very beautiful character, especially wide open. So far, this is my favorite 7Artisans lens and it’s a lot of fun to use!

Here it is juxtaposed to a Leica Summicron 35 ASPH. They’re similar in size but the 7Artisans 35mm is 40g lighter, equating to an almost 20% reduction in weight. Artist lenses tend to be softer but have perhaps heavy vignetting or interesting fall off. I love the mentioned TTArtisan 50mm f0.95 lens for this look especially. Before we get into this I just want to remind you again that this lens will cost you about half of a solid couple of headphones! It cost me less than if I’m going grocery shopping for some friday night dinner guests! Just to get some perspective as to what can be expected! Distorting and vignetting. We see some notable barrel distortion here patterned more around the corners of the image. The vignetting is noticeable at half 1.2 but the corners do get lighter at F 2 and F 2.8 even if you stop all the way down to f/8 though you'll continue to see very gentle vignette. Lens can focus as closely as 35 centimeters to your subject pretty good really. At f 1.2 close-up image quality is soft stop down to f/2 for an improvement and at F 2.8. That's as sharp as you’re going to get closer. Stopping down to anything below f/2 makes the 7artisans a very decent performer. But it will never become super super sharp. So let’s just put the whole sharpness thing to rest, shall we? This lens is about other things.Cons: Terrible lens cap, Vignetting, Color shifts, Distortion, Very soft wide open when close, Made in China What’s that? Your clothes, computers, phones and cameras say they’re made elsewhere? Fantastic, do yourself a favour and find out where their components and materials are sourced. Chances are that upwards of 50% of the products you own and use every single day have some or all of their source materials and components made or designed in China or made by Chinese businesses elsewhere. I also used this lens on my Panasonic S1. I was trying to see if maybe this lens had a Sonnar focus shift or it wasn’t calibrated properly on my rangefinder. I got the same results on the S1 so I don’t think it is a Sonnar focus shift issue. It is just a little bit soft at F2. It’s a modern lens in that it has been newly designed and built, the materials it uses are modern and the various coatings it employs are based on today’s optical standards – but the optical design is still the optical design. Lens design – Sonnar Workshops/ Photowalks Mailing List– Receive info on future events specific to your city/ country/ interest.

The sample gallery below have all been shot on the X-Pro3. Most of the images are Classic Negative film simulation jpegs, that I have tweaked a bit in Lightroom. The double exposures are all made in-camera using the new multi-exposure function of the X-Pro3. I tried searching for the lens diagram of both the Mitakon 35mm f0.95 mk2 and the 7artisans 35mm f0.95 and although it’s rather hard to find I managed to find at least enough evidence to know that the buildup of these lenses are exactly similar. They seem to be based on an already tried optical formula with an added focal reducer at the rear. From what I can tell even the coating seem to be the same between the two lenses. When I started shooting them side-by-side I did find that there were some slight differences but that was all about field of view and not about image quality. In day-to-day use you will find no difference at all between these two lenses. I will go into deeper detail regarding this comparison further on in this article. I lost my first battle with this lens during the unboxing stage. I know I said, I won’t talk about build quality because neither me (nor most anyone else) really knows what is going on inside a lens by just feeling it. All we can possibly know from the outside is that it is heavy or light, and the twisty things twist smoothly or they don’t. If you are keeping score, you need to get out two scorecards. If you think you are shopping for a modern lens the score is 7Artisans 1. Me 1. This lens can’t be classified as a modern lens. If on the other hand you think you are shopping for a modern lens with retro appeal the score is 7Artisans 2. Me 0.As long as it isn’t an environmental portrait and I am shooting wide open to hid any peripheral shmear.

So as you can clearly see from the images, the Fujinon XF35mm f/1.4 is by far the sharpest of the bunch. Focus missed the front berries, but they’re still sharper than the berries in the rest of the images. You can also clearly see that the bokeh from the Mitakon is amazing. Of course you have an extra full f-stop of narrow-DOF, but just look at the quality of it! Silky-smooth comes to mind. This also mean that your colours won’t be as saturated straight off the camera, so you’ll have to add some punch in the colours if that’s your thing. As with the 50mm f/1.1, the 35mm f/2 was entirely designed and manufactured in China. This seems to have upset a few people and although Hamish covered something similar in his review of that lens, posting a few shots of the 35mm f/2 has garnered more of the same ignorant responses. Mitakon 35mm f/0.95 mkII– Best for shallow DOF and very very smooth bokeh combined with Fujinon image quality. This lens is a true gem. Period. The aperture construction is made from no less than 12 blades. They’re rounded and ensure a completely circular lens opening right from f/0.95 all the way down to f/16. It’s not all that common to find 12 blade aperture lenses these days. A very cool choice.

If you’re interested, I rant a bit about this at the end of the article. In short, my response to these people is: get over yourself. Build quality A client lens for me is the best lens I can use which normally means sharp but pretty photos. For my Leica wedding photography I really enjoy the Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f1.2 lens for example. See below for that and more 35mm lens options.

As you can probably see by the amount I have written about the 7Artisans 35mm f/1.2 compared to the 55mm 1.4, I’m a little more taken with it. Quite a bit more in fact. To be honest, a lot of that comes from a combination of its size when mounted on the camera, it’s effective focal length being 50mm (my preference) and it’s speed compared to my usual 2.8 carry-everywhere lens. The 7artisans lens has wider distance marks on the focusing scale (easier to see your zone focusing).I also noticed that the 7artisans lens has a narrower field of view and is probably more like a 40mm focal length. If you’re so obsessed with avoiding “Chinese crap”, please do everyone a favour and stop buying products made in part or in full in China, or by Chinese businesses. FYI, this includes but is not limited to: Trust me…..Leica Gear is not worth the money they charge you. Especially today where all of their lenses optical computation is optimized for digital which means the glass doesn’t have to be as sharp because the Digital Sensor will compensate for that. It’s not the sharpest lens I’ve ever shot, far from it, but it is by far the sharpest fast aperture lens that I’ve ever shot in this segment. And this actually applies when shooting it wide open too!! Yes, it is so satisfyingly sharp at f0.95 that I never even consider stopping it down during day to day use. The focus throw on the lens is short, which makes it very ideal for day-to-day use. If you want to finetune your focus during, say, a portrait session, the very fluid motion of the focus ring makes it really easy to do precise focusing even though the throw is shorter than a regular portrait lens where you often get close to 180° of rotation for really fine focus tuning.