With a slew of new lens manufacturers in the last few years, and by extension, many new lenses at attractive prices, it's easy for some great glass to slip under the radar.
7artisans is one of a handful of new companies in the industry producing lenses that previously didn't seem possible. For fast prime lenses with any camera manufacturer or well-known lens producers, you had to expect that your wallet was about to get significantly lighter. For years I would foam and froth over 85mm f/1.2 lenses for my Canon and Sony bodies, but never able to justify the sizable outlay to own one. Now, fast prime lenses are in high supply, at low costs.
As with all things, there's a trade-off. First and foremost, these lenses tend to do away with autofocus systems to keep the price down. While disappointing, it's completely understandable and if it opens up the opportunity for more photographers to get to play with fast glass, I'm all for it. Secondly, wide-open (which is largely the allure of these lenses with razor-thin focus) the lenses are usually pretty soft. However, if they're fast enough, you have plenty of room to stop down and still get an extremely low depth of field. With the lens in this video, the 7artisans Photoelectric 50mm f/1.05 might be tricky to use in manual and a tad soft at f/1.05, but stopping down to f/1.2 or f/1.4 will likely resolve those problems and still be better than most lenses four times the price!
Have you used this 7artisans lens? What were your thoughts on it?
Perhaps no one is talking about it because the very next article at Fstoppers is "Thoughts on Why Gear Doesn't Matter", written by your colleague Mr. Cooke?
That's funny...that precisely what I was thinking!
Because it's manual focus.
If it's anything like the 7Artisans 35mm f/0/95 that I got for my M4/3 cameras, it's because it's a one-trick pony that royally sucks at everything else. The 35mm is a shtick lens, a la LensBaby, and this may be one as well. Sure, they have a look that may come in handy for portrait work, but useless for anything else. I don't know about this lens, but the 35 has massive field curvature. It's useless anywhere beyond 10-15 feet, and the rendering in portrait may or may not be your cup of tea. The declicked f stop ring is a royal pain for photography, and is so close to the focus ring that you'll be turning it off your setting more often than not when you go to focus. I have a strip of gaffer's tape on it and the focus ring to keep them in place (the dampening is almost nonexistent, and you'll be knocking both focus and aperture out all the time)
That said, if you like LensBaby junk, this lens (and the 35) may be right up your alley.
yeah i had to use loctite to keep the mounting ring on mine. IMO if your looking at a 7 artisans lens one should look at vintage lenses in the same focal length. have a takumar that is much sharper than my 7 artisans for half the cost and they are both manual focus.
Because you don't buy a f/1.05 lens if you have to step down to at least f/1,4 to get some sharpness in the centre of the image. Sharp corners? I don't know if that is possible, then it is better to buy a Sony FE 55mm f:1,8 Zeiss which is sharp wide open and also have autofocus.