I have no interest in purchasing such a lens, but love watching your videos even when I'm not interested in the lens. You have such a soothing presentation and make the assessment so interesting. You and Christopher Frost are the two that I always have to watch.
Great lens and I like the character a lot. Well done and thanks for your son to modell for the lens. I find the results really good. I especially like the strict and sublime charisma of your son. The B&W portrait is my favorite (and the warm, dreamy, over-flared picture of your cat !). Thanks for sharing.
19:02 I love that image! I bought one and find it works better than expected, in that it mostly holds up as a respectable lens and not a toy. At the minimum focusing distance and the widest aperture it's kind of hazy, but if you focus 1-2 meters away the widest aperture becomes usable. For normal subjects f1.4 is OK and f2 is solid although of course not what you buy this for. I'd have liked slightly better performance at close focus and maybe a clickless aperture, but the overall aesthetics are good, colors are faithful, no big flares or swirls, I'm not complaining.
Love the lens. Love the way you mix technical and artistic part of the lens. For the price I think it's a gem, specially nowadays, where everything is getting iphonish, super high dynamic range, everything sharp, and render is less unique. This is the kind of lens that makes me go outside and explore the world with a new eye. Thank you for taking the time to get out of the mainstream lenses, I know it's less visible, but oh so much of important. Kudos
@@DustinAbbottTWI it is a big possibility, I've been trying to find a good character lens on the fifty range. I have a samyang 45mm 1.8 but I'm not a fan of the look. I love my Minolta 50f1.4, optical not great but the render really catch me. Normally use it from f2 on, but love it still. For mirror less this might do it, to add to my perfect samyang 135mm f2. Thank for everything
You don't buy a lens like this for its sharpness and perfection... You buy it for its softness and "flaws"! Regarding the lens hood... By any chance does it lock into place by turning it slightly after extending it? Canon lenses with similarly built-in hoods do that. With a small twist they can be locked either in the extended or retracted position. Turning slightly the opposite direction loosens to allow the hood to be slid out or back in. Heck of a bargain at $400! Fully manual use may be a bit slow and take some practice, but I can see a lot of wedding photographers buying one of these! Finally, the focus and aperture controls may loosen up a bit with regular use. It also may be pretty easy to "de- click" the aperture (for video use). Often in fully manual lenses, the detent is just a tiny ball bearing that can be removed (just be careful to not drop and lose it, if you ever want to re-click the lens).
After seeing your review several lenses like this, i think it finally clicked. I’d always criticize these lenses, but i think i now get them. My error was probably expecting good technical performance wide open. These lenses, wide open, are more of an instant “dreamy” preset applied to all images. Great review!
Nice review, Dustin. What I found with this lens is quite a terrible close focus performance at wide apertures. Usable, and actually solid, is f2. On the other hand, at a 50mm typical portraiture distance even wider apertures are usable and acceptably sharp. Of course not crisp, but pleasing for some smooth portraits of half body for example. The lens gets worse wide open at long distance again. Closed down to f8 it is a fantastic lens for anything. So, I would recommend to use it accordingly, and people will have a lot of fun. It actually performs better than most of my bright vintage lenses, which costs 3 times more. Have a nice day, and thanks for your great work.
Un-related topic but I just found out about downsizing my images, I have some 61MP images that just don't have 61MP worth of detail due to higher ISO used. Just found that downsizing these images to 30MP really increases sharpness and actually decreases noise, so this now mean my denoise program is working much easier with a lot less artifacts. Who would have thought that losing megapixels would actually create a nicer image.
Very right these kinds of lenses should be looked at from other criteria - not just from edge to edge sharpness etc. Any lens that does not have an electronic interface saves a lot in terms of cost. So price is nt the only factor. In terms of lens design & history this has been a constant problematic. To widen the aperture & not lose contrast - aberrations etc. The early zeiss biotar (Willy Merte) 58mm f2 (1927produced) (later the helios 44) & there was also a 57mm sonnar design - is about almost a century ago - in a context where mathematics-physics-optical design was coming into its own and interfacing with the visual artistic movements in both painting and photgraphy + early cinema. Today wth the digital revolution out of focus rendering takes on another dimension & this asks for other criteria - when is vignettng artistic or just bad lens design. The same with the extra wide apertures vis a vis light transmission - dispersion and mfd and whether they really render a beautiful shallow DOF and not have whitewashed hghlights even after software processing . Also in terms of coatings and contrast. Also what is the role of MF lens design now.
Great review, sad you didn't say a single word about light transmission (T-stop). For such a fast lens, it should be part of any optical quality test, yet every RU-vidr fails to do that.
hi Dustin, I have looked and seen your reviews on the 50mm and I must say that you are very good. Is this 50mm f0.95 lens similar in quality to the Canon 50mm f1.0? For the cost of $ 400, do you recommend buying this lens or buying something else when used?
Well this lens certainly lets the light in - in it’s own special way. I love it, providing there is time to compose/focus. What’s the MFD? And what, irrespective of price, would you say it’s rivals are for a lens like this?
At 10:00, the needles directly behind the guy are out of focus, but the tree trunk in the top right corner behind the needles is in focus? What is going on there?
@@DustinAbbottTWI what? The needles are directly behind the subject, and the tree is at least a few metres behind the subject, and yet they’re both on the same focal plane.
too much CA at wide apertures...not really useable until you hit f2 but sharpness is uneven because it's either decentered or has severe field curvature. one can argue it's a specialized lens but IMO this is just a waste of money.
