It's definitely not a landscape lens. I use it for B&W street photography and have been quite pleased with it's performance, especially given it's price.
I have this lens, its added a new “life” to my spare (aka least used) A6000 body and its a ton of fun to shoot street and travel with, and def punches above its price point IMO.
Excellent Dustin, i asked for this review ;-) Now i have this lens since serveral weeks, it sits on my X-M1 forever now, giving the TTA 23/1.4 back to my E1. Have a great day.
This compact cheap lens was a nice surprise for me. On my Olympus OMD M-10II does a good job, usually as street photo setup. Price / performance ratio is excellent.
I just got this lens in today for my Fuji X-T2, for the money this lens isn't too bad. Is it perfect? No, can it compare to my Nikon lenses(50mm 1.8, 70-200mm 2.8)? Not by a long shot, but, again for the money it has a very good build quality, smooth focusing and the one feature I was looking for to keep my fuji compact is it's size. It doesn't protrude too much so I can keep the camera tucked under my coat and avoid carrying my Nikon D500.
Hi all, In my opinion, the price of this lens means you can't complain too much but if you were thinking of using it for street photography using zone focusing, think twice. At first glance the construction looks good; good weight and all metal. However the focus ring screws seemed too weak to me. Regardless of the fact that its diaphragm range is probably not f2 to f16 but darker, the biggest problem with this lens is that the focus is poorly calibrated. Not only in my case, I have found more users with the same complaint. Focusing by focus peaking at 1 meter the ring marks 0.8 approximately, focusing by focus peaking at 3 meters the focus ring marks 1.5 approximately. This makes certain types of street photography impossible. The one where you rely on the focus marks on your lens to pre-focus when you don't want to use the viewfinder to avoid drawing attention to yourself. In principle this problem should be easily solved by loosening the focus ring and adjusting it. But the TTArtisan 25mm f2 has another big problem, even if you loosen all the focus ring screws the focus ring is still attached to the focusing mechanism and cannot be adjusted. At least it can't adjust smoothly as it should, I don't know if reaching the end of the range and applying more force it could be adjusted. Finally, although the friction of the diaphragm ring is correct, the friction of the focus ring is too soft and there is no doubt that you will lose focus with the slightest touch. All in all, a good buy if you rely on the focus assist of your mirrorless camera but a bad buy if you want to zone focusing.
Unfortunately on full frame Z mount this lens has a smaller image circle not being able to cover 1:1 crop (3:4 is ok). I got this lens primarily for shooting in 1:1 crop, small and cheap. At @0:42 It appears to cover the square format however it is not the case for nikon. Great videos. Edit: I realized the footage shown, for how much vignetting you get on full frame, is in 16:9 ratio rather than 3:2.
Brilliant review. As much as I like your detailed reviews, I suppose I only need to know "Is it sharp in the centre and corners", and "is there something weird with the lens" when I'm buying a cheap manual focus lens. I think this reveiw type suits more for under $200 MF lenses. Thanks!
Thank you for this review! I received mine and am using it on a Sony APS-C body. I’m suffering heavy vignetting at f/2, f/2.4, f/2.8, and light vignetting at f/4. TTARTISAN said this is completely normal, but I don’t believe them because I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere. The vignetting is reminiscent of using an APS-C lens on a full frame body. The lens is pretty unusable at lower apertures. Are experiencing this at all? I think my unit is bad.
I saw under three stops in the corners in my tests, so I'm not quite sure what your standard is. It sounds like you are experiencing something more than that
Nice review. One thing, you said that manually focusing is easy with mirrorless cameras, as opposed to mirrored? Because SLR's are much easier to focus, with optical viewfinders, and focusing aids like split image and real microprism. Digital simulations of either don't even come close.
These cheaper lenses might be a good option for beginners, hobbyists & anyone into B&W street & architectural photography. If this was a perfect lens for 69 bucks then I guess it would be sold out.
everybody knows its not a landscape lens, and it works best on fuji, i use it as a pocket camera lens when my Leica Q2 is to big. you have to test it for what its ment for... and learn the lens. i use Sony,Nikon Z and Leica , Fuji and it can not compare with this cameras and lenses, its a pancake lens, you nerver use pancakes for landscape if you are serious about Photo... its like bying a cheep Chinese car and say it dont goes as well as my expensive Mercedes.... use it for street on a small Fuji cam and it works exelent with analog feel, or on a small Sony . Thanx for the review anyway, i think it can help someone who thinks its good for nature Photo...
@@DustinAbbottTWI ok most people know it, if they read about the lens. i use both fuji and sony and the fuji colors and files helps the lens to give better results. i still think people knows a pancake is not for landscapes. never been...
Looks like junk. Not worth buying. Might as well just use your cel phone which likely has a better lens around the same exact focal length. Save up money to buy a better lens than this.