I had my first experience with a 7Artisans lens not quite a year ago when I reviewed the 55mm F1.4 from them.  I had seen 7Artisans mentioned a number of times because they fill an important niche in the market.  They design affordable wide aperture manual focus lenses in a variety of mounts, giving both photographers and filmmakers on a budget some creative options.  Perhaps none so creative as the new 7Artisans 35mm F0.95, a compact, well made made prime lens with a huge maximum aperture.  It is available in Sony E-mount (tested here), Fuji X-mount, Canon EF-M mount, Nikon Z mount, and Micro 4/3rds.

Despite the modest focal length (35mm with Sony’s 1.5x crop = 52.5mm full frame equivalent), that huge maximum aperture assures that you can create a lot of defocused area, and the resulting bokeh is nice and creamy.

The 7Artisans 35mm F0.95 has a very nice build quality.  Everything is made of metal and glass, and both the focus and aperture (declicked) rings move smoothly.  There is about 115 degrees of focus throw, and focus ring is beautifully damped.  There are no electronics in the lens, so you won’t get any EXIF reporting, and there isn’t any weathersealing.  This is also a lens that costs less than $250 USD, however, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect the latter.  One thing that 7Artisans does very well is designing beautiful aperture irises, and this one is no exception.  The 35mm F0.95 has a beautiful 12 bladed aperture that helps retain a round aperture even at smaller aperture values.

The 35mm F0.95 has a very useful amount of image sharpness on tap even at F0.95 in the center 2/3rds of the frame, though the corners lag significantly behind.  Contrast at wide apertures isn’t incredibly high, though I found that when using the lens wisely (to its strengths), both resolution and contrast surprised me.  In other situations where the lighting was more harsh, the flaws became more apparent.  The lens seems optimized for closer distances, and I was less impressed with its performance at infinity at wider apertures, though when stopped down the center 2/3rds looks great while the outer 1/3rd is less impressive even at smaller apertures.

There is a fair amount of both lateral and longitudinal chromatic aberrations in the from of green and purple fringing, though again those are more apparent in harsher lighting conditions.  Vignette is (surprisingly) not bad, though I think this stems from the fact that the lens actually covers a larger part of the image circle than just APS-C (I estimate more like APS-H, or 1.3x crop).  Stopping down increases contrast as the longitudinal CA clears up.  Flare resistance is not fantastic, though I never expected it to be with a lens that has such a large maximum aperture.

Bokeh is beautiful, however, soft and creamy.  The strength of the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95 is that is capable of providing adequate sharpness and contrast at very wide apertures while also delivering beautifully defocused backgrounds.  This gives you all kinds of creative options for either stills or video.

I think the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95 is a lens with a lot of character.  It tackles a very wide maximum aperture with aplomb, and I find using a lens like this a lot of fun…so long as you have time to shoot a little more deliberately.  It’s great value for money optically, and is definitely worth considering if you are looking for a budget prime that will open up creative opportunities.  If you want a detailed breakdown of performance and features, check out my video review of the lens…

…or just check out photos below.

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Photos of the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95

Photos Taken with the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95

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