In 2024 7Artisans not only embraced autofocus but also a series slightly more upscale full frame lenses that are physically larger, have more features, and also have higher (but still inexpensive) price tag. The 7Artisans AF 50mm F1.8 lens was the first in that category, followed by the 7Artisans AF 85mm F1.8 STM was another strong lens optically, and was fairly reasonably priced at $299 USD. But of course the market was already saturated with 50mm and 85mm F1.8 lenses on Sony E-mount (where I did these reviews), which makes it a challenge to stand out. Perhaps that’s why 7artisans elected to skip the 35mm focal length (for now) and instead bring out a less common 24mm F1.8. The 7Artisans AF 24mm F1.8 STM is another nicely executed lens with a reasonable price that undercuts the only real competitors – the Samyang AF 24mm F1.8 and Viltrox AF 24mm F1.8 lenses. Should this be a lens you should add to your kit? Find out my thoughts in the video review below or by reading on…

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Thanks to 7Artisans for sending me a review sample of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.

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• AF 24mm F1.8 STM Review
• AF 50mm F1.8 STM Review
• AF 85mm F1.8 STM Review

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As before, I’m doing this review on Sony E-mount, which tends to be the first platform released, but 7Artisans has backfilled the 50 and 85mm focal lengths with releases for both Nikon Z and Leica L, which broadens the appeal.

The 7artisans AF 24mm comes to market at an MSRP of $329 USD, which is roughly $100 cheaper than the competition from Viltrox or Samyang…and it can give you beautiful, dramatic images.

So is this a lens that you should seriously consider? We’ll explore whether or not that is the case in this review.

Build and Handling

When 7Artisans introduced the 50mm F1.8, the most common question was centered around the size of the lens, namely, “why is it so big?” This has not been a small series of lenses, and once again this is a larger lens than most of the competition. It is 72mm in diameter (2.83″) and 92mm (3.6″) in length. The closer comparable lens is the older Viltrox AF 24mm F1.8, which is 70 x 85mm, but the Samyang AF 24mm F1.8 is much smaller at 65 x 71.5mm.

Unsurprisingly that also means that it is the heaviest of the bunch, weighing in at 424g (about 15oz). That’s heavier than the Viltrox (340g) and nearly twice as heavy as the Samyang (230g).

That is in large part due to being made of very nice materials. This is a lens with a metal body, based on a metal lens mount, and it doesn’t feel “cheap” in any way.

The lens barrel has a nice, anodized black satin finish. The lens design is very clean and elegant.

The lens hood is improved from what I saw on the 50mm F1.8. I complained that the finish of the plastic hood didn’t quite match the finish of the lens’ barrel (the hood was more matte, while the lens’ barrel was satin). The 24mm’s hood is a more natural match, and the look of the lens is more cohesive now. I also feel like the precision of the bayoneting and locking is improved.

The 50mm F1.8 had an AF | MF switch and an aperture ring, but the 24mm, like the 85mm, adds a function button as well.

7Artisans has definitely improved the action of the AF | MF switch from the early models like the 50mm F1.8. That switch felt indefinite, but now the switch has a more definite “click” into the selected mode, and doesn’t feel like it can be inadvertently bumped out of position anymore.

The new function button is well placed and clicks with nice precision. It doesn’t feel rubbery or unresponsive at all. 7Artisans is starting to nail the little details, which is a sign of maturation.

Also included is a declicked aperture ring, though this remains an area where more refinement is needed. The aperture iris is fairly noisy as you change aperture settings, so this is something that still needs refining. The aperture ring shows the one third stop markings, which is great, but it shows a full three one-third stops between F1.8 and F2, which is a bit odd since F2 is only one third stop past F1.8. At least they have removed the one third stop markings from F16 to A, as F16 is actually the minimum aperture. There are no markings after F16 now, but rather a space between F16 that corresponds to a reasonably strong detent that should keep you from accidentally bumping into that space.

The main point of a clickless aperture is to enable video aperture racks. There is a tiny amount of stepping, but overall I was able to pull off reasonably good aperture racks.

The aperture iris itself is lovely, with 11 rounded blades that create a nice, circular aperture, though it is much harder to see the aperture iris here than on the 85mm. A 24mm lens just has a LOT less glass than an 85mm lens!

The manual focus ring is made of metal and has nice damping, though unfortunately it did feel like there was more “stepping” in the manual focus process and thus the manual focus simulation wasn’t as good as what I saw on the 85mm. I call it a simulation because on mirrorless lenses the input on the manual focus ring is still routed though the focus motor. In clips where I do a manual focus pull I can definitely see some visible steps.

The handling of the rings is fairly good but not excellent due to these little quirks.

7Artisans has adopted the important standard of building in a USB-C port to the lens mount that will allow for future firmware updates. The firmware update process is very similar to that on Viltrox lenses and isn’t complicated at all.

What is missing from that lens mount is any weather sealing gasket. This is not a weather sealed lens.

The minimum focus distance is 32cm, which is a far cry from the Samyang’s 19cm MFD. The Samyang could produce a very useful 0.21x magnification, but the 7Artisans is producing a far less useful magnification somewhere in the 0.09x range…which isn’t very good.

Don’t expect too many close focus shots out of this lens! This is as close as I could get to this old SLR.

I like the overall feel and aesthetic of this series, but unfortunately the 24mm isn’t quite as compelling as the 85mm lens in some of the details. The Samyang AF 24mm F1.8 is still a more compelling package due to its portability and some of the fine details.

Autofocus and Video

The 7Artisans AF 24mm F1.8 features the ubiquitous STM motor that you are most likely to find in lenses under $500 that are designed for mirrorless. This motor feels relatively smooth and quiet. I can faintly hear a little scratching and whirring during focus if I listen closely. The loudest sound is actually the aperture blades opening and closing. Focus smoothness and general accuracy is all good.

Focus speed is about average for an STM focus motor, which is to say quick but noticeably slower than a top notch linear focus motor.

These 7Artisans autofocusing lens have a fatal flaw, as while you can focus with accuracy for a single shot…

…if the subject is moving towards you, the autofocus motor simply doesn’t keep up with even slow movement. Even with a relatively slow moving Mammotion YUKA robot lawnmower moving towards the camera you’ll find that focus is all over the place.

I got only 6 of the 19 shots in this burst well focused. This is clearly not a lens to purchase if you intend to capture action in bursts, which is a limiting factor that I’m not sure you’ll see in competing lenses.

So autofocus for stills works just fine so long as you aren’t trying to capture action in bursts. If you don’t want to do that, you probably need to look elsewhere. Focus precision for non action shots was excellent.

Video AF

On the video front I found mostly good results. Focus pulls were smooth and quick in the initial transition, with no visible steps. I did sometimes see a quick micropulse as focus settled on the subject.

Focus breathing is quite low and shouldn’t be a factor. There is little obvious change is the size of objects as you pull focus back and forth.

The 7Artisans 24mm did fairly well with my “hand test” however, where I alternately block the view to my face with my hand and then remove it. Focus transitioned nicely from my hand to my face with good precision.

I also found the focus felt pretty stable during static shots, though I didn’t feel like the camera’s OSS was working super well, with a lot of little erratic microadjustments. I’ve seen behavior like this before and know the cause. I switched from the auto setting in the camera based stabilization and instead manually input the 24mm focal length, and immediately the footage was better stabilized. Sometimes these third party lenses aren’t effectively communicating with the camera for stabilization, and it shows.

Focus isn’t bad in an absolute sense, but thus far 7Artisans isn’t at the level of other third party lenses like Viltrox or even Samyang.

7Artisans AF 24mm F1.8 Image Quality Breakdown

The 7Artisans AF 24mm F1.8 has an optical design of 14 elements in 11 groups, and this includes some ED (low dispersion), HRI (high refractive index), and Aspherical elements. The MTF suggests a strong performance, consistent with the high standard set by this series thus far.

This is a sharp lens with a bit of a lag in the corners, but you can get sharp images even at F1.8 and on a high resolution 61MP camera.

Fast wide angle lenses are much more difficult to engineer than 50mm or 85mm lenses, so in different ways I’m both more and less impressed by the 7Artisans AF 24mm.

That tension can be seen in a look at vignette and distortion. There is actually a rather low amount of distortion for a wide angle lens, requiring only a -1 to correct…but only because that distortion is very complex, with a strong mustache pattern.

There is some obvious evidence of pincushion distortion in the corners, though any attempt to manually correct that will quickly cause strong barrel distortion in the middle. The lesser of the two evils is to largely leave that uncorrected, as most of the frame is clean with the distortion only showing up along the edges. If and when a correction profile comes (I haven’t yet seen 7Artisans correction profiles in Lightroom), that should correct more easily. Vignette isn’t bad for a fast wide angle lens, requiring a +44 to correct. That’s a little under two stops.

This real world shot has no vignette correction and doesn’t look like it needs correction.

There is some minor issues with longitudinal chromatic aberrations, or LoCA. You can see some fringing on my chart test.

I didn’t see a big deal in real world shots, with just a hint of fringing here and there.

This isn’t typically a big deal on wide angle lenses for the simple reason that it will be rare to have a really shallow depth of field that makes these show up.

More concerning in a wide angle lens is some lateral chromatic aberrations that are visible in the transitions from black to white at the edges of the frame.

Real world images seem mostly good, however, so I’m not overly concerned.

I don’t love the complex distortion, but at the same time there isn’t really anything too concerning here.

So how about resolution and contrast? My tests have been done on a 61MP Sony a7RV. Here’s the test chart:

Here are F1.8 crops at roughly 180% from across the frame (center, mid-frame, and lower right corner).

That’s a good, but not great performance at F1.8. The center is nice and sharp, with good contrast, but contrast is dropping by the mid-frame, and the corner is looking softer.

But, to be fair, the modern standard is ridiculously high. This is a lens that can make very nice looking, highly detailed images even at F1.8:

As with other lenses in the series, there is only a minor improvement to contrast at F2, but there is a more obvious improvement from F2 to F2.8.

Corners are obviously improved by F2.8 as well.

There really isn’t any significant further improvement after F2.8, with F5.6 looking largely the same as F2.8.

Landscape apertures from F4-F8 generally looked good – good contrast and detail.

I think landscape images look good but not great. The optical glass has a color signature that I’ve come to recognize and associate with cheaper lenses. Colors don’t look bad, but they do lack the nuance I see in more expensive lenses.

But that might be splitting hairs in a wide angle lenses that costs less than $300 – though even this space is getting far more competitive. I had the same critique of earlier Viltrox lenses, but they clearly have changed suppliers for their optical glass and now have much better color.

Diffraction will start to soften the image after F8, with a mild amount at F11 but a more obvious amount by F16:

We’ve seen some images with specular highlights already, and I’ll note that they are a little busy.

Real world shots without specular highlights look better to me.

Here’s another shot that shows a pretty good transition to defocus.

It’s not going to match the bokeh of a lens like the Sony 24mm F1.5 GM (obviously), but the bokeh is mostly clean and didn’t raise my “busy bokeh” radar.

I didn’t see a lot of issues with veiling (loss of contrast), though you will see ghosting artifacts in a fairly obvious flare pattern.

In short, while there are things that betray the budget nature of the lens, I also think it is a very good (cheaper) alternative to the lens like the Viltrox AF 24mm F1.8.

If you’d like to see more image samples, check out the image gallery here.

Conclusion

7Artisans is into their second year of making autofocus lenses, and they’ve now got a tried and true formula for this series, which is mostly a good one. This feels like a fairly comprehensive package for this price, and the image quality is good enough to make potential buyers happy.

Autofocus is pretty good for single shot use, but don’t even consider this lens if you need to capture bursts of action. Thus far 7Artisans hasn’t figured out either the focus algorithms or how to get enough thrust in the focus motors to keep up with action.

But I do think they were smart to go with the 24mm focal length rather than 35mm, as there are a TON of 35mm options but relatively few 24mm alternatives. I personally would still probably go with the Samyang due it be so much smaller and lighter, but the 7Artisans AF 24mm F1.8 is good enough to definitely carve out space for itself and is worth considering if you happen to be a 7Artisans fan.

Pros:

• Nice looking lens with nice build
• Includes aperture ring, function button, and AF/MF switch
• USB-C port for firmware updates
• High aperture blade count
• Autofocus motor is quiet and accurate for stills shots
• Good sharpness wide open
• Relatively low vignette and distortion
• Bokeh is good in many situations
• Excellent price to performance ratio

Cons:

• No weather sealing
• Aperture makes some lot of noise while opening and closing
• Autofocus doesn’t track action well at all
• Bigger and heavier than competitors

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the 7Artisans AF 24mm F1.8 @ Vitopal (use code DUSTINABBOTT for 10% off) | Pergear | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the 7Artisans AF 50mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony a7IV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada |  Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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