7Artisans 60mm F2.8 Macro MK II Review | Bargain 1:1 Macro

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the new 7 Artisans 60mm f2.8 macro lens
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And you say, well, there's already been one of these, but this is the Mark II version
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And so it's kind of an interesting era for some of these that I call boutique third-party lens makers
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some of these smaller brands that are coming primarily out of China right now, like Seven
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Artisans, that are now starting to have had enough experience that they're moving on to
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the next generation of their lens design and cleaning up maybe some of the shortcomings
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of previous lenses. This is a full one-to-one macro lens, and unlike its predecessor, this is a fully internally
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focusing lens, so nothing extends as a part of operation. You can tell that it's a little better engineered than what the previous lens was
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And they've helped to solve some of the mechanical issues that some users had noted
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But lenses like this will probably continue to be very popular For the primary reason that they're inexpensive
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This is a full 1-to-1 macro lens that you can get for about $180 US
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And it comes in a wide variety of mounts It's the traditional, you know, Sony APS-CE mount, Fuji X mount
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This is a Canon EF-M mount. But you can also get it in a few other kind of more interesting mounts like a Nikon Z mount
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where you have to use it in APS-C mode, or a Canon RF mount
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Again, APS-C mode on those cameras. And a few other different mounts as well
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So a wide variety of options that this, there's a good chance if whatever camera you have
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that they sell a mount of this lens that will fit on it. And so as you can see, it is a compact lens
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and it actually handles really nicely, though this is a fully manual lens
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No electronics of any kind, and you're going to have to manually focus yourself, manually change the aperture
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But that's kind of par for the course for these type lenses, so I'm not going to harp on that very much
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And it's $180. So what you're really paying here for is the opportunity to have a one-to-one macro
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on a super budget price. And so I think it's going to be an intriguing option, particularly now that it's become a little bit more conventional in operation and I think more accessible to a lot of people
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So today we're going to start by jumping in and looking at the build and the handling, the design of the lens and give you a closer look at it
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Let's jump in. The Mark II is a more traditional design than what was the Mark I
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The Mark I had an extending inner barrel that would come out and a unique type lens hood that would thread on for that, not necessarily all that practical a design
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What we have here now is a fully internally focusing lens. And so the dimensions of the lens remain compact
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It's only 74.5 millimeters long, 60 millimeters in diameter. and yet it manages to be a completely internally zooming lens which by the way is pretty unique for
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a one-to-one macro lens in this small a configuration and so they have really done a
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nice job of miniaturizing the lens and making it a little bit more practical. A few of the things
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that were not beloved about the first version of this lens is that the focus ring in many cases
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tended to be quite you know just didn't move particularly well even though the overall build
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of the lens is very nice all in metal there's no problem at all here the damping on this lens is
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really quite beautiful and my only complaint for macro work is that the focus throw really isn't
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long enough we don't even have i would say even a full 180 degrees and really you need probably
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north of 200 i would say more like 225 at the least to give you precision because so much of
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this range is going to be occupied by your macro. And so literally your throw from just a little over a meter away
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a meter to infinity is just that little bit of notching. And I did find focusing in that zone to be somewhat difficult
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particularly on this Canon EOS M5 body. There's no in-body image stabilization
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And so if I happen to be hand-holding, it just made focusing even more difficult to get with precision
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and particularly where often you're wanting to magnify the image to get precise focus
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And so those of you that are using it on a camera that has in-body image stabilization
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that will help a little bit. Now, also the aperture ring here moves very smoothly
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It is a de-clicked aperture, and it racks from f2.8 smoothly all the way through f22
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I will note that the aperture shape does a great job of staying circular nine aperture blades but I really noted even when stopped down that I had a nice looking circular aperture and so I do give it high marks in that regard Our minimum focus here
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is about 17.5 centimeters, a little over six inches, and so it's a decent working distance
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You do have to get quite close to your subject obviously at one-to-one, but it's not a terrible
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working distance, you know, and you have roughly between a 90 and 100 millimeter full frame
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equivalent on most of these and so the working distance tends to be a little bit better at that
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that focal length and that is the case here no major problems there now there are no electronics
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in this lens and so it does have a very nice looking aperture mount here and everything looks
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good here but you'll see no electronics so no xf data it's going to be transmitted there's also no
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weather sealing here though i will note this internally zooming and you know internally
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focusing, I should say, design means that you have less opportunity to get dust and moisture
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intrusion in there because nothing is moving in and out of the lens itself. I did note a few user
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complaints from the previous generation of this lens with a tight fit. I had no such problem here
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It bayonets into place smoothly and precisely, so no problems there. The overall build feels
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really quite nice. The lens weighs in at a fairly hefty 339 grams. Not that that's heavy in an
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absolute sense but it does you know show that number one it's got all metal construction and
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some serious glass inside there. One thing I did note just looking at a diagram of the internals is
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that they point to several special elements that are created by Hoya who I know most as a filter
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maker so someone that's familiar with grinding you know quality optical glass and so there is
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some kind of partnership there to where they're using a few Hoya elements as a part of the design
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So overall here we have a nice looking lens, 49mm front filter thread, and I have no complaints about the operation other than that I would like a little bit longer a focus throw
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So as noted there, my only real takeaway is, you know, number one, a lot of good things
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The lens handles really beautifully. I just definitely would say for me it's a lens I found that I pretty much needed to use on a tripod
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I did do some handheld shots, obviously more conventional, but it's not the kind of lens
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where you're going to get run and gun macro very easily. For one thing, as I noted, it's just very
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very quick adjustments because of that short focus throw. And so you really have to hold
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things still to try to get a good precise point on there because it takes very small movements to
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nail focus. And so that makes it even harder to do when you are trying to run and gun macro
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Now, it will be a little bit easier, again, if you're shooting on a lens with in-body image stabilization
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But I would say still, this is a lens that I would say is best used and you're going to get your best results from when you shoot from a tripod
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And so just bear that in mind, getting a kind of tripod that allows you to get low to the ground
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It's really key with macro to have some flexibility for how low you can go, as some of your most intriguing shots are going to be taken from that lower angle of view
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but a lot of good things to point to there. So how about the optics of the lens? Again
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we have to take into consideration this is not a $1,000 lens. This is a less than $200 lens and so
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the bar doesn't necessarily need to be set as exquisitely high as some other lenses but at the
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same time it's not worth buying if it can't produce some decent looking images. So let's
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dive in and see if that is in fact the case. So let's start by taking a look at the vignette and
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distortion and I'm doing these tests on the 24 megapixel Canon EOS M5 sensor. So we can see
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looking at distortion there is a very mild amount of pin cushion distortion. Only took about a minus
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two to correct for it so no problem there. A nice clean result after that and then as far as vignette
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though vignette as you can see is considerably heavier and gives you kind of a muddy or dirty
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look in the corner and so I had to use more like a plus 73 to correct for that and you will be doing
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manual corrections as there is no profile either in camera for JPEGs or in a software so you'll
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have to do a manual correction on that and so you might want to just note down those figures and see
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if they work for you in your application. So as you can see in this image you can definitely see
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the vignette at work here. Some scenes work better than others if you're shooting on like very
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light backgrounds. Vignette looks kind of muddy and dirty. In some scenes like this, it actually
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can have a flattering perspective of kind of focusing the eye. And so I wouldn't correct it
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in an image like this, but obviously in others I would. I also wanted to look at this image as far
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as evaluating some lateral or longitudinal, I should say, chromatic aberrations. And so you
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can see that there is a little bit of green fringing as we go out of the plane of focus
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I don really necessarily notice a lot of purple fringing Not a lot of fringing in general However you can see that there is just some kind of spherical aberrations that do reduce contrast and make some of these edges just not
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quite as crisp. And so that is a factor. It's not an incredibly high contrast lens at wide apertures
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and that does improve some as you stop it down. So let's take a look at the overall contrast and
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resolution here. So we look at things at 200%. That's the way that I do these type tests. And so
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as you can see, the amount of resolution here is actually fairly good, but contrast is not amazing
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here at wide aperture. So center of the frame, I can see lots of detail there, but what I can't see
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is great contrast. And it looks kind of like there's a little bit of haze across the textures
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If we look here towards the mid frame, the mid frame is good, but not outstanding. And again
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contrast remaining low and down into the corner. A resolution has extended out here. It's not a bad
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corner performance. However, the contrast remains low. You can see evidence over here and we'll come
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and look at this side so you can focus in on that. There is a bit of lateral chromatic aberration
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here where you just see a little bit of fringing on either side of these black and white transition
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areas and that is probably helping to account for a little bit of that spherical aberration
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So if we compare F4 here on the right side, you can see the stopping down to F4 does start to improve contrast
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Not to amazing levels, but significantly better in the center of the frame than what we saw wide open
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You can also see some improvement in the mid frame and down here in the corner
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Corners are improving here, though as a byproduct of that, as kind of that sharpness increases and contrast increases
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you will see a little bit more of that lateral chromatic aberration just as a byproduct of that
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Stopping down to F5.6 here on the right does continue to improve contrast, as you can see
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And just jumping back here for a moment, we can see that it is definitely starting to look much better in the mid frame
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And then also in the center of the frame, the first center of the frame is now what I would call very, very sharp
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So reaching excellent levels in the center of the frame. Again, a fairly consistent result across the frame
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You can see that down in this corner, it looks much like the other. And if we pop up in here, also a good result
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So, you know, pretty good centering out of this copy of the lens. Stopping on down to f8, it seems like we've kind of hit a wall of, you know, we've kind of achieved the maximum resolution that we're going to see
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I don't really see any improvement here at this point. and if we pop back to the mid frame it also looks about the same and in the center of the frame
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roughly the same also maybe the mildest improvement here so somewhere between f5.6 and f8 is where we
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reach our limit of what you're going to get in terms of maximum resolution so obviously this is
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a one-to-one macro and so with that bill that we've been looking at the center of the frame which
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I use for testing minimum focus distance, you can see that we have a tremendous amount
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of magnification. And we can also see that while, again, contrast isn't off the charts, there's a good deal
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of resolution there. So you can see lots of the textures of the weave of the bill here
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And so that is a fairly strong performance, though contrast obviously has room for improvement
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Now that lower contrast can suit some images. If you're really liking kind of a creamy look, and as we're going to see, it does play a positive role in the bokeh from the lens, which is quite good for such an inexpensive lens
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And so I think that, you know, if you don't mind a lower contrast look, there certainly are applications for this
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Here's an image taken, I would say, in a more flattering type light
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And so the global image, I think, looks great. I'm not blown away by the amount of detail here at a pixel level, but I really do like the image
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and part of that is a fairly nice rendering from such an inexpensive lens of the background
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Here's an image that is shot in, I think, really good lighting conditions
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and it shows off that, you know, I really like the color here
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and of course, you know, I'm shooting on a Canon sensor, and I do like Canon colors
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but I think that this image looks quite good. Likewise here, you know, good color, and if we zoom in here
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this is off of working off of a tripod, which I think for getting focus well, I think that working off a tripod is fairly imperative
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And so we can see here, though, the detail looks pretty good on this image for an inexpensive lens
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Here I'm stopped down, I think, f5.6 to help to increase that contrast
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And so you can see that it's not mind-blowingly good, but it's an effective image of this little bolt that I have magnified to very high levels
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Likewise here depth of field being still very small here so good detail on this depth of field And this is just on a park bench you maybe have seen me sit on in some of my reviews so it shows you just the fine detail of the you know kind of uh copperized surface that it has
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now this image just shows you a difference between f2.8 and f4 that um you can see that while
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contrast does improve if you stop the lens down part of that really creamy bokeh is is kind of
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what suffers and so you kind of have to make a choice as to what your priority is for a particular
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image. Here's another image that I did really like both the colors and the bokeh from. And so again
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contrast is not amazing, but your trade-off is that you do have some beautiful defocus rendering
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from this lens. So finally, let's talk about our flare resistance. This lens definitely is capable
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of having some flare artifacts. Now, the good news is that for images like this, I actually find this
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to be a desirable look. Now, your mileage may vary, but sometimes these lenses
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that are not perfectly corrected, they do create some really interesting flare artifacts
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And so here at a wider aperture, you can see that there is that, you know, kind of really great
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kind of prismatic effect that's coming down, stopping down a little bit
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It reduces the effect across the frame. So contrast improves, but still a little bit of that effect
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And then stopping down to a, you know, quite a small aperture. I think I'm around f11 here
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It does increase the length of those shafts. And it's still, you know, I think a very interesting lens or image
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And I do want to point out that this lens does do quite a nice job of retaining circular highlights
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even when it's stopped down significantly as it is here. One final image kind of to illustrate this, just putting it in a little bit different kind of orientation
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The overall image I really like. And so flare resistance is not great, but I think it's a very artful rendering of that kind of defect that is there
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And so I actually would consider this, in my opinion, to be a plus rather than a minus
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So overall there, I mean, on the negative side of the spectrum, my probably biggest negative is that contrast is not particularly high from the lens
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And you have to shoot at much smaller apertures to get a reasonable amount of contrast
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And so that can reduce a little bit of the macro detail. If you're shooting at wider apertures, there's a little bit of that haze on textures that doesn't allow it to be, you know, pop as much as my favorite macro lenses
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At the same time, I did feel that the overall look of the images was really quite beautiful
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And that was because the bokeh rendering from the lens is really quite nice
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And I think that a side application for this lens is it could provide as an interesting portrait option as well
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if you have a limited amount of lenses in your kit. This is a lens that, particularly if you can work off of a tripod with your subject
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would allow you to really have some beautifully rendered scenes with a subject like that
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But I also just found in general that the bokeh was good. And your mileage may vary
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It's a taste thing, aesthetics, when it comes to the flare-prone nature of this lens
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But to me, it wasn't a detraction because I liked the look of images where that was the case
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And so you just, you know, if you're disturbed by that kind of flaring
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you just have to be a little bit more careful about your backlighting with it. But overall, I would say that the image quality is certainly acceptable here
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And they've, you know, in that tension between high contrast and soft bokeh
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I would say this lens is biased a little bit towards the soft bokeh end
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But again, if you stop it down to f5.6, in that range is where you can get your most amount of contrast
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and kind of strike towards that balance. So at the end of the day, is it a lens that is worth $180 US
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Absolutely. It's a lens that can really open up some new photography possibilities for you
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And if you're the kind of photographer for which macro is only going to be
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maybe an occasional pursuit, you know, a creative outlet, this is a lens well worth considering because it's a minor investment
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maybe for a lens you use a minor amount of your photography time and so it could be very intriguing
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for that and certainly come winter months for example having a macro lens is a lot of fun
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when if you live in a place that has you know harder winters like I do macro photography
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becomes something you can do indoors and you know keep those creative juices flowing all winter long
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I'm Dustin Abbott and if you look in the description down below you can find linkage to my photo
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gallery and brief summary review. You can also find their buying links if you'd like to purchase
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one for yourself. There's also links to follow me on social media, to purchase some of my merchandise
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lens-themed merchandise. You can also become a patron or sign up for my newsletter. And if you
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haven't already, please click that subscribe button right here on YouTube. Thanks for watching
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Have a great day and let the light in

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7Artisans 60mm F2.8 Macro MK II Review | Bargain 1:1 Macro

Dustin Abbott

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7Artisans 60mm F2.8 Macro MK II Review | Bargain 1:1 Macro

Dustin Abbott