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7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 STM Review | A Solid Prime for Under $130
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Apr 25, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 prime lens for Sony E-mount APS-C cameras. A solid lens for less than $130? f | Read the Text Review: https://tinyurl.com/7A27Review | Visit the Image Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/7A27Pics | Purchase the 7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8 @ Vitopal https://tinyurl.com/Buy7A27 | B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3xSMpEr | Adorama https://howl.me/cl662ckFXN7 | Amazon https://amzn.to/3UAAILC | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3JAmyUs | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/4d8OMmx | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3QfQp84 | Amazon France https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0D2H5G8C5 | Amazon Italy https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0D2H5G8C5 | Amazon Spain https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0D2H5G8C5 Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro 1:28 - Build and Features
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you a review of a very inexpensive new
0:15
lens from Company 7 Artisans. Just this year they have gotten into the business of making autofocus lenses
0:22
A little over a month ago I reviewed their first autofocus lens, the 50mm F1.8
0:27
They have now released a new APS-C lens, which is their autofocusing 27mm F2.8 STM lens
0:36
This is a surprisingly capable little prime lens coming first for Sony E-mount APS-C cameras
0:42
It costs just $129 US dollars but has a nice build, pretty strong autofocus, and a surprisingly
0:49
strong optical performance as well. So I'll break down the overall performance and then at the end of the review I'll give
0:56
you a deep dive into the optical performance if you're interested in that
1:00
Now as noted this is coming first only to Sony E-mount, though I suspect that 7 Artisans
1:05
will follow it up with some other mounts in the future. 27mm on Sony's 1.5x crop factor is roughly a 40mm full frame equivalent, which I really
1:18
like this focal length. It's a nice compromise between 35mm and 50mm, making for a great walk around lens and it
1:25
just seems to be useful for a lot of things. This is a very compact lens as you can see, which is kind of a refreshing after how large
1:34
that the 50mm F1.8 was. This lens is only 64mm in diameter and just 48mm in length
1:42
Not quite pancake length but not much longer than that. That's 2.5x1.9 inches
1:48
There is a small but common 52mm filter thread up front. Though it's made all of metal and has a nice dense feel to it, in absolute weight it only
1:58
weighs 172g or about 6oz. As noted everything here is metal, it's an anodized metal finish that looks really quite
2:07
nice and there is a raised manual focus ring that has nice damping to it, a good quality feel
2:15
It's again all metal with nice tight ribs and has a nice feel in the actual action to it
2:21
There are some visible steps when you're doing manual focus but you're able to focus with
2:25
some precision despite that. There are no features here however, there are no switches or anything on the barrel
2:32
no aperture ring or anything like that. Inside there are 6 straight aperture blades
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It's a pretty simple aperture and so you are going to see that shape if you're stopped
2:44
down a little bit. In fact, even when you're not stopped down, I did note it sometimes that you could see
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that shape a little bit. I will also note that I'm not crazy about the sun star, it just gets a little bit extreme
2:56
Often straight blades produce nice sun stars, in this case they're just a little bit too
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long and a little bit too extreme when you start to stop it down
3:03
Now on the side there is a USB-C port that is covered by a little rubber gasket
3:08
My only concern about that is that little rubber gasket would be very, very easy to
3:12
use and if you lose it, obviously you have a pretty obvious point where moisture could
3:17
get into the lens. There is no weather sealing here and so having that on there I think would be important
3:22
So be very careful when you do remove that for firmware updates
3:26
Minimum focus distance is 30 centimeters and that gives you a decent but certainly not
3:31
exceptional maximum magnification of about 0.14 times in that range. Close enough to be useful but not really to strongly blur out backgrounds or really get
3:42
it into macro type levels. Though on the positive side, I will point out that the performance is still very strong
3:47
up close so that does help. It doesn't really soften as you get close
3:51
Now there's one other quirk that I noticed along the way with images imported into Lightroom
3:57
I noticed that the focal length was missing and then I mentally made that connection later
4:01
on when I noticed that sometimes shooting on my camera that has in-body image stabilization
4:06
I felt like I was getting a little bit shakier results and so I questioned maybe it is not
4:11
properly reporting the focal length for the IBIS system. I tried switching to manually inputting the focal length and as you can see here, I got
4:19
dramatically sharper results, much more stable results and so if you are shooting with the
4:24
lens, you might want to manually input the in-body image stabilization focal length and
4:29
you will probably get better results out of that. So let's talk autofocus
4:34
There is a stepping motor or STM motor here and I can already see improvements over what
4:40
I saw from their first autofocusing lens. I found that focus speed here with a simpler, easier to drive lens was actually faster
4:50
it was smoother and quieter and you can see that focus results even indoors are nice and
4:54
snappy back and forth and of course outside even more so. So I see some definite maturation from what I saw on the 50mm f1.8
5:04
I had really no reservations about using autofocus. In my walking around and using the lens in a variety of conditions, I got quickly, accurately
5:13
focused results in the series of shots of Nala as she was rolling around locked onto
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her eye and delivered beautifully focused and very sharp results as you can see here
5:24
On the video side of things, I was also pretty pleasantly surprised
5:28
You can see that my video pulls are nice and quick and confident, no issues there
5:33
You can see that there is a bit of focus breathing there that is apparent so you are
5:37
going to have to watch out for that. I also noted I had good results with my hand test as I blocked and then removed my hand
5:45
I could see that the focus went from one to the other with good confidence locking onto
5:51
the eye with no issue there and you can see that it's also crisp when it's locked on my face
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I found that in general, just kind of sliding along with autofocus for real world shots
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that I actually got good results there. It's not too abrupt or anything and so I think that this could be an interesting gimbal lens
6:09
I also just kind of secretly, I have been filming some of my YouTube episodes like this
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with this lens and actually been really pleased with the results. It's been perfectly stable, not any kind of pulsing away from, in a static shot like this
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staying locked on my face and on my eye accurately and I found that the overall look of the footage
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was nice and so, you know, a surprisingly robust little video lens here for the money
6:36
So on the image quality side of things, this is a really simple lens, just six elements
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in five groups. I will follow this up with a detailed optical breakdown but I will give you some of the
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highlights here. I would consider that simple optical design to be somewhat of a classic design and as
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we are going to see that does play into some of the real world results. If you look at the MTF chart here, it shows actually a pretty strong result with good
6:59
sharpness in the center of the frame and some fade towards the corner, kind of a classic
7:03
profile there. I was actually generally impressed with real world results that were shot even at f2.8
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within the rule of thirds area. I'm using 26 megapixels on Sony and I found that the results were nice and crisp there
7:18
and I was actually repeatedly impressed by how good they actually looked
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Now on the technical side of things, there is some moderate barrel distortions, about
7:26
a plus nine to correct for it and there is some obvious vignette about two stops in the corners
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I used a plus 61 to correct for that. At this point, there isn't a profile correction available in Lightroom, obviously the lens
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is just releasing today and so as a byproduct, I had to do those manual corrections but nothing
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that was too difficult to correct there, no real problem. I also found that fringing was well controlled for both longitudinal and lateral chromatic aberrations
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I didn't see the fringing before and after the plane of focus, didn't see it in the edges
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of the frame and so I saw good strong controlled results for that
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On the sharpness side of things, I found that taking a look at my test chart, I saw really
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good results in the center of the frame, a little bit of regression in the mid-frame
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and the corners still look acceptably good but you can tell that contrast is a little
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bit less and if you get to that final few degrees in the very corner, you can see that
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there is a drop off there. However, stopping down to f4 doesn't make a radical difference in the center of the
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frame but it shows up quite a dramatic difference in the mid-frame here and then also in the corners
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I also noted that the vignette really lifted by f4, allowing everything to look a whole
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lot brighter. By f5.6, you're going to get pretty near perfect sharpness across the frame, really surprisingly
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good and so that works really great for landscape images, things like that
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A lot of detail there, it looks really, really fantastic. Results will stay the same through f8
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By f11, diffraction starts to soften things a little bit. By f16, that effect becomes more noticeable
9:02
The quality of the bokeh and the blur is, again, it's okay, it's certainly not exceptional
9:08
You'll see that there is a bit of a swirl effect due to kind of cat eye shapes towards
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the edge of the frame. You either like that look or you don't like that look but in this case because the aperture
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blades are straight, don't expect those to get rounder as you stop the lens down
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So you know, you're either going to have to love it or leave it basically when it comes
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to the bokeh quality. In some situations, I felt like it looked pretty good
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Other times, I felt like there was a little bit of outlining there. I did feel like the kind of 3D pop from the lens was actually pretty decent so that's
9:37
something to consider there. Now, one thing that definitely is an issue is flare resistance
9:43
Again, this behaves a lot like a classic lens so there's not a lot of modern coatings on
9:48
there, I don't think. And so as a byproduct, I found that the sun at different aspects in the frame produces
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some interesting effects. Some of those you could use artfully, I think, but you would have to be really careful in
10:00
your composition and use it wisely. I actually found that the images were far from boring from this lens
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It's a really inexpensive lens but I actually really kind of liked, I was kind of charmed
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by some of the look of the images. I did find that the character of the lens kind of varied some depending on the environment
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I was shooting in. If I was shooting in kind of more low contrast situations, it had quite a cinematic look
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Then in other situations where contrast would be more naturally intense, there was a little
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bit more pop to images there. And so it was an interesting lens
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It definitely has some character to it. It's not like this modern overcorrected lens that's sterile and has no personality
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This is a lens that was actually surprisingly fun to use. And so in conclusion, I think that's the thing that really stuck with me in that I didn't
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really expect a whole lot from it. You know, there's nothing on paper that's particularly exciting here
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But the fact that the lens is so small, easy to pop into a bag and carry along and then
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throw on for just a different look. But above all, I found that I was actually pleased with the look of the images I got
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out of the lens. And so that is, it's really kind of amazing to me by how good budget lenses are at this point
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When you think about with all the things that have gone way up with inflation in our world right now, the fact that this lens is 130 US bucks and yet is surprisingly well built
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has pretty good autofocus and has really, really good image quality is really pretty amazing
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And the fact that now some of these budget brands are now giving us autofocus and not
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charging us an arm and a leg for it is pretty great
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And so if you're looking for an inexpensive and surprisingly fun little prime lens to
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throw onto your Sony APS-C camera, take a look at the 7Artisans AF 27mm f2.8
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It was a pleasant surprise for me. If you want more information, you can check out my text review, which is linked in the
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description down below. There's an image gallery there as well. And now if you want to go deeper into the optics, let's jump into it together
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So inevitably the first thing that people want to know when I review an APS-C lens is
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how much it covers the sensor on a full frame camera. Well, since I'm doing this review on Sony E-mount, I can give you that answer
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And it is really not much. On the left here, I have cropped out from that previous image, what I consider to be
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the usable portion. And if you compare it on the right to the just typical APS-C crop of the same scene
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you can see that it is very, very, it's very close. There's not a huge amount of difference
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There's just ever so slightly. You can see if you just look at the height of the tree here, there is just a little bit
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wider a framing here, but not hardly any difference at all. And so certainly don't buy this thinking you're going to get some kind of secret, uh, full
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frame lens out of the package. You can see here the barrel distortion that's present
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I used a plus nine to correct, and then you can see definitely some vignette in the corners
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You can see in this image here where I've done the manual correction, I used a plus
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61 to correct for that vignette. And it cleared up very easily there
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Now you can tell from these two real world side-by-side shots here of a very, very similar scene
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You can see on the left side, you can see how much vignette is present and it definitely shapes the image somewhat
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On the right side, both these uncorrected, stopping down to F4, you can see pretty much
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eliminates that vignette almost altogether. And so it's a very, very different look
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And so you can use that, I think to your benefit. Sometimes a look like this works, I think, whereas this image is a little bit plainer looking
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Again, I mean, vignette can always be corrected for, but in some cases, and of course it can
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be added to, it can produce a desirable effect. Now the lens got very good scores when it came to various chromatic aberrations
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You can see here for longitudinal style chromatic aberrations, just not anything really to see there
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And I felt the same way with my real world shots, no issues with that. We can also see looking here for lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame, just
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very, very little fringing to see. Aberrations from black to white all look nice and clean
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So here, this is 26 megapixels of resolution on Sony, 200% magnification level
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You can see that center of the frame performance is nice and crisp, very, very good detail
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good contrast there. Midframe also looks good. That's true on both sides of the frame here
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If we pop down to the corner, we can see that through this zone, there's still a pretty
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good amount of detail and contrast. It's only when we get to the very edge here, you can see that the contrast level from here
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to here really has dropped. So obviously in real world shots, it's going to be really rare that you're composing that
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deep into the corners. So here at F2.8, you can see that the detail and the contrast looks really nice here
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And obviously depth of field is going to correct or is going to impact over here, but you can
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also see if you look there, there's still actually a really usable amount of resolution
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And again, it's only right here in the very corner where that drops away, but even along
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the edge here, you can see the detail is right out to the edge and then just in the
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corner is where it pops off. A shot of Nala here, and you can see if I pop in and look at a pixel level, all that
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detail is really, really good. You can see all those fine hairs are nicely delineated around the eye
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I don't think you could ask for any more than that from $129 lens
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So stopping the lens down to F4, it does give you a tiny bit more contrast in the center
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of the frame, but where you're going to see a much more improvement is here in the midframe
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Look how Chris that looks now. That's just top of the heap. Fantastic
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And into the corner, it's definitely better, but our big improvement here is you can see
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that that lift of vignette means that the corner just looks brighter and thus contrast
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is allowed to pop a little bit more. And just taking a look around here on the left side, very, very good performance up
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into the upper left corner. Very good performance. Upper right corner. Very good performance
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Very nice centering, which is great to see in a budget lens. Consider performance to peak somewhere around F5.6
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You can see comparing F5.6 to F8, they look very, very similar
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Not a lot of difference there. Same is true in the midframe and popping down into the corners
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Corners also look really fantastic. So now we're seeing detail all across the frame
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I would say that very, very edge performance. F8 looks a little bit better than what F5.6
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Now after F8, you're going to see a bit of softening start to happen due to diffraction
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and you can see by F16, which is the minimum aperture, diffraction is definitely having
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a greater impact and a lot of that contrast has been lost once again
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Now as noted previously, you can focus as closely as 30 centimeters
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Maximum magnification is somewhere in my estimation about 0.14 times. The good news here is that contrast and detail holds up really nicely up close here
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It's really crisp looking and you can see right off to the edge here that we're seeing
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that same kind of effect. You know, it's not enough to really dramatically blur out the background, but it is getting
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me close enough to where I can tell a story through this image, and I really liked the
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contrast of this white shell against the black rocks there on the beach and produces a nice
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looking end result. I also felt like the overall three-dimensional pop is pretty decent from this lens
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You can see that the subject kind of comes out of the background there and makes for
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an interesting image even of a fairly basic subject. In this shot here, number one, contrast and detail looks really great right after a rain
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so that tends to produce some of the best type results. You can see that there is a bit of that swirl effect, so there's definitely some geometric
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deformation, cat eye effect towards the edge of the frame, and so it does create a little
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bit of a look, and again, as I said previously, either you like that or you don't, but because
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the aperture blades are straight here, it's not going to get circular when you stop it down
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Here is kind of the distance where that swirl effect becomes a little bit more noticeable
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sometimes and you can see it here, but I also think that the colors are interesting here
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and the image itself looks good, you know, contrast in the area of focus looks interesting
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I found that in lower contrast scenes like this one with some mist there along the beach
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I actually really liked the look that was captured by the lens
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I felt like it handled low contrast scenes with a cinematic type look and so I like that
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Now we noted previously that there is definitely some flare effects and so that is part of
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what we're examining here, but the other thing I want you to notice is that if I pop out here for a moment, we can see my aperture is f2.8, so that tells you that the aperture
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is wide open. Despite that, you can see that those blades are still impacting the aperture shape for
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some reason. So your specular highlights are not circular, but they have, you know, the six sides to them
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And so again, it's a look and either you're going to like that or you're going to dislike
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that, but I did want to bring it to your attention. Secondary shot here where that's even more noticeable along with the various flare impacts
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Now this stuff up here in this kind of shot, I think it's kind of artful, but again, you
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would have to compose really carefully to make sure that that does not become something negative
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What I didn't love was this and this is stopped down to, I believe, f8 here
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And so you can obviously get ever longer blades on that sun star, but I just, I just don't
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love it. And so again, it's, it's a taste thing, whether you like it or not
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Overall, however, I think that this lens is optically very interesting. So thank you for sticking around to the very end
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Hopefully this additional information has helped you to make an informed choice as to
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whether or not the 7arsons AF 27mm f2.8 is for you. As always, thanks for watching
19:55
Have a great day and let the light in
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