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7Artisans AF 50mm F1.8 Review | 7Artisans First Autofocusing Lens!!
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Mar 18, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of 7Artisans first autofocusing lens - the 7Artisans AF 50mm F1.8. Is it worth the $230 USD asking price? | This video is sponsored by Fantom Wallet. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN20 to get 20% off | Read the Text Review: https://tinyurl.com/7ArtAF50DA | Visit the Image Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/7ArtAF50pics | Purchase the 7Artisans AF 50mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3TklyYT | Adorama https://howl.me/clRg7Ttlw0N | Amazon https://amzn.to/3Te4J1y | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/4aeWp8T | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/4ajVJij | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3PpWvCs 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 1:30 - Fantom Wallets
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0:00
So far 2024 has been the year when more and more companies are taking the leap to autofocus and
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today's review is of yet another company that is taking that leap and that is in this case the
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company 7Artisans. Today I'm reviewing the 7Artisans autofocusing 50mm f1.8 lens and
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and 7Artisans first autofocusing lens is actually a fairly ambitious one. Now on paper it's just
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another 50mm f1.8 lens but really this is far from being your typical nifty 50. As you can tell it
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is bigger, it's heavier, it's nicer made, but it's also optically superior to any of the more budget
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style 50mm f1.8 lenses that I've reviewed in the past. Now it does have some flaws that we will
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detail but if optics are your priority I don't know that I've used a nicer 50mm f1.8 for this
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kind of price tag. A price tag of right under 230 US dollars and in many ways I think that this lens
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is competitive optically with a lens like the Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8. A lens that costs you know
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about nearly four times more, three to four times more and so that makes this a very interesting
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value proposition if you're willing to tolerate just a little bit larger lens. So is this a lens
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you can you should consider? We're going to dive right into it right after a word from our sponsor
1:30
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to check out. Now initially this lens is coming only in Sony E-mount which is what I've reviewed
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here. It is a full frame lens designed for Sony E-mount but I believe that they do intend to
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follow up with other mounts in the future. Now this $228 price tag is considerably cheaper than
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a lens like which probably is the most direct competition the Viltrox autofocusing 50mm f1.8
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That lens comes in at about $375 US dollars and the older Sony 50mm f1.8 it is a little bit
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cheaper due to being discounted at the moment but it is a lens that isn't nearly as nice in terms of
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the build quality even the focus system and of course when it comes to the optical performance
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Now the trade-off is that this lens is big. It's 72mm in diameter leaving a 62mm
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front filter thread. It's 104mm in length and so that's 2.83 inches by right over 4 inches in length
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and as you can see from this shot it dwarfs the Samyang AF 45mm f1.8 and it is slimmer but it is
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just as long if not a bit longer than the Sony 50mm f1.4 G Master lens which I'm filming on at
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the moment. The lens also is fairly hefty it weighs in at 412 grams that's right under 15 ounces
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but a lot of the reason for that is this is actually quite an upscale build in many ways
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though it's not the same shape but the feel of the lens and the materials and things like the focus
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ring actually reminds me a lot of the Sony Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.4 so that is to say it is a very
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nicely built lens. It's all black anodized metal and it has a really nice manual focus ring here
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that's all in metal it's ribbed. The weight is heavier it's damn fairly heavy but that means
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that the experience feels actually quite it feels a lot like a typical manual focus lens and so that
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is a great job of doing manual focus emulation here. It does have a few of the expected features
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it's got an AF-MF switch it has an aperture ring though it is only de-clicked there's no option to
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click de-click and there are a couple of quirks there the first of those being that between f1.8
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and f2 there is the they have the one-third stop to tense markings throughout the scale but they
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have them between f1.8 and f2 and of course that is only a one-third stop difference and so it's a
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little bit deceptive you can go along those you know little markings that are there and the truth
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of matter is nothing's going to change until you hit the f2 mark. The other oddity there is that
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between f16 and then what is the automatic mode there is also two markings for those one-third
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stops and of course the minimum aperture is f16 so you're not doing anything beyond that point
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Those are some of the little details that maybe they'll clean up in the future. What is nice here
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however is that the aperture iris has 11 curved blades and so not only does it make for a nice
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circular shape as you can see looking at the aperture but it also does a good job maintaining
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circular bokeh highlights as you stop the lens down and then even nicer as you stop it down
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further it actually inverts to make a surprisingly nice looking sun star for a 50 millimeter lens
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Now like Viltrox there is a usb-c port on the lens mount and so I've also already done a firmware
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update on a pre-release copy this is a retail copy I'm looking at here. I did a pre-release
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copy that I've looked at for a while it needed a firmware update to try to get it up to retail
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standard and so I went through the update process and it's basically identical if you've ever
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updated a Viltrox lens it is identical to that which is to say very easy. Now unfortunately there
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is no weather sealing here the lens hood is included but unlike the rest of the lens it is
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plastic and it it's okay it feels a little bit cheap compared to the rest of the lens which
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is not atypical when you have a all-metal lens and then you have a plastic lens hood
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Minimum focus distance here is 50 centimeters which is better than the Viltrox which is 55
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centimeters it's worse than the Sony 50 millimeter f1.8 that is 45 centimeters so as a result its
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magnification is basically right between those two lenses I estimated it being at about 0.12 times
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which is a little bit on the low side for a 50 millimeter lens. Overall however there's a lot
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going on here a very nice build some actual features giving you the option of doing manual
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aperture control if you like doing that the AF-MF switch which I love having and so I I'm fairly
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impressed with what we've got overall here for that kind of money. Let's talk autofocus this
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they haven't specified what kind of autofocus motor this is at least that I've seen anywhere
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over the last couple of months but I suspect it is the ubiquitous STM focus motor. You can see here
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that focus speed is about average these days I expect very good autofocus and autofocus here is
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is good typical focus changes are pretty quick and you can see that it speeds up a bit when you get
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outside and focus changes are more instantaneous. You can also see that the tracking of the eye
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works quite well and it you know keeps tracking on the face when it's not in the appropriate place
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to get the eye and then will go back to grabbing the eye. I found in some low light shooting
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conditions that autofocus speed does slow down but I was still getting accurate focus locks. Now what
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I found over the course of my test across two copies of this lens is that I had really good
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one shot focus accuracy and so no complaints about that in a variety of situations if I was shooting
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a single shot I got no problem and that's not just shooting AF-S that's shooting AF-C but only
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shooting one shot. The reason why I say that is that if you shoot a burst as you can see here of
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just a series of shots taken of me without me moving focus drifts in a burst and it did that
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consistently when I tested it I tested it half a dozen times and saw the same thing and so that's
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obviously not great. I also noted that if there is obviously we've got an issue with burst anyway
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and so if the subject is moving things if anything are worse still and and so or at the very least
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equal. Bottom line is that if you're shooting multiple shots in a burst you're not going to get
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all of them autofocus it will cycle away it'll come back it'll cycle away it will come back and
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so I would say that we probably still need at least a firmware update or two here to refine that
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behavior and also in the the bigger picture long term I think that they probably should beef up the
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the power of the autofocus motors a bit as well and that helps it to stay a little bit more stable
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you combine that with a little bit better focus algorithms and I think that we could see improved
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focus certainly I think that there's room for improvement even on this lens via firmware update
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but if they will uh up the power of their focus motors in the future I think that that will become
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less of an issue as well. Now on the video side of things I would say that video AF results were
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mostly good you can see here from the focus pool test the focus changes are smooth and quick in
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between the initial subjects but you'll see a little bit of settling at the end and what I'm
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actually noticing is it as it micro adjust it's typically actually micro adjusting away from what
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was already an accurately focused result and so I don't love that aspect I did see better results
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when I did my hand focus test where I switched between blocking the lens with my hand and moving
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to my eye and vice versa again you have more recognizable subjects that the camera's autofocus
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system is looking for and as a result I didn't see the settling the same way it is more confident
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in locking and staying on that result. Likewise in in this clip here you can see that I intentionally
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wanted to move kind of glide along with focus from one subject to another and you can see that those
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focus adjustments they are they're not smooth transitions they're a little bit abrupt looking
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and so obviously that's not ideal for that. So there are some areas where I can tell that this
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is a first time autofocus effort but in other ways it's a fairly refined focus motor it is very very
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quiet it could only hear any kind of focus noise if I put my ear right up next to it and again for
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for actual typical shots it was confident in locking on to subjects you know shooting through
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obstacles to lock on subjects it delivered really accurately focused results and so for my actual
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typical everyday use I didn't really have a lot of objections there and so if you're not looking to
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shoot something like sports or your shooting style if you shoot in burst this is not the lens for you
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at least now but hopefully that's something that will be refined in the future. So moving on from
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that let's talk about the image quality. Now at the end of the episode there will be a detailed
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breakdown we'll go a deep dive into the optical performance and so if you want the deep details
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you can jump ahead to that in the time stamp but I'll give you an overview here for those that
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don't want that long of the video. Optical formula is 11 elements in nine groups but that includes
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two aspherical, one extra low dispersion element, two high refractive index elements so I mean that
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that's a total of five out of the 11 elements that are exotic elements that's a lot of exotic
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elements for an inexpensive lens. The MTF chart doesn't blow you away at any point but what stands
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out to me is how consistent it is from the center to the edge there's not any kind of significant
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drop-off it's within 15 percent from center to edge. I was actually really impressed with real
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world results it's images feel very sharp even on my 61 megapixel a7R Mark V. I saw when I did
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my formal test I saw very little distortion about a minus two to correct very little vignette right
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over a stop I used plus 35 to correct so very good performance there. I saw some minor longitudinal
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chromatic aberrations some fringing before and after the plane of focus it's not extreme or
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pronounced but I didn't notice it when I was looking critically at images. When it comes to
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lateral chromatic aberrations on my test chart I can see very minimal ones there I didn't really
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notice it much in real world images so not bad there. As the MTF chart suggests when I did my
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test chart I saw a consistently good performance across the frame. I compared to something like the
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Sigma 50mm f2 which is a lens that costs about three times as much but it is a very strong lens
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optically probably the strongest lens that's in or around this particular focal length obviously
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just a little bit slower and the Sigma is sharper in the center of the frame but this 7Artisans is
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about equal at the mid-frame and out into the corners which is pretty impressive for a lens
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that costs so much less. By f2.8 sharpness across just about all the frame is very good and the
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corners even the corners are excellent by f4. You'll see diffraction starting at about f11 on
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a high resolution body and it will definitely increase at the minimum aperture of f16
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Where this lens I think kind of stood out to me is the combination of sharpness and bokeh
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and that I feel like the bokeh is just better looking than most nifty 50s. It feels a little
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bit more sophisticated more like an f1.4 lens in a lot of ways I would say that that is a definite
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strength for it and so you can definitely have a very nice blur when you're closer to subjects but
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even at the more moderate distances where you might shoot family related things or you know
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your typical shots the quality of the the fall off of focus is quite good. I actually did because
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there was a clear sky and I had the lens I did shoot in the night I saw some minimal coma. Coma
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wasn't too bad on it but I did see a little bit of fringing around a bright star point so not my
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favorite lens for that. The other thing that is an issue here is the flare resistance and you will
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see from these various shots that it does exhibit a variety of flare artifacts not the worst I've
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seen but far far from the best and so you have to do have to exhibit a little bit of caution
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if you're shooting into a backlit subject. Surprisingly I felt like the colors were
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pretty good out of the lens and I have no complaints they seemed accurate with nice
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levels of saturation however without feeling garish or overdone. So overall a pretty strong
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optical performance for a lens costing under 230 US dollars. So in conclusion the build quality and
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the optical performance I would say are those of a more expensive lens. Now the autofocus has its
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good points but it obviously could use some improvement in some other areas. Bottom line
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you probably aren't going to get better image quality from a 50 millimeter f1.8 without spending
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a lot more money but the trade-off is that's going to come at the expense of some size and some
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weight and so you have to make a decision you know are you willing to spend maybe a little bit more
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for a plastic fantastic like the Samyang AF 45 millimeter f1.8 a lens that I really like optically
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and it is incredibly small and compact or do you prefer going for a larger lens that actually costs
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less surprisingly but also delivers really really strong image quality. Choices choices that's the
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the way of today's market. If you want more information you can check out the description
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below where I have my full text review I've got some buying links there and of course now
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if you're interested join me for the deep dive into the optical performance
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Okay we will start by taking a look at vignette and distortion here you can see looking at the
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uncorrected result on the left that we have very very little distortion and minimal vignette and
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on the right you see my manual correction. Now the values that I have plugged in here I've done a
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minus two to correct for just a tiny bit of pin cushion distortion and then I have dialed in a
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plus 35 to give us even illumination so that's just a little over a stop that is a very strong
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result. Now you can see from this shot that there is a little bit of an issue with longitudinal
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chromatic aberrations nothing that is like serious but you can see a little bit of fringing
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both before and after the plane of focus. So in real world shots I didn't find it to be too
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critical in most situations you can see here actually that detail and contrast looks good
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and yes you can see the tiniest bit of fringing around some of these high contrast areas but it's
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not at all pronounced and as we go towards the specular highlights there's maybe the faintest
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bit of outlining and fringing but nothing strongly pronounced and if we step back to a global level
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you're not seeing that at all. Now I'm going to go ahead and take a look at the
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if we step back to a global level you're not seeing that at all. Likewise when it comes to
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lateral chromatic aberrations it's kind of the same story yes you can see a little bit of fringing
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here particularly on this really bold line on either side kind of more of a blue and yellow
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fringing rather than a green and red fringing but overall it's not strongly pronounced and of
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course this is the easiest type of chromatic aberration to correct for it's just the one
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click variety. So here we have the test chart that will take our sharpness and contrast results
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from this is a 200 percent magnification and the test is done on the 61 megapixel Sony a7r mark 5
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so if we zoom into that very high 200 percent magnification level we can see that it holds up
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just fine the contrast and detail looks very good in the center those fine details in different
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places are nicely rendered if we move towards the mid-frame also a very impressive looking result
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good detail good contrast there and as we scroll down and we work towards the edge I mean all of
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this is holding up really really well right off to the very corner that's a very very even sharpness
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profile so for a little bit of perspective I mentioned previously the more expensive much
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more expensive Sigma 50 millimeter f2 and of course Sigma does really good with sharpness
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we can see in the center of the frame that the sharpness results do favor the Sigma just a little
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bit more contrast a little bit more detail we can see in the mid-frame however that these are
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coming in at a more similar than different I think the Sigma is still probably a hair better but it's
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not by any kind of significant margin and looking off into the corner we can see that the same is
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true that they're really the results maybe slightly favor the Sigma but really not by much
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and if we look in other spots like over here I would actually slightly favor what I see from
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the 7artisans lens up in this zone here again I would say that if anything I like the 7artisans
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and up into this corner the same is true and so really a pretty strong performance from such an
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expensive lens so the sharpness I saw in a lot of real world shots it ended up kind of exceeding my
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expectations and so you can see in this shot of Nala for example great detail in her fur another
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shot here where it's got good window lighting and you can see that the detail all throughout
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looks really really consistently fantastic here at a little bit further a distance you can see
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that contrast in detail on the subject you know the plan of focus is pretty narrow but you can see
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that it holds up really nicely and then even if we move out towards not quite infinity but close to
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it a distant subject you can see that it's handling that just fine as well and very very nice detail
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here in this and of course in this instance we have a bigger plane of focus and so as a byproduct
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you can see that that detail is holding right off to the end and this is at f1.8 now if we compare
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f1.8 to f2 we don't really see a significant improvement here the results look maybe so
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slightly better when it comes to contrast but frankly more similar than different and even
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down into the corner the results are largely the same now from f2 to f2.8 i do see a bit of a boost
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in contrast a little bit more detail there the mid-frame likewise you can see a an improvement
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there moving off to this other side it's looking really really strong and then up into the corner
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we can see there's definitely an uptick in the contrast and the detail there and from f2.8 to
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f4 we can see those corners looking better still they're really fantastic at this point and so this
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is really good sharpness all across the frame now we'll see those same levels of sharpness
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continuing at f5.6 and f8 we'll find that diffraction starts to soften the image a bit at
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f11 and then by f16 which is the minimum aperture it's not bad as you can see but definitely it is
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not as sharp or contrasty as what we saw at larger apertures now while the magnification level is not
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high as we've already seen the good news is is that we have a flat plane of focus and up close detail
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looks really quite good and so no complaints about that now looking a bit at the specular bokeh
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highlights you can see some definite cat eye shape towards the edges of the frame i will also note
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there is a there is definitely some of that kind of concentric circles in these specular highlights
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not so much that it really shows up a lot at this level although i can see it but it is certainly
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present we can see as we start to stop the lens down here at f2.8 you can still see that
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busyness in the center of the frame but you can see that we're getting more towards a circular
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shape and it's not however until about f4 that we really see that consistently all across the frame
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now where there aren't specular highlights i find particularly with kind of bright lights associated
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i find that the bokeh is actually fairly creamy as you can see in this shot likewise here this is a
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fairly busy background you know obviously the subject matter here there's lots of hard edges
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nothing to soften it but you can see in the branches and then the the cones that are there
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you can see that it's rendered really quite well and then in a shot like this i'm very impressed
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with the combination of sharpness that you can see here everything looks great and then the
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background is nicely blurred out and this shot is one of my favorites i took during my review time
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because it shows that again that great combination good detail on all of this and then a beautifully
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blurred out background now as noted flare resistance is a bit of a weakness here and so we
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can see at mid aperture is definitely a ghosting pattern stopping on down the sunburst effect looks
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good but definitely some ghosting artifacts and you can see here as you pan across first wide open
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that there's some various flare artifacts that do take place and then as as it's stopped down you
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can see that those kind of ghosting patterns intensify somewhat and so i like it less actually
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stop down than i do wide open so finally a look at the coma performance as mentioned previously now
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this lens being a little bit longer mags of magnifies some of the celestial bodies a little
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bit more so in the center of the frame you know the biggest problem is that there is this that
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kind of haloing slight fringing effect around some of those bright areas you can see that coma is not
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bad it actually stays pretty consistent towards the edge but unfortunately that kind of haloing
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effect does diminish it stopping down a little bit here's that f 2.5 that does improve things a
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little bit less of the halo a little bit less of the fringing and of course again coma is not bad
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and so it is useful it's just you might want to try to correct a little bit of the fringing if
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that bothers you overall however this is a pretty beautiful optical performance in many ways from
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such an inexpensive lens so you've made it to the end thanks for faithfully watching as always
24:02
have a great day and let the light in