Kamlan 50mm F1.1 MKII IQ + Review | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you an image quality breakdown as well as my final
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verdict on the brand new, not even here yet, Camlan 50mm f1.1. That's right, f1.1 and this is their
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Mark II and this lens is a huge step up from the Mark I. I reviewed the Mark I version back in
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I believe November of 2017. And at that point, I thought that it was novel. It was inexpensive
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It had a huge maximum aperture. It actually had really nice bokeh quality, but it had some serious
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optical shortcomings. It didn't really have a whole lot of contrast. And even when stopped down
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it never really got super sharp. And so I considered it really to be more of a novelty
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a fun lens to play around with, but not a serious optical instrument. Fast forward to the present
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and I've been spending months with the prototype versions of the upcoming Camlan 50mm F1.1
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both in a Sony mount and in a Fuji mount, and I can safely tell you that this is a much
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much more serious lens. Now, if you missed my first look episode, I broke down what has changed
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as far as the physical dimensions, the physical design from the Mark I version
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And I'll just hit a couple of things here. You have a beautifully made all-metal lens that actually is fairly hefty, over 500 grams
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And it's still, as you can see, a nicely compact lens in an absolute sense
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But of course, there's a lot of glass and it's all metal, and so that adds up
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Even the lens hood itself, which is a screw-in lens hood, is made all of metal
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and very, very nicely made. The focus ring is absolutely fantastic on this lens, which is
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by the way, been a characteristic of all the CamLAN lenses I reviewed so far
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But unfortunately, there is also another CamLAN characteristic that continues here, and that is while it will start to loosen up with some use, so it does better the more that you use
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it, the manual aperture ring is a little bit heavier than what I would like, and I feel like
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it could use maybe a little less damping, particularly since the whole reason for having
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a clickless aperture like you have here is to help with, you know, when shooting video
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Now, I will note that the Sony copy is actually a little smoother and lighter than what the Fuji
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copy that I have. And so I have raised this concern with them and have been promised that
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you know, that there will be improvements made to the, you know, the final release versions of the
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lens, which hopefully will be the case. I have noticed, however, that this is kind of a trend
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in that the focus rings are beautiful, aperture rings not so much. This is a fully manual lens
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It has no electronics in it, and so no electronic contacts. Fortunately, it is designed for
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mirrorless cameras where it is a little bit less of an issue, particularly because you have a lot
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of manual focus aids, and so manual focus is easier on these bodies. And so you can get it
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obviously in a Sony and Fuji X mount, Sony E APS-C, and then Fuji X. So both of these are 1.5
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times crop factor. And so the lens behaves like a 75 millimeter full frame equivalent and, you know
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more like a 75 millimeter, somewhere around, you know, 1.4 maybe in terms of the depth of field
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And so still obviously really shallow depth of field as we're going to explore in just a second
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You can also get it in a Canon version, EF-M mount, also for mirrorless, APS-C, but in that case, it's a 1.6 times crop factor, and so you stretch closer to 80 millimeters there
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Then, of course, you can also get it in a micro four-thirds, which will have a full-frame equivalent of 100 millimeters
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Bottom line is that this is a lot of lens when it comes to the build quality
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It's a really, really nicely made solid lens. But let's see how it performs optically. Let's jump in and let's take a look at that
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Okay, so we're going to start by taking a look at a few things here. First of all
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this is at f1.1 and this is actually on a Sony a6500. I will switch back and forth between the
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Sony a6500 and then the Fuji X because I have shot with two different versions of the lens on both of those camera systems But what I want to point out here is there is a surprisingly low amount
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of vignette for a lens at f1.1 which tells you that the lens you know when they've redesigned
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it here and made it bigger in circumference they've I think they've probably almost exceeded
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the APS-C image circle a bit and so almost all of the vignette is taking place outside of the
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image circle which is pretty awesome. You can see that there is a little bit of distortion here as
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you look towards the top a little bit of bulging out but it's not particularly bad. This seems to
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be actually a bit of a barrel rather than pin cushion distortion that I see. So at f1.1 in the
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center of the frame there's actually a definitely a usable amount of sharpness here and particularly
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you know in that sweet spot there you can see a little bit of haze along some of the edges
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and maybe a little bit of a purple that points to there being some chromatic aberrations that
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are present there. But in the center of the frame, it's actually pretty useful. Mid-frame here on the
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side, you know, it's definitely softer, but it is not completely soft. And even right into the corner
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there is still some usable sharpness that is left. And so, you know, some good things to
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see there. I do think that in some spots we see a little bit of extra softness due to the distortion
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pattern and we can see here mid-frame where there's less distortion taking place that we're
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actually fairly good there. So let's just jump right over and look at a landscape shot at f1.1
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So as we see moving into the center of the frame that you know again there is usable resolution
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there but there's also some haze on some of the textures. Contrast is lower as you would expect
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and that's due to some chromatic aberration. That's also true off towards the edge of the frame
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You can also see a little bit of a purple fringing there that helps to indicate that
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And of course, our foreground here is really quite out of focus. A landscape that has stopped down more
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taking a look here, you can see it's just got a lot more punch and sharpness to it
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And so that's the difference that you get there. So if we compare F1.1 to F1.4 here
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We're going to see in the center of the frame definitely some increased contrast
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and now the lens is really quite sharp here in the center of the frame. You can see where there is that bit of haze there that now is gone
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and resolution is definitely picking up there. Vignette actually looks really nice and clean here
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and that's because, as we saw before, there wasn't a lot there to begin with. Off at the side of the frame, even towards the edges
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we've got improved sharpness, but not exceptionally good sharpness as of yet
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but you can see if you just move a little bit inward, we're actually quite good in terms of our resolution
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Now, this is actually shot at f1.1 or between f1.1 and f1.4
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Unfortunately, it doesn't record that. But you can see here near minimum focus distance, which, as we noted in our first look episode, has been reduced down somewhat
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There's actually a really nice amount of sharpness that is there on our texture
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so it's also good sharp up close, and our bouquet quality obviously is really, really nice here
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So a great performance there. Here's another shot that is near to wide open here, and so obviously
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depth of field is really, really tiny, and so this was our edge that we focused on, and you can see
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there's a definitely usable amount of sharpness there, but a really, really soft, a defocused
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background. Now, I will note that I have, I put a preset on this shot on import to give it kind of
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the color look and so that's not necessarily out of camera color. This is however and this is
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another that is shot near wide open and so we can see that you know there's again that the field is
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very shallow but everything looks good here. You can see there's a little bit of color fringing
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that is taking place which we have seen but it's not strongly pronounced and it's certainly not
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destructive to the image and again there's a lot of challenging things that are handled here
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really quite well. Here's another shot that is near to wide open
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and so obviously depth of field drops off really, really fast. It's very, very thin, but as you can see the background
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the beach beyond and the ocean just completely disintegrates. Bokeh quality, really nice and soft
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And I would say certainly enough sharpness there to be very usable wide open Here another that really shows off how much it capable of melting away This is shot on the Fuji as was the last image
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And so once again, we've got usable sharpness here on our subject. Our narrow plane to focus looks quite good
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A little bit of fringing here, but not too bad. But then look at our bokeh quality
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The rest of this fence along a dune on the beach just really disappears
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Pretty impressive. Now if you compare F1.4 to F2, you can tell even before you zoom in that contrast and resolution is getting really serious here
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I mean the contrast really kind of jumps off the page there. And looking at the center of the frame, lots of bite here at the center of the frame
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Looking at these grout lines, really, really great contrast. And now if we move off towards the side of the frame, we can see that that sharpness is edging out right towards the corners
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Right at the very last, it's still not quite there, but now we've gotten over, you know, probably 95% of the frame
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We've got really good resolution that's taking place. If we compare f5.6 along the edges, we can see now that, you know, this is compared with f2 towards edges
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We are razor sharp here, and that sharpness is right off into the corner
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And so a very, very sharp lens when stopped down. Here's a real world landscape image probably around f5.6. You can see there's tons of detail
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This is shot on the Fuji. Tons of detail that is rendered all across the frame. I mean if
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everywhere you look there's just great textures that are popping there and so a really fantastic
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when stopped down. Now I recently noted that the Sigma 56 millimeter f1.4 that I reviewed
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was perhaps the sharpest APS-C lens that I've ever reviewed. And so let's see how these two compare in a similar scene
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There is a little bit of exposure difference, and I've tried to compensate by adding a third stop of exposure
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to the image here to help them to compare. So we can see if we look in the center of the frame
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that they are really remarkably similar. I think that the Sigma may have a hair more contrast
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but it's without having them side by side I don't think you'd be able to see. I mean there's just
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tons of information that is resolved there. If we look on you know kind of past the glacier area
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you can see that you know contrast again I think maybe is a little bit better on the Sigma but
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they're very very close. Let's look towards the very corner of the frame. I think that the Sigma
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shows a little bit more contrast at the edge of the frame but I was shooting through glass and
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they don't frame identically but down in this corner I think that there's enough there to say
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you know that the Sigma has the edge in the extreme corner performance but they are remarkably close
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really. Now if we can compare f8 and f16 you can see super sharp at f8 a little bit of loss due to
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diffraction at f16 and that is you know true up in the corner as well although you know image quality
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is still really quite good even at f16. Now if we break down the bokeh quality you can see that
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you know, at close focus distances. This is F1.1. I was near my cat, and so his paw was up while he
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was asleep. So you can see that there is the ability to almost completely blur away a background
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if you're close to your subject, and so you can't even really see the cat beyond just his
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paw that is there. Here's another image, you know, that I often shoot just to show out of focus
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and I think this is a really soft, really creamy background. You can see in this, you can see a
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A little bit of purple before the plane of focus, a little bit of green afterward, but not really in an overly destructive way
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So still really an impressive performance. At F1.1, obviously there's a lot of bright, shiny surfaces here
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You can see that there's a little bit of haze, a little loss of contrast
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You can see evidence of small amounts of chromatic aberrations at different points, but really not bad here
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Definitely, again, usable even in a more high contrast lighting situation. And you can see that the bokeh quality, you know, these bokeh circles looks pretty good and pretty clean if you look into them
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Now one definite shortcoming here is when it comes to flare resistance
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And so you can see in this scene with wide open with the sun in the frame, it has really done a lot of destruction
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And a stop down the destruction isn as extreme you know but at the same time this is a pretty huge ghosting artifact You know you got so much glass in there that this is probably never going to be a strong suit for this type of lens once again here we have got a lot of you know capacity for chromatic aberration and so you can
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see both some purple before and green after the plane of focus fringing you can also see that
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resolution is really quite good and bokeh quality is really really nice and soft moving over to this
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side kind of similar here that you know a very very small depth of field but you know sufficient
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sharpness and contrast but a really quite artful rendering of a somewhat difficult this is basically
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a field of these type of things and you can see that it's really quite an artful rendering that
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we've gotten out of the lens this is under controlled lighting and really kind of shows off
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how nice the you know the color rendition of this lens is this looks you know pretty high end
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And for a relatively inexpensive lens, chromatic aberrations are controlled pretty well
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and bokeh quality just looks nice, very, very rich image. Here is a portrait shot where I've had to try to balance the exposure
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pulling up the shadows a fair bit. And so it's not going to be the best example of resolution
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But what we can see is the color rendition from the lens is really beautiful
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I mean, it's a great looking image, even if it's not technically perfect, you know, in terms of the detail on the face, you know, due to having to bring that exposure up
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Here's one final image to show off. Beautiful color rendition, you know, great detail across this image
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And again, this is a lot of bang for your buck in an inexpensive lens like this
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So as you can see, a lot of good things going on optically with this particular lens
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and it's not perfect. We saw the flare resistance, you know, certainly needs some work
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but beautiful bokeh quality. And now that's coupled with really, really useful sharpness
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and when stopped down really impressive degrees of sharpness. Now, one final area I do want to
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cover before wrapping things up is that of course, you know, one of the main reasons to buy
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a compact manual focus lens like this is to have that beautiful, beautiful manual focus ring. And
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And so as you can see from some of these videos, it's really easy to do nice, smooth focus pulls
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It really is a very versatile lens for doing video work. And of course, the fact that you can get it at such an inexpensive price makes it a really, really compelling option for a focal length
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that might be a little bit longer than what you use the majority of the time
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But it gives you, of course, a tremendous amount of creative control when it comes to the depth of field
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and the bokeh and all of that. And so certainly appealing on that front as well
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Now, at the moment, like the 28 millimeter that I reviewed in 2018
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CamLine is rolling this out via a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. And so I will throw information in the description down below
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for where you can access that Kickstarter campaign and so that you can get your own copy
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CamLine has promised that they're going to keep the price under $200 US for this lens, which is really impressive when you consider how much you're getting for it
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And unlike the Mark I lens, this is not a gimmick lens. This is not a novelty. This is a serious
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optical performer here. And of course, it gives you a maximum aperture that you are rarely going
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to see in this space and particularly at this price point. And so I think that if you're looking
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for a lens to invest in and to get an early copy of the new Camelan 50mm F1.1 Mark II is well worth
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consideration. If you look in the description down below, you can check out my full written text
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review along with lots of photos and accompanying support evidence. Beyond that, you can also take
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a look at the image gallery and see lots of photos that I've taken both on Sony and Fuji
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And finally, there is a way to join that Kickstarter campaign and eventually there
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will be traditional buying links that are in the description as well. You can follow me there on
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social media, including now on Instagram, become a patron and you can get early preview looks at
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upcoming content. And beyond that, if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button right
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here on YouTube. Thanks for watching. Have a great day

Kamlan 50mm F1.1 MKII IQ + Review | 4K

Dustin Abbott

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Kamlan 50mm F1.1 MKII IQ + Review | 4K

Dustin Abbott