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Thypoch Simera 28mm F1.4 M-Mount Review | Does it Have the Leica Vibe?
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Jan 16, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a thorough, real world review of the new Simera 28mm F1.4 for Leica M-mount from new lensmaker Thypoch | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery: | Purchase the Thypoch Simera 28mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/48z58lI or Adorama https://howl.me/clpJirCHdU5 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 - Who is Thypoch? 1:20 - Fantom Wallets
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you a look at a brand new lens from a
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brand new lens maker. The company Typoc is a new lens maker that is targeting the Leica M mount rangefinder
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crowd with their new Samara lineup of manual lenses. Now the initial releases are a 28mm and a 35mm f1.4 lenses and they do only come in
0:35
Leica M mount. The names Typoc which is a combination of two old English words and then Samara which
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is a Greek word, they focus on individuality and living in the moment
0:47
Now obviously that's completely marketing but it does reflect the fact that Typoc is
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going after that Leica vibe and trying to capture both the kind of the aesthetic and
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the lifestyle and then the overall feel of the lenses in the release of the Samara lineup
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So the question is as we look at the Samara 28mm f1.4 as the focus of today's review
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have they nailed that Leica feel as a part of their design and the optical performance
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ready to check out. So as you can see I'm looking at the silver version of the Samara 28mm f1.4 but both the
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28mm and 35mm do come in both black and silver editions. The MSRP for these lenses is $699 and if that seems expensive to you for a manual focus
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compact lens like this, bear in mind that the Leica Summilux M 28mm f1.4 retails for
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$7800 and so this lens is literally more than 11 times cheaper than what that lens is
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But you wouldn't know it from the build quality. Everything is all metal here which includes by the way the caps and the hood which are
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frankly the rear cap is maybe one of the nicest that I've ever seen
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But everything here does have a lot of attention to detail. Now as noted the lens hood is all made of metal
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It is kind of the rectangular style that you do see on a lot of Leica lenses kind of following
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that old rangefinder aesthetic. But I will note that there is a limitation that comes as a part of that in that the front
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cap is a slip over style and so if you are using the front cap it's either that or the
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lens hood because you can't use both at the same time. So the aesthetic may look cool but there is a price to pay for in this case I think that
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style is trumping over functionality. Now the lens is very very compact here
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It is 54mm in diameter that's 2.1 inches and it has a very compact 49mm front filter
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thread which seems to be a pretty common one amongst Leica M mount 28mm lenses
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Now the lens is 55mm just 1mm longer in its overall length that's 2.2 inches and it weighs
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in at 330 grams or 11.6 ounces. So that's about 110 grams less than the aforementioned Leica Summilux lens and so obviously if you
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are looking to travel light getting the f1.4 aperture and an all metal build while also
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staying fairly lightweight is an added bonus here. Now this is a manual everything lens which is pretty common on Leica and the rangefinder
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bodies but everything is nicely executed here. The manual focus ring has really nice, it's all in metal of course, and it has really
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nice knurled sections that each have individualized grip so very easy to grip
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The focus ring moves very very smoothly and there is a couple of unique features here
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There is a little bit of additional drag that is at 0.7m, minimum focus distance is 0.4m
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but at 0.7m there is some additional drag and the intent of that is that on rangefinder
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bodies that's as close as they will actually focus and so beyond that you have to switch
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to live view if you want to get accurate focus up close. So it's designed to just kind of let you know you are entering into that territory
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On the other end of the approximately 100-110 degrees of focus rotation there is actually
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an infinity lock there. I'm not convinced that it's entirely necessary but it is a cool looking feature
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You do have to, once it's in that lock position you have to just depress this little tension
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knob here and so it will release to allow you to rotate back out of there
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This is an internally focusing lens which does actually set it apart as superior in
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fact to some of the Leica counterparts. The lens has a nicely executed aperture ring near the front of the lens and so you have
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a couple of different options. Surprisingly you actually have a click-declip click option on this lens and so you can choose
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to click it and you will have 1 third stop to tenths that are really nicely defined all
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the way through F8. After F8 you have single stop to tenths for F11 and F16
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Now if you're in the declick mode obviously you can smoothly rack through that entire
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aperture iris range and as you can see here the other bonus here is there is a beautiful
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14-bladed aperture iris that stays really beautifully round as you open and close it
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And so that is a very, very nice addition. Kind of another cool, I almost call it an Easter egg here, that I didn't initially notice
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but only noticed after using it for a while and that is that rather than having a traditional
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hyperfocus scale, instead what you have is you have these little red dots that start
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to fill in as you stop the lens down. And so each one of those corresponds to the position where you can put the infinity symbol
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if you're wanting to achieve proper hyperfocal distance. And so just kind of a unique bespoke touch there that I found very, very cool
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Now as noted previously the minimum focus distance is 0.4 meters or 40 centimeters
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That is not particularly close for a 28mm lens though in many cases close focus doesn't
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seem to be a priority with a lot of the Leica lenses
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But in this case you have roughly a 0.09x magnification which as you can see is not
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particularly high. The build quality however is actually really, really nice. Everything is very beautifully executed here and there's a really fine attention to detail
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which I appreciate. For those that appreciate lenses that are also kind of engineered pieces of art, this
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is something that will probably delight you both in the tactile sense but also in the
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overall aesthetic look. They're great looking lenses and they handle very nicely
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Now image quality here comes via an optical formula of 11 elements in 7 groups
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Now that includes an ED element, an aspherical element and 3 HR or high refractive index
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elements as a part of the design. Another welcome surprise as a part of the optical design is a floating element that
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allows you to get better performance up close. And again it's that attention to detail that has impressed me as a part of this brand new
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lensmaker and their design. So we'll give you a quick breakdown of overall performance here
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You can see from the MTF chart that we've got a good performance in the center of the
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frame, a pretty good performance mid-frame and then weaker corner performance and a little
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bit of improvement across the board as you stop it down. We're going to break all the optical performance down in detail at the end of the review so
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stay tuned for that if you're interested in the kind of nitty gritty of the details
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If you just want the overview I'll give you just a quick rundown of optical performance
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in my experience. So the first positive note is there's basically no distortion here
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I could do a tiny correction of maybe a minus one but frankly you probably wouldn't even
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notice in any kind of real world conditions. Vignette on the other hand is heavier
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We've got about three stops of vignette in the corners. It improves a little bit as you stop down but it never goes away altogether
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Again positive is there is very good control of aberrations on the 28mm which by the way
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is better in this than the 35mm. So I saw almost no longitudinal chromatic aberrations, very very minimal fringing before
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and after the plane of focus. I also saw basically no lateral chromatic aberrations near the corners of the frame
9:18
so that's a very strong performance when it comes to that. If we look at the overall sharpness and contrast we find breaking it down and this is at 200
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magnification so yes, torture test and I reviewed on 61 megapixels of resolution actually used
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both a manual adapter and then the TechArt LM-EA9 adapter which gives you a little bit
9:39
of auto focus. It gives you M-mount lenses on Sony E-mount. I don't own a Leica body and so I was testing on a 61 megapixel Sony A7R Mark V for these
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tests just so you know and so I found that there was good center performance, there was
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okay mid performance and there was fairly weak corner performance. Now I did find that real world results looked a little bit better mostly because you're
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not composing the extreme corners at f1.4 in real world shots typically but also because
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the lens has such nice rendering that I just like the overall results and so it gave me
10:13
a more positive feel. The center will become very crisp by f2, the mid frame very crisp by f4 and the corners
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very crisp by f5.6 so you can if you wanted to use this lens as a landscape lens you could
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do so after you stop it down. I found kind of peak consistent performance across the frame at f8 and there is after
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that diffraction will start to slightly soften the image but even by f16 which is minimum
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aperture I really didn't find that the images looked too bad. The bokeh from this lens is actually really nice so looking at it on the technical side
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first there is of the geometry there's a little bit of cat eye you know deformation near the
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corners of the frame with specular highlights in some cases that will give you a little
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bit of that swirl effect you'll either like or dislike that depending on your taste
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By f2 it's almost perfectly round all across the frame and because remember there's that
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14 bladed aperture iris after that point if you can create specular highlights or bokeh
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balls you will find that they tend to be really nice and circular because that aperture blades
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is so nice and circular. In situations where you don't have specular highlights and it's more just about a creamy
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background I found that up close you could get a really nice and creamy background and
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even at more medium distances I found that the kind of what I call the transition zone
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was actually handled fairly well. So bokeh quality from the lens and the overall look and rendering I think is quite nice
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The lens also exhibited surprisingly good flare resistance wide open with like light
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coming through the windows I found that what bit of kind of veiling was there was actually
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quite artistic kind of gave a warm glow to images and then directly facing into the sun
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even when stopping down I saw just a basically one kind of ghosting artifact that wasn't
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too big and not too destructive so positive there. I did test for coma though in using the tech art it's a little bit tough sometimes to nail
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infinity focus in that kind of setting the movement of the actual adapter could kind
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of work against you so my results are not perfectly focused however what I did find
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is that there is a little bit of coma smear in the corners it's not terrible but this
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lens wouldn't be what I would call a top astrophotography pick either
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In general I really liked the look of the images that I got from the Typoc Samara 28mm
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f1.4 and so in summation I think that Typoc has really done a pretty good job here of
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nailing a lot of the Leica aesthetic and the lens design but also a lot of the Leica aesthetic
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when it comes to the image quality and obviously at a much much lower price point
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I enjoyed using the Samara 28mm f1.4 I will confess I do have a little bit of a weakness
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for nicely executed manual focus lenses and in this case I think that that's what they've
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done so I enjoyed using the lens I think the question remains of how the market is going
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to receive this. The Leica brand is unique amongst most modern photography brands and those who have bought
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into the Leica system I don't know for sure whether they're open to a non-established
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brand like this. Maybe they are and obviously there's always going to be some disparity of opinion across
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any kind of group of photographers but I guess the market will determine whether or not people
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are looking for an off-brand lens like this new Typoc lens for their Leica body
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But if you happen to be open to a far less expensive alternative for your Leica body
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take a look at the Typoc Samara 28mm f1.4 if you like 28mm this is a pretty nice one
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Now if you want to go into a deeper dive of the optical performance stay tuned we're going to jump into that right after this
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Okay let's take a deeper dive into the image quality performance starting with the vignette
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and distortion. You can see that this the uncorrected image on the left that there is basically almost
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nothing to correct there as far as the distortion very very minimal I do use a minus one here
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on the right but you really can't hardly tell a difference. Vignette is much more obvious
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I used a plus 73 to correct for the vignette and the corners and move the midpoint most
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of the way over. You can see that gave us a nice clean up that's about three stops
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Now many wide aperture lenses like this do suffer from longitudinal chromatic aberrations
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but that's really not much of an issue here as you can see there is just a tiny bit of
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friending fringing before and after the plane of focus it is not very pronounced at all
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and if I take a look at something like this with shiny and reflective surfaces I can see
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yes just the tiniest bits of fringing but as we go towards the bokeh highlights very
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minimal there and as we move out of focus I see only just the slightest bit of fringing
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but not enough that you're really going to notice it on the whole image at all
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Lateral chromatic aberrations are even if anything are less pronounced and you can see
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in these transitions from black to white near the edge of the frame that everything is really
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really nice and clean. So as noted previously I'm doing this test on a 61 megapixel Sony a7r mark 5 so very
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high resolution level. I'm showing you these results at 200% so we can see that wide open contrast isn't perfect
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but there is a lot of detail there in the center of the frame looking really quite good
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I'm going to go to the left here and we can see that the mid-frame looks again its contrast
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is not fantastic but there is a good amount of detail that's being captured there and
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down here on the left side we can see that you know there's still some work to do in
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the corners but there is it's not like there's no image quality here either
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As noted in my summary I kind of liked my real world results even better than what that suggests
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For one thing if you're looking just at a hundred percent magnification level that really
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looks quite good. There's no issues there with the detail that I'm seeing and moreover just the overall look
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and rendering of the image looks quite good here in my sauna and so you can see it's handling
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the light coming through the window there quite well and if we look here obviously it's
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going to be a fairly narrow depth of field you can see it's not pen sharp but there's
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plenty there to make this image look credible and thus overall I really like the look of
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the image. One final here and I can't remember if this was f1.4 or f1.8 but you can see here I wanted
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to use a shallow depth field and use the contrast of this old abandoned barn with the kind of
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the whiteout around it of the fresh snow and if we punch in there to a pixel level you
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can see again it's not what I would call pen sharp but you can see there's a perfectly
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usable amount of detail and I like the look of the image overall
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Now stopping down to f1.8 does give us more contrast in the center of the frame over in
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the mid frame the results again there's a little bit more contrast there and you can
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see that the brighter areas are brighter to the corners it's not enough to really improve
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the resolution much but again you can see that contrast is improved some with some brighter
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looking edges. Now f1.8 to f2 makes a more marked improvement in the contrast in the center of the frame
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with the center looking what I would consider pretty much pen sharp at this point the mid
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frame is also improving and looking better not a hundred percent there yet and the corners
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not a huge leap ahead yet there. By f2.8 to f4 you know even at f2.8 here we can see that the details looking really really
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good contrast is looking excellent and if I pop down here once again and I look towards
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the edge you can see it is starting to improve and it's going to be better still if we stop
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down to f4 and then to f5.6 where the corners are looking really fantastic now
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So for landscape type shots where you're looking for detail all across the frame you know if
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you stop it down in this case I wouldn't call the corners looking as good on 61 megapixels
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but overall the image looks nice and crisp I mean it's an image you would be perfectly
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happy with. Here's another shot here that even if we look into the foreground everything looks really
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nice and then as we look on towards infinity everything is captured looking really nicely
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right off to the edge of the frame and so here's an image that I feel like really held
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up well and shows off what the lens is capable of. So after f8 diffraction will start in a little bit at f11 though you can see it still looks
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really good and then minimum aperture of f16 you can see by comparison that it is softer
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but it's not unusable either and you can see even down into the corners that there still
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is a useful amount of information so I wouldn't be against using that even at f16
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Now as noted previously our minimum focus distance is only 40 centimeters and so magnification
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isn't super high. Detail doesn't look too bad here up close however it's still what I would consider usable
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for sure. A quick closer look at that bokeh geometry you can see that we're definitely getting
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some of that lemon shape towards the corners of the frame if I stop down to f2 it's not
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completely circular but you can see it looks acceptably circular by f2.8 everything is
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looking better and of course you're going to continue to have really nice results due
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to having that really circular aperture. We can also see because of low chromatic aberrations and a good amount of contrast that there's
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a great amount of detail that's there even on some of these shiny and reflective surfaces
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Now of course the lens doesn't focus particularly close I was able to get a little bit closer
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due to using the tech art adapter that is one advantage of that but you can see that
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the detail is good there but I mean this is obviously a really creamy type of background
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here in this case at f1.4 where I'm back a little bit further you can see a little
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bit of that swirl effect due to the specular highlights there so whether you like or dislike
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that it's there. Now flare resistance was again quite good I really liked how it handled shots like this
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which is important because this is the kind of shot that I would like to take with a lens
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like this. So you've got some bright light coming through a window source and you can see that it's
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everything's got a little bit of a warm glow but there's no kind of damage to the image
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and this shot here once again backlit and so the sun's coming through fairly intensely
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there but we can see at large aperture here that there's just a bit of a glow but there's
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no big ghosting artifacts. As you stop down a bit you do get a little bit more of these kind of blobs but nothing
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too severe and so I wasn't put off by that performance at all
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And as noted with the caveat of not being able to focus perfectly for this we can see
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that as we move off towards the edge of the frame you can see that the star points are
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deforming a little bit and so they're becoming not quite like full-on flying birds but almost
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a little triangular in shape and so that is the evidence of coma going on there and so
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it's not a terrible performance but neither is it a good one either when it comes to coma
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Overall however though I think that this lens really does pull off a very nice looking
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optical performance. So thanks for watching to the end I hope that this has helped you to get a better understanding
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of this lens and also this new brand. If you want more information you can check the link below in the description to my full
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written review also there are buying links there if you'd like to pick one of these up
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for yourself. As always thanks for watching have a great day and let the light in