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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my review of a very unique lens
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the new TT Artisan 75mm F1.5, swirly boca lens. Now, I've long had a love for vintage glass and have pursued some of lenses like old Helios and
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Jupiter lenses, because they are able to producing that kind of unique, swirly effect
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that can be very desirable or at least unique if you're into that
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The TTRs in 75mm F1.5 is essentially a new version of the Carl Zeissgena Biatar 75mm
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F1.5, which is a very old lens design in its original form over 80 years old
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and copies of which can cost into the thousands of dollars if you can find them on the used
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market. Of course, anytime you're going after these old and vintage lenses, I can see looking
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inside, for example, my Helios 44-2 is that I look inside there. I can see that there is a bit of
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fungus that growing inside You know there some mechanical issues It kind of separates and comes apart a little bit here That the nature of the beast with these So to be able to get a new lens
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that has that same optical charm, but has a little bit better manufacturing and a whole lot
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less gunk going on in the inside, it's certainly very interesting, particularly when you can get
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this lens for only about 270 bucks. And it is a lot of fun. However, note that this is going to be
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a different kind of review of a different kind of lens, because pretty much nothing about this lens is conventional
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Still sound interesting? Well, let's dive in and let's find out. So in terms of the basic overall design here
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this is essentially shaped like what they called the fat version of the biotar
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that was sold from 1952 to 1967. It has looking at it a very handsome kind of vintage design to it
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that frankly really reminds me of a lens like the recent Voitlander 75 millimeter F1.5
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that I reviewed earlier this year. Everything is all metal and glass here, so it does have some heft to it
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It weighs about 570 grams or 20 ounces here. And by my measurements it is roughly 73 millimeters in diameter by about 72 millimeters long with a 58 millimeter front filter thread Now when you focus towards the closest focus you actually going to find that the lens will extend a bit It will extend out about an additional 10 millimeters
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So it is not internally focusing. It's at its longest point when you are focused down to minimum focus
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Now, one big thing you're going to have to deal with here is that they have decided to go with the classic M-42 mount
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And that's not micro four seconds. That is the old M-42 screw mount that goes back till, I think, somewhere like the 20s
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It's a long-standing mount, but it is quite easy to adapt. But it means you're going to have to have an adapter
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So you can adapt it to a lot of different platforms, old DSLRs
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You can have a thinner kind of adapter, but because here with mirrorless, the optical path needs to be further forward
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you'll find that the adapter you're going to need is going to have to be fairly chunky
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I've done it on Sony here, and the good news is that the adapters are quite inexpensive
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The one I'm using here cost about 20 bucks, and so nothing expensive there
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but it is going to add some bulk and some length there and a little bit of price
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Now one thing that I like about the design here is that it actually includes an Allen key with the recognition that as you adapt these sometimes everything doesn line up perfectly You can actually use an Allen key You can loosen up three little screws on here
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You can then rotate the lens in its housing to where it's lined up perfectly
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then tighten things back down. It's a good thoughtful touch there, which I appreciate
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Now, what's interesting here is that you can actually adapt this to a variety of platforms
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as mentioned, but that includes in Fujifilm's medium format. And you're actually going to get the most pronounced swirl effect there because more of the image circle is being exposed
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It'll also maybe look the softest in some ways there for the same reason
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Likewise, if you go to APSC, you're going to actually crop off a lot of the swirl effect
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and you're going to retain the more conventional sharper portion of the image circle
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So just be aware of that. Now the manual focus ring here is very nicely implemented
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It has that kind of nirled or scalloped feel to it. All metal, everything moves very
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very, very smoothly. Pretty much perfect damping. I really, really like that ring. About 200 degrees of
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rotation, it's pretty sweet. And so they've done a great job with that. Up front, we have a nicely
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implemented aperture ring. It has soft clicks throughout, and those clicks will mostly be at
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the half stops, at the earlier part of the range. And then after F5.6, they're only at the 4th
