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when i reviewed the viltrox 28 millimeter f 4.5 it was the slimmest autofocus lens that i had ever
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used it was a lens that proved to be very popular for them because it was absolutely tiny just
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barely thicker than a camera cap but it had autofocus and could achieve pretty good results
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now fast forward to today when tt artisan is releasing a lens that in many ways one ups the
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viltrox it has i think a more attractive focal length at 24 millimeters it has a slightly brighter
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maximum aperture of f3.8 while maintaining that identical small size and incredible lightweight
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under 60 grams of weight and on top of that i actually prefer the image quality from this new
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TT Artisan lens to what I did to the Viltrox. That makes it a really, really intriguing lens
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for those that want to travel extremely lightweight and discreet, even more so when you consider that
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it comes with a price tag of just $99. So does this lens make sense for you? Well, we're going
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to dive into it today. It's a pretty simple review because it's a pretty simple lens
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but I think you're going to find that just like right now, as I'm filming on it, it's capable of achieving surprisingly good results. Before we jump into it, I do want to
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say a big thank you to the retailer Vitapol for sending me a review sample of the lens
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As always, however, they've had zero input in the review, nor has TT Artisan
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nor will any of them see it before this review launches and you see it
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This is a completely independent review. All of that aside, let's jump in and let's take a look at this tiny little guy
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All right, let's take a closer look at this little tiny lens
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Again, price point is $99. That's the same as the Viltrox. This is a full frame lens and it has an f3.8 aperture
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That's not a maximum f3.8. That is the only aperture. And so if you take a look inside there, you won't see any aperture blades
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It is just a circular opening that is an equivalent of f3.8
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Now, like the Viltrox, which I've got here, it has this little sliding door that opens it up
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There is one advantage here, however. This, obviously, you're going to use when you're not using the lens just to, you know, keep the dust from getting onto the optics
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But one advantage here is that when you power this lens on, it does not do the pulse forward that the Viltrox did
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Some people complained about that because if you had it still closed, the elements would actually come up and bump the cover here
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That's not the case here with the TT Artisan. They solve that problem. So that's good
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We have a lightweight metal mount that is here, and there is a USB-C port on the lens mount
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The lens is 60 millimeters or 2.36 inches in diameter. So that just basically covers the E-mount here in this case
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And it is just 16 millimeters in width or 0.62 inches. And so it is within a fraction of a millimeter of the dimension of the Viltrox
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Basically, they are about the same. The weight here is just 59 grams or two ounces
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There is no filter threads here. And so this is just a plain lens
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You're not using it with filters, not doing anything fancy with it. You're just taking photos with it
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You can see that the minimum focus distance is 30 centimeters or right under a foot
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And it has, unfortunately, a very low level of magnification. Outside of that, that's all there is to it
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There is no manual focus ring. There's nothing here on this. The only feature they're going to ever touch is just to open and close the cover over the
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front element there. And then, of course, you might use the USB-C port for firmware updates
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and that's it. So let's talk autofocus. Like Viltrox, it was one of their earliest lens to
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have a VCM or a voice coil motor. And to my knowledge, this is the first lens that I've
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seen from TT Artisan with a voice coil motor Now because this lens is autofocus only a lot rest on that autofocus system And as I found with the Viltrox focus is good though not exceptional in this lens There is some obvious focus breathing we
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talk about in the video section, but even in stills, there's just kind of a little bit of a
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sense of a lurching sensation when focus goes from one subject to another. But at the same time
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the focus motor is quiet and it can focus relatively quickly, moving from a close to a
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distant subject with very very little pause in between. In fact I found autofocus to be really
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stable and easy to use for a variety of different situations which is important because if you get
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into a situation where you can't get what you want out of autofocus there is no manual focus to fall
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back on to fine-tune focus. The place where I did find some frustration with that was when it came to
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trying to do close focus. Often I find manual focus more useful if I'm wanting to really clip the
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as the minimum focus distance of a lens because you can assure you're getting
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you can really determine where that minimum focus is. I mean, you just, you know, manual focus to the macro level
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and then you just move in into where things are in focus. And even if you want to put auto focus back on them
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you know that you're in the proper range. In this case, it can be a little bit hard to determine
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And so I did one shot where I was trying to hold a leaf out and get to the minimum point where it would start to focus
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But, you know, just that little bit of movement holding it there, I was right on the edge
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of that minimum focus distance, which is quite long on this lens. And as a by-product, the lens
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the leave just has a tiny little corner of it in focus. I like the shot in general anyway, but
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it just illustrates one of the difficulties I had. Likewise, when I was trying to line up on my test
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chart, trying to find that minimum focus point was actually quite challenging on that. So I do miss
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a manual focus sometimes, but autofocus really is stable enough for most situations. And I think
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that people are going to have no problems with it. Works perfectly well for something like street photography
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which I can see this lens being a hit for because it is so small and discreet
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So at the end of the day, I think that this is a lens that does just fine in the stills department when it comes to autofocus
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On the video side of things, focus pulls are fine, though there is that kind of bit of a jarring effect
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that's not very cinematic because of the focus breathing. And it feels like focus kind of lurches a bit
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as you go back and forth. I found that also to be true when doing my hand test
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that it's not a smooth transition from the eye to the hand because it feels it's not cinematic at
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all it just kind of lurches back and forth and so for you know making big focus changes it's not
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great for that but for just capturing video as you can see right now it's perfectly stable it
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keeps locked on and a normal like transition from one subject to another as long as you're not
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looking for a very you know cinematic sweep from one focus point to another it's going to be just
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fine. Again, remember no manual focus here. And so that means if you're going to do a focus pull
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it has to be an autofocus pull. And so it's maybe not the best video lens for anything cinematic
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However, it would work perfectly well for a lens that you're throwing onto a gimbal or even using
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for something like vlogging, for example, it has a wide enough focal length, very small
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very light. And because it is so small and light, you can throw this thing on pretty much any gimbal
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or, you know, selfie stick or whatever the case may be and turn your camera into something
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equivalent of the ways, maybe not a whole lot more than, you know, a hefty smartphone
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So at the end of the day, I think that there are some useful video applications. And again
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the footage looks great, but just know that there are a few limitations in such a compact lens
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All right, let's take a look at the optics from this little lens. There are seven elements in
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six groups and that includes some extra low dispersion elements. I don't have an optical
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breakdown or an MTF chart for you to show you so we'll just jump into my own
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test you can see that there is a bit of vignette and distortion here and it's a
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little bit of a wave pattern there in that distortion distortion is very very
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mild however and so I'd had to dial in just a minus 2 to correct for a tiny bit
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of pincushion distortion there definitely some vignette there but it not super heavy and so I used about a plus 57 to correct for it So for what such a tiny lens that not too bad You can see if we go back and compare to the Viltrox lens that the Viltrox has much heavier vignette definitely
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And a similar level of distortion. Here's an uncorrected shot of my living room
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And if we look at all of the lines, you can see that there really isn't any evidence of that distortion showing up
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Even with some straight edges right along the edge of the frame. Neither is Vignette 2 Extreme
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Overall, I'm not really concerned here. Now, in terms of other metrics, I would say that longitudinal style chromatic aberrations that show up before and after the plane of focus, really not bad
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Almost nothing before the plane of focus, just a tiny bit of green fringing afterward
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If I punch in here and look at my dad's old SLR here, I can see very, very little fringing showing up on some of those shiny bits overall
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Actually, the contrast and the control there is really quite good. even if we jump in and look at an even higher level of magnification
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When it comes to lateral style chromatic aberrations, we can see there is a bit of those there in the corner
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It's not severe, but it is present. Now here's a look at the test chart
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and so we're only going to be looking at one image. Remember, this only has a single aperture
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and so that is going to be f3.8. This is a 61 megapixel Sony a7R Mark V
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and this is 200% level of magnification. You can see in the center of the frame, it's very punchy and sharp
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Looks quite good. No concerns there. Mid-frame also looking really quite good
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And if we look over here on the left side, also good up into the corners. Corners aren't quite as crisp, but they're very usably good
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And looking down at this other side, I see a drop-off here right at the very, very edge
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But overall, I would say that the corners look quite good. If we compare to the Viltrox, again, at f4.5, which is its only aperture
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you can see that definitely the TT Artisan has more contrast and more detail in the center of
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the frame. If we jump down here and look at this mid-frame, the biggest thing that stands out is
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how much more contrast the TT Artisan has. I would say that resolution is similar, but contrast
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definitely favors the TT Artisan. And down here into the corner, the same is true. I think the
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Viltrox is maybe a little bit better down in this corner if we look right towards the very edge. But
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if I look over at this side, I would say still that the Viltrox is a little bit better. We can
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also see, however, that it's showing much stronger levels of lateral style chromatic aberration of
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fringing. You can see how much more pronounced that is on the Viltrox. And if we look up in this zone
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for example, here, I would say along this edge, again, detail is similar, but contrast is just
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so much better looking at the TT Artisan lens compared to the Viltrox. There's different spots
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I feel like the Viltrox looks better here. So there's some give and take across the frame
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But TT Artisan is doing a pretty fantastic job of giving us more contrast and a little bit more punch
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So more important is how that looks in real world images. We can see here that detail and contrast in the plane of focus is looking quite good
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I really felt like landscape images were really, I felt fairly strong here
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You can see that in the area of focus that that contrast and the detail is good
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Right off to the very corners you can see some slippage. I see a little bit of fringing up in there
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But for the most part, everywhere I look in the frame, even on a high-resolution body, it really looks quite good
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Colors are surprisingly good. Here's another shot here. And again, if we just kind of pan around and we look in this image, I mean, right off here into the corners, that's very, very usable
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And, you know, crossing over to the other side, again, same kind of story
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Everywhere I look inside this frame, I'm actually fairly impressed. Likewise here if we jump in and you can see again resolution and contrast at closer focus distances holding up well
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This shot here you can see that the focus point is here and that highlights the one kind of concern that I have Trying to nail minimum focus here is really really difficult for the simple reason that you have no manual focus control And so you just trying to get to the edge of the
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focus to get as much magnification as possible. It can be a little bit hard to do. While we're
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here, however, let's look at this bokeh quality. You can see a little bit of a soap bubble type
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effect, maybe a little bit more outlying than what I would like, a little bit of nervousness
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in the transition zone. But in general, I would say that that bokeh quality looked quite good
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here's another image that shows just a lot of pop in a you know densely colored scene and likewise
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here when it comes to colors and bokeh again you know that detail and contrast in the sweet spot
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looks fantastic for just general purpose shooting here you know i really feel like this is doing a
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great job look at the detail and the contrast on his eyelashes and his hair and the overall image
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You know, the vignette doesn't look too heavy. Distortion is fine. Colors look good
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And in general, I'm quite happy with that image. So how about flare? Well, you can see that there definitely are a bit of ghosting artifacts
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There's obviously no hood here. And so that's not going to help that. At other angles here, you can see again a bit of some ghosting artifacts there
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In this shot with the light coming through the trees, there's a little loss of contrast
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But it's mostly these blobs of false color that I don't love
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You can see it showing up here. It's a little bit more intense sun, so you can see some of those rays coming through, but it's this that I'm mostly concerned about
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And if we look at a pan across, you can see that there's certain angles that are going to really emphasize those ghosting artifacts
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In summation, I would say that while this lens does have a few optical flaws, overall, it's a real lens that can produce some beautiful images
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So what's my conclusion? I thought it'd be interesting to shoot this last segment in APS-C mode
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And so that's giving you a focal length more, about 36 millimeters
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so a traditional 35 millimeter type focal length distance. Because I do think that this is a lens
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that will also be appealing, though I haven't really focused on that. I think will also be appealing potentially
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for those that shoot APS-C as well. It is as compact a lens as you're going to find
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And this still is a very usable focal length and aperture combination on APS-C as well
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There was a lot that I liked about the TT Artisan AF 24 millimeter F3.8 VCM lens
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I liked it better than the Viltrox in terms of the optical performance. I also like the fact that it's a little bit wider, so a little bit more usable in a number of situations
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It's easier to crop in on today's high-resolution bodies than it is to step back and get more in the frame
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I appreciate a slightly brighter maximum aperture, and they can afford that because of a wider focal length means that depth of field grows just a little bit
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And so I think you're going to have a similar kind of depth of field as what you did on the 28mm F4.5 from Viltrox
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You know, when you have just one aperture value, it means that that aperture has to kind of work for all situations
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And I think that TT Artisan has essentially done that here. At the end of the day, it's hard to argue against a lens that is both competent and so incredibly cheap, not to mention incredibly lightweight
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This is a lens that you could throw into your camera bag to take as a counterpoint to maybe for shooting on a longer telephoto type focal length to have that in the bag
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even if you never reach for it, but just to have an option. If you want to frame more of a scene
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if you're out backpacking, hiking, you know, whatever, traveling, whatever the case may be
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I think that this is going to be a very intriguing lens because the image quality is really quite
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usable, even on a high resolution body. And so I think that for many people in many situations
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this is a great lens to just have in your bag as an option. And for that reason, I think that
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TT Artisan probably should sell a lot of them. And maybe even for some of you who have invested
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in the Viltrox and you're saying, I would have liked something a little bit wider. Well, this
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may be exactly what you've been looking for. If you want more information, I do have a full text
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review as well. So feel free to check that out. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day
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and let the light in
