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TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8 Review | Able to Handle 40MP on Fuji?
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Apr 2, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review into one of the least expensive autofocusing lenses he has ever reviewed - the TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8 for Fuji X, Sony E, and Nikon Z | This video is sponsored by Fantom Wallet. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN20 to get 20% off | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery: | 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 1:38 - Fantom Wallets
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here to give you a review today of another inexpensive
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lens from TT Artisan that is surprisingly good. It is an autofocusing 56mm f1.8 lens and it's the second lens in a series of similar lenses
0:28
that started with the 35mm f1.8 autofocusing lens that I reviewed a few months back
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TT Artisan when they approached me about this lens said that they had improved on some of
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the flaws of the 35mm lens that I had pointed out, with some of those areas including an improved
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minimum focus distance and thus maximum magnification, reduced vignette, a little bit
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less chromatic aberrations and also some reduced flare. Now this lens I'm reviewing on Fuji X-mount
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It will be available, at least eventually, on both Sony E-mount along with Nikon Z APS-C mounts as well
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So 56mm when you apply it to the 1.5x crop factor of those cameras is roughly an 85mm
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focal length, so a very very popular focal length for things like portraiture
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The price point is going to be roughly $150 US dollars as of the day of this review it has not
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been finalized but that's the ballpark that I've been given. So the question is, is at a price
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point of around $150, is this a lens that's worth checking out? Let's find out as we dive into it
1:36
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So we'll start by taking a look at the overall build and specifications here
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This remains a nicely compact lens that's an easy fit for these various APS-C cameras and so in this
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case it is 65 millimeters in diameter or right over two and a half inches and it is only 62
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millimeters in length right over 2.4 inches. So it is very similar to the 35 millimeter except for
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this lens as you can see is just ever so slightly longer. It's about two millimeters longer and as
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such it is a little bit heavier as well. It weighs in at 236 grams or 8.3 ounces. A longer focal
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length at a similarly large aperture means that the glass elements are a little bit larger which
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is why the weight is a little bit heavier. Though 236 grams is still very very easy to pack along
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you won't notice that you have it with it. This lens is much nicer in its overall feel, the feel
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of the materials in the build than what the price points suggest. There feels like a lot of metals
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in the construction here. It has an anodized black finish. I really like the little bit of a scallop
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that is there towards the edge as it approaches the mount that not only looks nice but also it is
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a nice ergonomic place for your fingers to rest as you support the lens. Now there is no bells and
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whistles on the outside here. There is no aperture ring. There's no switches of any kind. What we do
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have is basically just the manual focus ring. Folks fortunately that manual focus ring is
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nicely damped and has a good feel to it. Everything moves nice and focuses well there
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Inside we have nine aperture blades that do a reasonable job of maintaining a circular shape
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Now included is another one of these quirky lens hoods like we saw on the 35 millimeter lens in that
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it when going on it almost looks like a box for an anamorphic type design and it is a little bit
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of an impractical hood in that if you have the hood on you cannot use filters. This does have
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filter threads along the front in a common 52 millimeter size but if you have the hood on
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obviously you're not going to be able to put on any of those filters because this needs to bayonet
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in place and it obscures the filters. So I don't love the hood design. It is a look and maybe you'll
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like the look of it but it's not particularly practical. This design also means that you cannot
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reverse it for storage and so for the most part I just kind of leave it on and that's the permanent
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look of the lens itself. Another feature that we have here is a lens cap with a USB-C port built
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into it. It has electronic contacts and it's so you can do firmware updates. I do prefer the
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implementation of the USB-C port in the lens itself as some other manufacturers do but it is a nice
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option at again at this quite low price to where at least you can be supported and get firmware
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updates as things move ahead. Now one of the things that TT Artisan highlighted that they wanted to
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improve was the minimum focus distance and they have done that. Minimum focus distance here is 50
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centimeters so that compares very favorably to the 60 centimeters that was required on the 35
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millimeter lens. You combine that with a longer focal length and we move to a more competitive
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0.14 times maximum magnification. By the way that's about standard with the Fuji and Sigma
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56 millimeter lenses and a little bit better than what you can get from manufacturers like Viltrox
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or Tokina and so as a byproduct means that even though this doesn't have as large a maximum
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aperture as say the Viltrox 56 millimeter f1.4 in some situations you actually have an opportunity
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to produce a little bit more bokeh because you can get closer to your subject. So I appreciate
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the improvement here and certainly it opens up some additional avenues for the making of images
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that I appreciate. So overall what we have here even if there's not a lot of bells and whistles
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it is nicely executed. So how about autofocus? This employs an STM or stepping motor like the 35
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millimeter. It is quiet in operation though if I put it near my ear I can hear a very light
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whirring in operation but fortunately there isn't a lot of things like clacking of aperture blades
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and stuff that really adds to the noise and so in operation autofocus works nice and quiet
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The autofocus speed as you can see here is is good but it's not great. There's a little bit
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of that split second pause while inertia builds before focus changes take place and so it is not
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the fastest autofocusing lens that I've seen but neither is it slow. It's what I would call about
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average in its overall operation. Focus accuracy was good even here on Fuji. I don't always
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love Fuji's autofocus compared to some of the other brands that I test but it is getting better
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and this lens seems to work just fine in terms of giving me good focus accuracy. IEF seemed to work
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well and I got good accuracy for kind of general purpose shots, shots in a church setting, even in
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portrait type work and some of these shots taken by my son who's far from a professional photographer
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He took some shots of me as a subject and autofocus caught my eye every time. Every one of them is
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accurately focused so you know good marks when it comes to the accuracy. Now on the video side of
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things I found that there was some improvement over what I saw with the 35 millimeter. Focus
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pulls are reasonably confident so you though you can see some minor steps towards the end of the
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cycle. Unfortunately that is still fairly common on Fuji so it may be a little bit better on either
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Nikon or Sony. I haven't tested those mounts or on those cameras. There is about what I would call an
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average amount of focus breathing. It's there but it's not severe. Where I definitely saw an
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improvement over the 35 millimeter review is that I found that the focus confidence and when I did my
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hand test was much better and so it's very good in making those transitions from the hand to the eye
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and vice versa. So there does to me there is some growth that I'm seeing already in more confident
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autofocus. I would still say that this is not necessarily reactive enough for very fast action
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for either stills or video but for most people in most situations I think autofocus is going to get
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the job done and so there's some growth there and overall for the money this is a nicely executed
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little package. So finally let's talk about the image quality. This is an optical design of 10
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elements in nine groups and while the MTF chart is maybe a little bit more consistent than the 35
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millimeter on paper it doesn't look quite as good. Fortunately I actually found that my real
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world results were better with this lens and what I saw with the 35 millimeter lens and I think that
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there is a very specific reason for that. Now I'm going to give you a quick overview here of optical
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strengths and weaknesses. If you want the detailed breakdown you can check that out that comes at the
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end of the review or you can jump ahead in the time stamp in the description. Now when it comes
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to real world performance I will say this and that is I think this is the most impressive results
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that I've seen from a cheap lens on the 40 megapixel Fujifilm sensor which is the most
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demanding thing that I review on at the moment. This is fairly impressive in that this is an
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entirely usable lens on 40 megapixels in a way that most inexpensive lenses simply are not
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So breaking down some of these areas there is no measurable distortion that I found. There is some
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vignette not as much as the 35 millimeter but I required still about a plus 68 to correct that
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vignette so that's a little bit over two stops that's not at all severe but there is some vignette
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still there to correct. I did find another area where they were intentionally trying to prove
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was when it comes to the fringing and particularly the longitudinal chromatic aberration
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and it is much improved over what I saw on the 35 millimeter lens which is by the way why I think
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that real world results are actually better from this lens. In a vacuum it might the mtf chart from
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the 35 might be better but in real world results contrast is better because it's not being diminished
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by the fringing that is there and so fringing is much much better controlled and it is very good
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particularly for an inexpensive lens like this. Likewise lateral chromatic aberrations near the
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edge of the frame are minimal and so a very good control of aberrations. Now when it comes to the
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sharpness profile I found that sharpness was pretty consistently good across the frame. It
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obviously steadily gets a little bit worse as you progress across the frame so the corners are not
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fantastic but at the same time I did find moving away from high magnification on my test chart
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that real world results I was pretty much satisfied with what I saw most of the time
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I didn't see a big improvement at f2 or even at f2.8 the big jump comes at f4 and that's when
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the corners really start to sharpen up better at f5.6 and f8 though they're never quite as sharp
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as what the center of the frame is but again in real world results they're sharp enough that I
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didn't really notice a lingering softness that bothered me. Bokeh quality is is good but not
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exceptional and that way it reminds me a lot of the sigma 56 millimeter f1.4 and that there's
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nothing that comes across as being bad about the bokeh but neither is it exceptionally creamy and
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nice. I think that most people will be happy with it but neither is it going to produce like
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magical images that you just love because of the rendering from the lens. Now when it comes to the
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flare resistance it is improved but it is still an area of weakness. I think that there are fewer
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flare artifacts and what's there in my opinion is a little bit more artistic but there is certainly
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some blooming there is some various flare artifacts some flashing that you're going to see
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and so there's still room for improvement on the coatings that TTRSyn is using but at the
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same time I think that the flaring here is less objectionable and that if you compose properly I
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think it can be used in a creative artistic way and it's less destructive in that sense but still
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an area that you need to watch out for. Overall this is a pretty decent little optical performance
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for a lens that has such an inexpensive price tag. So in conclusion I would say this is a quite a
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complete lens at this price of around 150 US dollars. There's certainly better lenses and
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better lenses at 56 millimeters but none that are anywhere near this this price tag. In fact this
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lens undercuts the Viltrox 56 millimeter f1.4 but I would say that it in some ways outperforms it
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optically and so I'm quite impressed by what you're getting here for this price. I think that
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TTRSyn has already shown a significant improvement at mitigating the flaws that I pointed out on the
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35 millimeter f1.8 autofocus lens while retaining a lot of its strengths and my conclusion is is
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that this is at least to this point probably the best budget lens that I have used on the 40
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megapixel Fuji sensor. One that actually works enough that you're going to be happy to use it
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there and that means that it should look even stronger optically on lower resolution models
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where it's not being pushed to the same kinds of limits. But the very fact that a lens at this
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price can perform reasonably well on this incredibly demanding sensor is a big win for TTRSyn
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If you want more information you can look in the description. I do have my full text review there
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There's also linkage to an image gallery along with some buying links. As always thanks for
14:17
watching and have a great day and let the light in. We'll start by taking a look at vignette and distortion here and so you can see looking on
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the left the uncorrected raw image that there is some obvious vignette but basically no distortion
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So on the left side we have the manually corrected version. You can see here I have done nothing to
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correct distortion because there wasn't anything. I've dialed in a plus 68 on the vignette so a
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little over two stops to correct vignette. Now what's interesting is that if I click
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correct enable profile corrections I'm not quite sure what the lens designation here MJ 56
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millimeter f 1.8 x da dsm that doesn't sound right but what I will say is that it seems to do a
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perfect job. It's not meshing messing with the distortion and it is correcting the vignette
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appropriately so bonus. So as noted previously one of the significant improvements over the 35
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millimeter f 1.8 is when it comes to longitudinal chromatic aberrations. You can see it's actually
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really nice and clean both before and after the plane of focus. That means that even in situations
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like this I find often that the imprinting on lenses is a really a trigger point for
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chromatic aberrations and you can see very very neutral here no issues with that
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Here's another one where you can see as we start that transition towards defocus just a tiny little
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bit of fringing there up here on this shiny reflective area the tiniest bit of fringing but
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very very well controlled. So what that means is we actually end up with better than expected kind
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of micro contrast out of this lens on this 40 megapixel sensor as a byproduct because the
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fringing is so well controlled it allows the textures to render really nice and crisp. I mean
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look at the detail that's there and so this is a better than expected result in my opinion and you
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can see that even in this very bright area there's no haloing or fringing around it. So this image
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really impresses me. One final one here with a lot of reflective surfaces and then specular bokeh
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highlights you can see again very very neutral there's no fringing that you can see in these
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reflected areas and you can see that the bokeh itself is very nice and neutral. Now likewise
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with lateral chromatic aberrations I can see just the very very faintest amount here at this very
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high level of magnification it's low enough however that I actually can't see it in real
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world results. So that does translate into slightly better than expected optical performance and
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better than what I think the MTF chart suggests out in real world use. Now for chart testing here
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at 200 percent magnification this is on the 40 megapixel X-H2. You can see that in the center
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of the frame looks really really good. Good detail, good delineation of the various textures
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even in the text here it's not flawless but it is very good and we can see if we scroll up this way
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that everything is still quite good in the mid-frame and finally if we pop down to the corner
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corners are softer particularly when it comes to a little bit less contrast but there actually is
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still a pretty decent amount of detail there and the lack of distortion means that there's no
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stretching of things that also helps. So while the MTF suggests that the 35 millimeter might have a
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little bit of an advantage we can see that in my actual test my real world comparisons that's just
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not the case at all. Even in the center of the frame I find that the 56 millimeter looks better
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in the mid-frame you can see there's better contrast and more detail there and even into
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the corners while there's maybe less of a difference in the corners I still feel like
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the lines are cleaner and there's actually more detail in the fine areas that are showing up
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and so to me this is a win all across the frame. I'll also note that at a just a more typical 100
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percent magnification I put the subject right over here in the corner to the area that I wanted to
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focus because I wanted to see how the corner looked and frankly that looks just fine to me
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It looks quite good really without any kind of serious drop off it's not low contrast I'm really
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impressed with this performance. Likewise with this shot at f1.8 I kind of shot from the hip
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this dog's walking by and I thought he was interesting looking and and so I shot quickly
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as he went by and as I punched in here and looked at it on the detail level again I'm quite pleased
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with the amount of detail I'm getting. This like I've said before this sensor is so incredibly
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demanding that a lot of lenses look soft on it and I just don't find that to be the case with
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this really inexpensive lens. Now stopping down from f1.8 to f2 there's not any kind of real
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noticeable improvement though I do think there is ever so slightly more detail in the text that is
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there still even if it's a mild improvement it is a little bit of one and so that is worth noting
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in the corners not really any kind of improvement there yet. Likewise I don't see any major corner
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improvement from f2 to f2.8 contrast is a little bit better and obviously the corners are brightening
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a bit more if we look over at the other side about an equal result there and up into the opposite
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corner again you can see maybe a little bit more of improvement here at f2.8 over f2 but fortunately
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what we are seeing is a nice centering performance I would say this upper right corner is maybe the
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weakest of them. Moving from f2.8 to f4 you can see in the corners there's still only a slight bit
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further performance improvement and if we compare the other opposite corner again it's about the
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same there a little bit more improvement at f5.6 but again for perspective here's a real world
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landscape shot and if I punch into a hundred percent magnification pixel level looking through
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here I'm not at all unhappy with the detail and if I move right off to the edge of the frame yes
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it is a little bit softer here than what it is here but neither is it mushy it's still what I
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would consider usable and right up here into the corner it's not pin sharp but neither is it
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unacceptable. Now moving from f8 to f11 you'll see a little bit of softening due to diffraction it
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comes really early on this high resolution body and that's going to be worse still when you move
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to the minimum aperture of f16. Now as noted before we have a competitive minimum focus distance
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and maximum magnification for this focal length and we can see that the up-close performance is
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just fine even at f1.8 detail is holding up contrast is good that just makes the lens even
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more useful. Now the bokeh quality is as I said in the summation it is okay it's not exceptionally
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good but neither is it bad either it's just it's about average. We can see here that again at f1.8
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I like what I see as far as the contrast there and the fact that there's no fringing or bleeding off
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blooming on the textures. This is a little bit more of a busy background and you can see
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that it renders a little bit busier. Now when you have more specular highlights again I'm impressed
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by the control of aberrations and so the amount of detail I can get here and the bokeh highlights
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they look good you know not amazing but good. You can see that there is definitely some geometric
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deformation going into a little bit kind of real world shot where the background's a little bit
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busier the detail looks good the bokeh quality looks a little bit nicer here another similar
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type shot again with more space to the background and you can see that there's maybe a little bit
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more outlining than what I would like here so it doesn't have that feeling of being like like
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really really creamy but at the same time it's not objectionable either. So for portrait work
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this lens actually works quite well as a budget portrait lens. You can see that the amount of
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detail there is good the overall scene and the colors look fine and accurate. Another shot here
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and you can see once again focus my son was taking these shots and so he's not necessarily
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being intentional so the focus actually picked the far eye that wouldn't have been my preference I
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would have preferred the the fore eye to be the one that's in focus but you can see the amount of
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detail here is good skin textures and colors look good and as a bonus you have Nala's tail that's
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sticking out from behind there. One other thing that I did test just because I saw a clear night
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it's like well why not and so I went out and took a look at the night sky and some astro so the
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pluses are obviously this is a little bit higher magnification of some of the celestial bodies
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fringing is well controlled with these bright areas so that's good as we move towards the edge
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of the frame there is some coma you can see it becomes these star points become a little bit more
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triangular it's not a terrible performance either and so you know certainly usable if you want a
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lens to point at the stars. Now the flare issues have as I've already been documented you know they
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tend to they're definitely there now in this case this is actually a really artistic look I've added
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this effect to a lot of images in times past and so I'm not impartial to that at all particularly
23:36
because my detail is holding up nicely there. Images like this you can see this kind of blooming
23:43
flare effect again that's a very artistic look it's a flaw and I'm not trying to sugarcoat it but
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at least is an artistic one and as you can see with the panning back and forth there is a variety
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of effects you get wide open and then also if we look stop down I prefer a lot of the effects wide
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open they're softer and the good news for that is if you're wanting to shoot portrait type work
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I think you can actually use a lot of these artistically and so again I'm not necessarily
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hugely turned off by this because it's an inexpensive lens but also it adds some character
24:17
to the lens that can be used creatively. Overall this is a really really impressive optical
24:22
performance for such a demanding platform and such an inexpensive lens
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