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TTArtisan AF 75mm F2 Review | Full Frame Telephoto Prime for under $200
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Sep 19, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the $180 TTArtisan AF 75mm F2 STM full frame prime telephoto lens. A surprisingly strong little lens. | 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 Fioboc Cloting: https://tinyurl.com/FiobocDA20 and us code DUSTIN20 for 20% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro
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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the TT Artisan 75mm
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F2 STM lens. Now earlier this year I reviewed the first TT Artisan autofocusing lenses, in this case
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a 35mm F1.8 and a 56mm F1.8. Both of those lenses were for APS-C
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That of course brings its own challenges, them moving from doing manual focus only to
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doing autofocusing lenses, but in this case they've taken a step forward yet again
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And so this is their first full-frame lens. This is a lens for either Sony E-mount full-frame or Nikon Z-mount full-frame
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I'm reviewing Sony here today, but I believe that both the Sony E-mount and Z-mount for
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Nikon will be released at the same time. Not only is this their first full-frame lens, this is the first time we have seen an aperture
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ring on one of their autofocusing lenses. So again, further steps in the right direction
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And probably most impressive to me is the fact that this is actually quite a mature
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good performing lens that is going to cost significantly under $200, about $180 US dollars
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And it is, my conclusion, the best sub-$200 telephoto prime lens that I have yet seen
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to this point. So we're going to dive in in detail and help you understand whether or not this is a lens
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that might work for you. First of all, talk about build handling and the features here
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This is a lens that continues to be compact. Now there is a even more compact competitor that I'll get to in just a moment, but this
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lens is only 65 millimeters in diameter and 73 millimeters in overall length
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So that's a little over two and a half inches by right under 2.9 inches
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Now that is four millimeters longer than the Samyang AF 75 millimeter F 1.8
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I'm actually filming on the moment with the Samyang VAF 75 millimeter T 1.9 lens
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And so the difference of course here, the Samyang just AF lens is $350
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The VAF lens that I'm filming on right now is more like $650. So obviously this is very slightly larger, but it's also significantly cheaper
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It also is a little bit heavier. This lens is 328 grams or 11.57 ounces, which is nearly a hundred grams heavier than the
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Samyang lens. And the main reason for that is while the Samyang is a plastic fantastic, this lens
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is actually all made of metal. It feels fairly premium overall in its build
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It has a nice anodized black satin finish on it. Everything is very nicely executed here
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We do, as mentioned, have an aperture ring for the first time. This is a clicked, there's no de-click option
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And so it has clicks at the one third stop detents. Everything seems to move with good precision, good solid clicks there
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And then there is a gap between F 16 and then A or automatic mode, which will allow you
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to control aperture from within the camera. I would like to see a little bit firmer, a detent between F 16 and automatic mode, but
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a fairly minor quibble overall. Aperture ring worked just like I would hope it would
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The aperture iris itself is nine blades, and so it retains a fairly circular shape
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when stopped down a bit. Not perfect, but overall not bad there
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It also comes with a more traditional lens hood. And so those first APS-C lenses, my main critique of them, in some ways lens hood was nice
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It's made of metal. This one's just plastic. But in those early cases, it almost had kind of a letterbox design, like a rectangular opening
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And the biggest problem is you couldn't reverse a lens hood like that, nor could you add
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filters and operate them on the front with the way that it was designed. In this case, we have a more traditional design
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It can be reversed for storage. When you put it on, there is sufficient room there to still use filters after you have
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mounted it. Filter size is actually 62 millimeters, which is not incredibly common, but has become more
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common in recent years. I've seen a number of lenses that do share that overall filter size
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Once again, we have got a lens cap that has a USB-C port and then some electronic contacts
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in it. So you actually do firmware updates through the lens cap itself
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I actually prefer having it mounted on the lens itself, on the lens mount, like Viltrox
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does it, but at least again, we have the option for doing firmware updates here
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Now one area that's not fantastic about the lens is the minimum focus distance
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It's 75 millimeters and the magnification level looks fairly low to me
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Probably around 0.10, 0.11 times. The Samyang gives you a better 0.14 times magnification and it can focus down about
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7 centimeters closer. I did feel in, certainly in situations where I felt like I just couldn't get as close of
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what I would like. And so I did find it slightly limiting. So that's something that you might want to bear in mind
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Overall, however, this is a really nicely executed package. And while it is a little bit bigger and heavier than what the Samyang lens is, the feel of
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everything here is much higher grade, right down to the manual focus ring, which actually
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feels quite good. Now how about autofocus? Autofocus comes via a lead screw type SDM focus motor here and autofocus in general
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is about averagely good. So as far as the sound, the sound itself is very minimal
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You can hear some very light whirring, mostly, however, if you're only in an extremely quiet
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environment and you put your ear closer to it, otherwise it's pretty close to being silent
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in operation. You can see here that autofocus speed is reasonably good, but not, certainly not instantaneous
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And you will see a little micro pulse or step in there periodically
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And so it's not flawless in overall performance there, but autofocus speed, particularly when
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you get outdoors in good light, you can see it, it's zipping back and forth fairly quickly there
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Overall, I also found that it did a good job of staying tracked on the eye, both in the
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test here, but then also in taking shots of the cats, taking shots in a church type setting
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of the speaker, doing a quick portrait session with my son on his first day of school
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In all of those situations, it nabbed the eye well, it focused accurately, delivered
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well-focused results. So I really had no complaints in real world use for autofocus
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In fact, my only complaint was that there was occasions where, again, I would bump up
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against that minimum focus distance. But outside of that, autofocus worked just fine and I have no issues with it there
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Overall for video work, not bad either. Video focus pulls were quick, but what I did see is there were some visible steps sometimes
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some little micro pulses. So it's not perfectly confident, but overall the quickness was fairly good
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You will see some fairly obvious focus breathing there, so that's not necessarily a strength
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for the lens. Neither is the Samyang, by the way, that's an issue for it as well
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Now when I did my hand test or alternately block the view of the camera of my eye with
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my hand and then remove it, going back and forth, there was good speed there
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There was some pulses. Every now and then in either situation, you'll see a rack in the wrong direction
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So it's not flawless, but there is obviously potential that firmware updates might make
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that even more well executed. Overall, however, for ordinary shots, I felt like autofocus was stable
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I have shot one of my YouTube episodes where I had forgotten to bring along my typical
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recording camera. I had this with me and so as a byproduct, it got the job done
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It was stable. It did just fine. So overall autofocus is not top tier good, but again, this is far from being a top tier
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price and I've reviewed lenses like a Mike 85mm f1.8 that were infinitely worse than
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this lens and cost a little bit more. So I think that this is a pretty well executed package overall
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How about our image quality here? I'll give you a quick overview of optical performance and if you want a deeper dive
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you can read either the text review or stay tuned for the deep dive optical examination
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that I'll put at the end of the video. We have an optical design of 10 elements in 7 groups
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Five of those are exotic elements. MTF looks good, but it doesn't look exceptionally good
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It definitely trails off towards the edge. But what I found in real world use is that I think that this lens actually strikes quite
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a good balance between sharpness and then also having very nice autofocus region
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Very nice bokeh and I'll get more to that in just a second
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The distortion here, there's a bit of pincushion distortion, it needed a minus 5 to correct
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and vignette was very low, only a plus 32. I suspect it's probably a little heavier on Z mount
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That's been my experience at least with these lenses that are both E mount and Nikon Z mount
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Here on Sony at least, I don't really feel like you need to correct either one of those things
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That little bit of pincushion distortion is actually flattering for portraits because it makes the subject a little bit slimmer looking and so overall I'm not too concerned
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about either one of those things. I also feel like they have done a good job of controlling longitudinal chromatic aberration
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In extreme situations I saw the tiniest bit of fringing but overall it is so well controlled
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it's not really a factor at all. Likewise with lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame, they're basically
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non-existent so overall fringing is well handled here. As I took a look at resolution and this is on a 61 megapixel a7R Mark V so highest possible
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at the moment full frame standard for resolution. Even on that and looking at results at 200% I felt like results looked pretty good
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I would say real world observations there from my chart test is that the center looked
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a little bit worse than what I expected from the MTF. Not bad but a little bit worse than the MTF chart and I felt like the corners looked better
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than what the MTF chart suggested. But overall across the frame I felt like results were solid
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Contrast is not off the charts but what I did find is that if you stop down to f2.8
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the contrast really really improves and so you have the ability if you want that contrast
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just stop down to f2.8 and it is certainly there. We're very sharp even into the corners by f4 thus as a byproduct I found that landscape
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images look really nice and for example in this shot of islands even if we take we do
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a deep crop of the little island off to the left you can see that resolution is still
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holding up very nicely and the image is still quite beautiful. So there's a lot of potential in resolution to be able to crop deeply into images
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Likewise I also found that diffraction was not bad. You are going to see it after f11 but minimum aperture here is f16 and while it certainly
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is softer than f11 it's still not terrible so I don't consider it to be all that big
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of a deal here. I mentioned that the bokeh is nicer than what I expected and I found that in just a variety
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of situations that the bokeh was really quite soft and that's one of the advantages of
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not correcting everything and not having incredible contrast wide open is that it
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does leave the potential for an often softer creamier bokeh and I believe that's the
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case here. As a result I think that there's sufficient sharpness to make most people happy and at
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the same time the bokeh rendering is really quite nice. The blend of that I think is good and so you can see from these images that I've been
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showing overall I feel like the rendering is really quite nice. Now a shortcoming for these TT Artisan lenses that hasn't yet gone away is that flare resistance
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is not flawless. It's improved but it's not great and so what you'll find is that straight on it's not too
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bad but if your bright light source gets into the corner of the frame you tend to get some
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fairly large ghosting kind of blobs of color there and so you're just going to have to
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watch out for that and to compose accordingly. My conclusion is this
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This is a surprisingly complete lens for $180 and I think that TT Artisan has done a great
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job of finding a nice blend between sharpness and rendering and a lens that I think is nicely
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made without being overly heavy or large. Overall this is just a nice little lens and considering how low the price tag is right
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under $180, I mean it's hard to point too many fingers here when this is just a really
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really well executed package for the price. So overall I'm quite impressed with this lens and its ability to perform here and as I mentioned
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in my intro I would say that to this point this is probably the best sub $200 telephoto
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prime that I've yet seen at this point for full frame. I think it's a great option for someone that maybe only has a kit lens and would like to
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add a prime lens or maybe a cheap portrait lens. This is a really really compelling little package here and definitely well worth consideration
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You want more information you can check out my full text review that is linked in the description down below
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There's also linkage there to an image gallery and some buying links if you'd like to purchase
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one for yourself or if you would prefer to take a deeper dive into the optical performance
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stay tuned with me right now. Let's jump into it. Alright so let's start by taking a look at vignette and distortion
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So here we have an uncorrected raw on the left side. You can see a bit of that pincushion distortion that's there
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Again that can be quite flattering for people's faces so you may or may not want to correct it
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A bit of vignette in the corners here you can see an easily manually corrected result
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on the right. I achieved the corrected result with a minus 5 to correct for the distortion
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You can see it corrects nice and linear and then there's a plus 32 to correct for the
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vignette in the corners and again it cleans up very easily. No issue there
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Likewise here you can see that we don't really have a whole lot of longitudinal chromatic
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aberration either in fringing before or after the plane of focus. Nice and clean there
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Here's a real world shot again with some high contrast in these little blossoms
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You can see however that we really have a quite good looking result and not really any
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kind of fringing messing things up. Lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame are also well controlled
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You can see in all of these black to white transitions that there's no evidence of fringing
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around them. So here's a look at the test chart and we're going to start at f2
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This is 61 megapixels and we're going to view results at 200% magnification so let's zoom in
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You can see in the center of the frame that detail is good
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Contrast is not off the charts good. There's room for improvement still there
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We can see the midframe is looking solid. Kind of a similar story but with just a little bit less acuity
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A little less fine detail rendering. Overall however not bad. Here we can see not a big drop
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There is a drop however from the left corner of the build down to the bottom right
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You can see it just doesn't look as crisp and then as we move off into the corner you
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can just see that surprisingly in the very edge, the very edge doesn't look too bad
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This almost looks softer here than it does here. If we back off even to 100% however for a real world shot we can see a couple of things
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First of all obviously focus is very good here but you can see that around that very
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narrow plane of focus the detail and contrast are really not bad. I think sufficient to where most people would be satisfied
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And again as we're going to detail the trade-off is that the background is really really nice
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and soft. So I think it's a fairly good compromise. Should you want even more contrast however stop down a little bit
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Actually even by f2.2 it starts to improve. By f2.8 you can see a fairly significant increase of contrast here
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So look how much darker the darks look and then how much brighter the brights look
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So that's going to translate on over into the mid-frame which you can see looks significantly sharper
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The corners are looking sharper but they haven't hit peak yet. Above all you're seeing a natural vignette lift and then also more contrast there
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Take a quick look around the world here and we can see a fairly consistent here on the
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left side looking up into the upper left corner. Upper left corner is looking pretty good and then finally the upper right corner
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Overall I would say a fairly consistent centering result. Now you can see as far as the corners go that if you stop on down to f4 particularly at
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the very edge it's looking really good and overall we've seen a significant improvement
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You can stop on down to f5.6 and f8 for a very very minor increase
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For a real-world example this is f8 and if we look in at a hundred percent magnification
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you can see that we've got very nice detail and also good contrast in the center of the frame
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Even as we pan towards this edge at this island here you can see a lot of resolution and detail
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there and then likewise if we were to jump over to the far right side you can also see
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that detail is holding off here towards the edge as well. Now by f11 contrast and detail is still looking very good
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You'll see after f11 however that it will soften somewhat due to the effects of diffraction
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and so you can see a pretty significant difference in contrast and detail pop versus this and
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so that probably isn't worth doing unless you absolutely have to get down to f16
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So as noted maximum magnification is not particularly good. You can't magnify very high
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You can't get particularly close in the area of focus. However detail and contrast looks quite good and so even at f2 and so I mean that is the
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upside here. Also as a byproduct you can't get super close but you can get close enough to strongly blur
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out backgrounds and again as we've already discussed the bokeh is really nice and soft
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from this. This kind of stood out to me because there is quite a bit of hard edges of structures
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in the background so we can see the foreground bokeh looks good and then also the background
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bokeh looks really nice and soft as well. I also felt like colors actually look quite good from the lens
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The optical glass is not really cheap and so byproduct is you can see color rendition
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here is nice and rich not over saturated. It doesn't look nasty
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It just looks good. Another shot here you can see again that colors look natural not garish or anything and the
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amount of detail and contrast and then just how all of that translates to the color science
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looks quite good here. Finally as noted flare can be an issue
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So here's an example of bad flare and obviously this big kind of ghosting blob is not helping
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the image. You can see that wide open if the sun is more centered in the frame it's not too bad
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I mean there's a little bit of a veiling, a little bit of kind of an artistic coloration
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here but again it's artistic. Going back to this for a moment, sun being out of frame here but you can see how it's
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just more of a distraction than what that is. You stop down to f11 as we've got here there's a little bit of ghosting pattern but it's
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still not bad. I had to like the helicopter that was flying into there
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I've got a crew from the church I pastor that pilots one of these helicopters
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Anyway here however it looks a lot worse when I just reposition the sun over towards the
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corner of the frame where we got this big ghosting blob there
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So again you know here is a good example. This feels very artistic to me
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I love the effect actually. It looks really really cool. So I like it better wide open than stop down
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And here also not a bad result. It looks to me it's very artistic and usable
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So you're just going to have to be careful how you compose and it's better
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I think it's more artistic if you shoot at wide apertures. So as you can see a pretty nice little package here and hopefully that that overall resolution
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examination helps you to understand better whether or not it's a lens for you
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As always thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in
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