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TTArtisan 35mm F0.95 Review and Gallery

Dustin Abbott

December 12th, 2022

TTArtisan has continued to surprise me with lenses that in some way exceed my expectations.  Whether it was a surprisingly sharp full frame fisheye lens, a shockingly competent macro lens that cost right over $100, or tiny little prime lenses like the 23mm F1.4 that are surprisingly competent…and cheap.  They have also experimented with extremely large aperture lenses like TTArtisan’s 50mm F0.95 lens (which I reviewed here). Lenses with maximum apertures like this are notoriously difficult to engineer, and it’s a somewhat surprising trend that these new small lens makers like TTArtisan are taking on such challenges.  But here we are with a second focal length at F0.95 – in this case the new TTArtisan 35mm F0.95.   This is designed for  APS-C mirrorless cameras like Sony E (reviewed here), Nikon Z, Fuji X, M/43, Canon EF-M and RF).  The 50mm F0.95 did a fairly decent job of covering the larger full frame image circle, but that’s not the case here.  This is very much a lens designed for the smaller sensor, and if you try to shoot it on full frame, you’ll get this (second photo shows the proper APS-C crop).

The TTArtisan 50mm F2 is an extremely compact lens (not much bigger than a “pancake” lens).  It weighs only 200g in the Sony E-mount version I tested (it also comes in Canon RF and M mounts, Fuji X-mount, Nikon Z-mount, Leica L-mount, and Micro 4/3rds mounts.). The length is about 35mm, and the diameter is somewhere around 55mm (it’s not specified) with only a 43mm front filter thread.  This is a lens that will easily fit in a pocket and can come along easily.

The list of features is rather short.  This is a manual everything lens with no electronics or autofocus motor.  Aperture is controlled by a tiny aperture ring near the front of the lens.  The ring is clicked, with detents at ½ stops through F5.6, whereafter only full stops are available.  The focus ring is made of metal (with fine ribs) and moves very smoothly though about 120 degrees of focus rotation.   The lens extends a very minor amount during focus.  There are both distance and hyper focal markings etched on the barrel.  Everything is made of metal and actually feels very nicely made.  My one complain about the build is that the front cap is of the screw on variety, and while that allows it to be very thin, it is also a pain to thread it on and off each time as that could cause you to miss a moment.  There is no lens hood.

Manual focus is smooth and fairly precise, though you’ll want to utilized focus aids on your camera body like focus overlays and/or magnifying the image to visually confirm focus.  My focus accuracy was nice and high when utilizing these techniques.  Focus pulls for video are nice and smooth, though there isn’t a lot of room on such a small lens to keep your fingers out of the way.

Image quality is pretty much what I’d expect for a lens like this.  Contrast at very wide apertures is low, with some prominent chromatic aberrations at wide apertures that clear up significantly by F2 but haven’t yet disappeared altogether.  

When stopped down, the lens becomes very sharp and gives you plenty of detail all across the frame.

The aperture iris has 10 blades, which looks pretty cool when you look inside:

The high blade count is offset by having fairly straight blades, which results in some pretty obvious blade lines in bokeh highlights when the lens is stopped down.

Optical weaknesses include some moderate barrel distortion (+10 to correct), some tendency towards being flare prone, and the chromatic aberrations mentioned earlier.  Vignette isn’t bad for a lens with such a wide aperture (about two stops).  Lateral chromatic aberrations (near the edges of the frame) area are well controlled.

F0.95 lenses are valued for their bokeh, but I found bokeh a bit of a mixed bag.  At close focus distances, the bokeh could be nice and soft:

A little further out, though, and the bokeh gets busier.

Minimum focus distance was 35cm, which gives us a little higher level of magnification than the 50mm lens, though this is no macro lens.

Despite these limitations, however, there was certainly plenty of optical performance to allow me to get a number of beautiful images with the lens despite its low budget origins.  The TTArtisan 35mm F0.95 is a clear bargain at about $200 USD, making it a bit cheaper than the 50mm F0.95 before it.  You can get my full breakdown by watching the video review below…or just enjoy the beautiful photos in the galleries below that!

 

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Thanks to Pergear for providing the review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7IV along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).

Images of the TTArtisan 35mm F0.95

Images taken with the TTArtisan 35mm F0.95

Pros:

  • Extremely large maximum aperture
  • Great light gathering
  • Nicely made lens
  • Good center sharpness from wide open
  • Good sharpness across the frame when stopped down
  • Focus ring moves smoothly and accurately

Cons:

  • Soft corners at wide apertures
  • Somewhat flare prone
  • Strong longitudinal CA

 

Purchase the TTArtisan 35mm F0.95 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Pergear 

Purchase the TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Pergear 

Purchase the TTArtisan 23mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | PerGear | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

Purchase the Sony a6600 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase the Sony a6400 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase the TTArtisan 50mm F2 @ Amazon | Amazon Canada | B&H Photo | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Pergear | AliExpress

Purchase the Sony a7IV @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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Keywords:  TTArtisan 35mm F0.95, TTArtisan 35mm Review, TTArtisan 35mm F0.95, F0.95, F/0.95, Review, TTArtisan, 35mm, TT Artisan, Review, Sony a6400, Sony a6600, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7IV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Sony a9, Sony a7IV, Sony Alpha 1, Sony A1, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA

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Laowa Argus 25mm F0.95 APO Review

Dustin Abbott

October 25th, 2022

A little over a year ago I spent some time with my first Laowa Argus lens.  The Argus series is a more premium line of prime lenses that to this point have all had the extreme maximum aperture of F0.95.  That lens, the Laowa Argus 35mm F0.95, proved an interesting lens with a dual personality that I documented in my review.  Slightly dreamy wide open, extremely sharp when stopped down.  The Argus 35mm (and the accompanying Argus 45mm) were designed for full frame sensors, but the subject of today’s review – the Laowa Argus 25mm F0.95 APO – is for the smaller APS-C sensor, with the lens available in Sony E, Nikon Z, Canon RF and EF-M, and Fuji X.   What sets the Argus 25 (which I’ll refer to it as for brevity in the review) apart from the previous Argus lenses is that Laowa has employed their APO technology on this lens, which does give it a different character than previous Argus lenses.

A lens with an Apochromatic design has better correction of chromatic and spherical aberration than the much more common achromat lenses. Put simply, most lenses struggle with the fact that colors don’t always focus at the same distance, which results in green or purple (red) fringing due to the fact that those colors aren’t focusing on the same plane of focus. Whereas most lenses are corrected for two color wavelengths (typically red and blue), an apochromatic lens is able to bring three color wavelengths into focus on the same focus plane. This produces a near absence of chromatic aberrations and allows for higher contrast and a near absence of the veiling (lack of contrast) that produces “soft” images. True apochromatic lenses tend to be very sharp and very contrasty. They also are corrected for spherical aberrations on two wavelengths rather than one.  Typically very large maximum aperture lenses (particularly those with maximum apertures greater than F1.4) are quite prone to A) fringing and B) low contrast at very wide apertures.  The Argus 25 manages to deliver higher contrast results with lower fringing in the sweet spot of the frame:

But APO lenses do have a common downside, and that is that the higher contrast of APO lenses on the subject also leads to more contrast in the defocused area (bokeh) as well, which can result in bokeh that isn’t quite as soft and creamy.  That can unfortunately mitigate one of the great strengths of a very wide aperture lens.  I do think that is true to some extent here, as while there’s definitely more contrast at F0.95 than I typically see, there’s also slightly more busyness in the bokeh.

The behavior of this focal length will vary according to the crop factor of the camera that you have it mounted to.  Sony/Fuji/Nikon have a fairly similar 1.5x crop factor (giving you a 37.5mm full frame equivalent focal length), but the Canon mounts will use Canon’s 1.6x APS-C crop, which results in a 40mm full frame equivalent focal length, which is just enough to take you from wide angle to normal range.  Of the two potential focal lengths, I would slightly prefer the Canon crop focal length as I think it is a more definite focal length and less “caught in between” than what the 1.5x crops produce.  40mm is a very flexible focal length for a lot of subjects.

So join me as I explore whether or not tweaking the Argus formula with a little APO magic produces a better end result.  You can find my conclusions by watching my video review or reading on in this text review.

A brief review note:  When Laowa reached out to me about reviewing the Argus 25 I didn’t clue in that it was an APS-C lens, so I agreed to receive a Canon RF mount loaner.  Unfortunately I don’t own a Canon RF-mount APS-C body, so I’ll be doing the review on my full frame Canon EOS R5 in APS-C mode.  It’s a reasonable amount of resolution (17MP), but not really high enough to challenge this lens.

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Thanks to Laowa for sending me a loaner of the Argus 25mm.  As always, this is a completely independent review and all conclusions are my own.

Laowa Argus 25 Build and Handling

This is definitely not a small lens for an APS-C prime, though the Argus 25 isn’t impractically large.  It is 71.5mm in diameter (leaving a 62mm front filter thread) and 81mm in length (that’s 2.81 x 3.18”).  It weighs in 575g (20.28 oz) due to Laowa’s typical heavy duty, all metal lens construction.  I’ve compared Laowa lenses to classic Zeiss lenses in construction, and that’s never been more apt than on this more premium Argus lens.  Everything is beautifully made.

The focus ring is made of ribbed metal and moves smoothly and precisely along its near 160° of rotation.  The weight is just about perfect, giving you plenty of feel and precision in the focus process. 

This is an all manual lens without any electronics, which does mean that both focus and aperture must be controlled manually.  The aperture ring also moves smoothly, and you have the choice of using it “clicked” or “declicked”.  There is a switch on the left side of the barrel that allows you to choose between the two.  When “clicked”, you will feel light detents at the major aperture stops (F1.2, F1.4, F2, F2.8, etc…)  This is the typical arrangement for photographers.  In the “declicked” mode the aperture will smoothly move throughout its whole range without any stops.  This allows for videographers to do aperture “racking” and is typically the preferred approach for videography. 

The aperture blade count is lower here than what I saw with the Argus 35mm.  Instead of the very high 15 blade count, we have a more standard 9 bladed aperture.  It still retains a fairly circular shape when stopped down, however, but isn’t quite as circular (or visually appealing) as the 15 bladed aperture. 

You can see the shape of bokeh highlights stays round as you stop the lens down from wide open to F1.2 to F2:

In some situations you will get a bit of a “swirl” effect to the bokeh due to the geometric deformation on the edges of the frame, but this is actually a fair popular effect.

With the aperture blades retracted, however, you can see a LOT of glass in the Argus 25:

As a fully manual lens, there are no switches or controls other than the rings and the aperture click control.  The lens does have nicely etched distance markings along with a hyperfocal guide.

There isn’t anything like weather sealing, image stabilization, or any kind of electronics built into the lens.  If you’re not familiar with how lenses like this work, they do function largely as normal save you have to control focus and aperture.  The camera will still meter properly and takes photos as normal, though you will have to turn ON a setting in the camera to release the shutter without a lens attached.  This seems counterintuitive, since a lens IS attached, but since there are no electronics, the camera doesn’t know a lens is there.  What isn’t as normal, however, is that no electronic information is submitted to the camera, so the camera won’t know the focal length or lens designation nor the selected aperture for the shot.  There will be no automatic distortion or vignette correction; this will all have to be dealt with in post.  The EXIF data only contains what the camera provides, like ISO and shutter speed.  If you have a camera with IBIS (in body image stabilization) you will have to manually set the focal length on the lens, but then the image stabilization will work normally.

One very unique design element here is the lens hood, which has a squared, anamorphic-look design.  I’m not quite sure what the logic is here, as for strictly photography this isn’t necessarily a positive development.  It means that the lens hood will have to removed to use filters on the lens.  By necessity the lens cap also has a unique design where it clips onto the sides of the lens hood.  The leather-patterned texture on the front of the lens hood and the shape of the lens hood itself gives this lens a bit of a retro vibe to it.  You’ll either love or hate it, I suspect.

The Argus 25 feels dense and well made (Laowa can be proud of the build quality), though I would like to see some further progression by Laowa on both the electronics side along with some weather sealing on these premium lenses.  I want to see Laowa go to the next level of lens development, as I know they are capable of it.  The Laowa 25mm F0.95 Argus APO is priced at $549 USD, which makes it a little too expensive to be considered a bargain but inexpensive enough that someone interested in premium manual focus lenses can probably afford it. 

Focus Thoughts

In so many ways mirrorless cameras have breathed new life into manual focus lenses.  The ability to magnify the image in the viewfinder, or to have focus overlays, or other focus aids made possible by an electronic viewfinder enables very accurate focus results with a lens like the Argus 25.  I had very few results I had to discard because of inaccurate focus.  That’s not to say that focus is as fast, obviously.  Getting a well focused result requires being a little more deliberate.

But a good camera body and viewfinder helps immensely.  My Canon EOS R5 is one of my favorite cameras ever for manual focus, as I find the viewfinder very clear and easy to see when focus is in the right area (aided by a bit of focus overlay).  Being able to have a stabilized image while focusing due to IBIS doesn’t hurt, either. 

One of the huge advantages of a lens with a maximum aperture this big is the simple fact that it can suck in so much light, which does really help even in very dim situations.  Take this image, for example:

It looks like a normal image taken under normal lighting conditions, but the reality was that there was almost no light left outside and inside was extremely dim.  I shot at ISO 1600 at F0.95 to get this shot at 1/160th second.  If I were shooting with a zoom lens starting at F2.8, I would have to cranked the ISO to 12,800 to get the same shot at the same shutter speed, which is where most all APS-C cameras really fall apart in terms of noise.  The only other option would have been to reduce the shutter speed way day, which results in much more likeliness of motion blur.  You might get away with it with a still subject like this, but what if your subject is moving?  If you shoot in dim rooms or environments (restaurants, bars, etc…) a lens like this will allow you to get clean images in a way that many others will not.  I focused like normal here despite the dim conditions.

In summation, the focus ring moves smoothly and accurately, and I had no issues with focus during my review.

Laowa Argus 25 Optical Performance

The Argus 25 has a fairly complex optical formula with 14 elements in 9 groups.  The MTF chart at F0.95 shows a surprisingly strong center result, a fairly steep drop in mid-frame performance, but then a flattening out of the curve with the corners nearly as good as the mid-frame.

It’s unusual to see that much sharpness at F0.95, but I think the lens is helped by the Apochromatic design.  Typically F0.95 lenses aren’t particularly impressive near maximum aperture.  As you increase the maximum aperture size you all also increase the risk of many optical aberrations.  The most typical are low contrast, high chromatic aberrations, heavy vignette, and being extremely flare prone.  You can pretty much guarantee that all of these will happen to some degree; the question is how much these aberrations can be minimized.  I was intrigued to see how the APO design would counterbalance the massive maximum aperture, and the results are interesting.

We’ll start with some of the standard tests before I delve into the more subjective opinions on the lens.

Vignette is a typical Laowa weaknesses, and it is very evident here.  I had to nearly max out the vignette correction slider to achieve the result on the right above.  A typical Laowa strength is low distortion, and that’s true here.  I needed only a +3 to correct a mild amount of barrel distortion.  The vignette is going to be factor, though, even at smaller apertures.  At F0.95, it will certainly give your images a “look” (in this case a dark and gloomy one):

Like many Zeiss lenses, this can be part of the overall look of the images, however.  A feature rather than a bug, so to speak.  In some images the heavy vignette really draws your eye towards the center of the frame, though this obviously works best with a center composition.

An Apochromatic design definitely goes a long ways towards eliminating Longitudinal Chromatic aberrations (LoCA), and I can see only the faintest amount of green fringing after the plane of focus.

You are unlikely to see this in most real-world situations.

Lateral CA (LaCA) is slightly more evident, with a bit of fringing marring the transitions from black to white on the edges of the frame on my test chart.

As noted in the intro, I had to do my formal tests at slightly lower resolution than optimal due to having to use the APS-C mode on my R5.  We’ve only got 17MP of resolution to work with as a result, but that’s enough to get a good sense of the lens.  Here’s a look at my test chart.

If we look at crops at F0.95 from across the frame, we see the kind of pattern suggested by the MTF charts, though the mid-frame results are very slightly better than expected. 

Since many shots are composed with the subject in the sweet spot for resolution, I found that real world results were quite crisp for an F0.95 lens…at F0.95.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I could produce a fairly credible landscape image at F0.95:

You can see some lateral chromatic aberrations and softness towards the edge of the frame, but there’s definitely some fairly crisp portions of the image as well.

Stopping down to F1.2 does add more contrast punch to the image, particularly in the center.

By F1.4 the center is very impressive, though the mid-frame and corners still lag behind the center.  By F2 the mid-frame is looking quite crisp:

The corners take until about F4 before reaching peak sharpness.  By landscape apertures (F5.6-8), the lens is sharp across the frame, resolving fine details in a beautiful fashion:

I tend to like the colors from Laowa APO lenses better than I do their standard lenses, and I think that’s true here.  Something about that extra contrast gives more punch to the colors.

An image like this shows a nice three-dimensional pop to the subject:

So, on one hand, I feel like choosing to go with an Apochromatic design helps solve some of the big problems a lens with a huge maximum aperture.  But it also reduces one of the most effective aspects of such a lens, which is the soft, creamy bokeh.  It is often the reduced contrast and even the aberrations that help produce that lovely bokeh…and an APO design eliminates some of those flaws.  Out goes the baby with the bathwater!  Images like these should have lovely, soft bokeh, but I see more busyness than what I would like.

Likewise here, as while I like the image in general, I find a little more outlining and busyness in the bokeh than what is optimal.

But bokeh is a subjective measurement, so I’ll you deliver your own verdict on the quality of the blur.

On a positive note, however, I found the Argus 25 to be better than average in flare resistance for a lens with such a large maximum aperture.  I shot several different scenarios with bright sun, and other than some loss of contrast at wide apertures, I felt the lens did fairly well.

I’ve yet to see a huge aperture lens that was actually a great astrophotography lens.  The Argus 25 isn’t going to be the first.  At F0.95 star points are reasonably crisp in the center, but there is some obvious fringing around the brightest star points.  If you look towards the edges, however, you see what either looks like host of angels or a flock of birds fleeing the frame.  It’s neither – it is the result of some fairly wicked coma.

Stopping down a bit (no EXIF data, and I was in the dark, so I’ll estimate about F1.2 to F1.4), we can see that rather than flying geese we have shrunk to pigeons, but there’s still a fair bit of coma.

This is a great lens in the dark because it can suck in so much light, but not necessarily for capturing the stars or individual bright lights.

Overall, the Laowa 25mm F0.95 Argus is essentially what I expected when I saw the APO in the design.  It’s sharper and more contrasty than the typical F0.95 lens, and feels more usable at that huge aperture, though at the cost of that dreamy look that many people love about such a lens.  It all comes down to what you value in lens design.  Feel free to check out more images by visiting the image gallery here.

Conclusion

The Laowa Argus 25mm F0.95 APO is both similar and different than the Argus 35mm F0.95 full frame lens that I reviewed.  The APO design does alter the formula, which results in more usable sharpness results at huge aperture values like F0.95.

It also means that the bokeh isn’t quite as soft, however, which might turn off some of the core audience that is interested in a lens like this.

These are all a matter of preference, however, and what is definite is that there is always room for more premium prime lenses for APS-C, a space that often gets overlooked.  This is a serious lens, and it is interesting to see Laowa bring some of their APO experience that they’ve developed in their macro lens designs into a more extreme lens like this.  You’ll have to determine for yourself whether or not the end result is something you’re looking for, but I will say this:  the list of F0.95 lenses with an Apochromatic design and a price tag of under $550 USD is a VERY short one.  

Pros:

  • Nice quality build and finish
  • Huge maximum aperture
  • Higher contrast and sharpness than most F0.95 lenses
  • Smooth, well damped focus ring
  • Ability to declick aperture
  • Low distortion

Cons:

  • Soft corners at large apertures
  • Some lateral chromatic aberrations
  • Bokeh can be a little busy
  • Quite a bit of coma
  • Heavy vignette

 

Gear Used:

Purchase a Laowa Argus 25mm F0.95 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amplis Foto  (use code AMPLIS52018DA  for 5% off) | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK 

Purchase a Canon EOS R7 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Canon EOS R5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like.  Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like.  Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

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Receive a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

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Keywords: laowa 25mm, laowa 25mm F0.95, laowa 25mm F/0.95, laowa 25 argus, argus, 25mm, F0.95, F/0.95, APO, laowa, laowa 25mm F0.95 review, laowa 25mm argus review, Review, Dustin Abbott, Portrait, Canon EOS R5, R5, R6, EOS R, Sony a6600, Canon R7, Fuji X-T4, Sharpness, Resolution, Bokeh, Video Test, Sample Images, Real World letthelightin, DA

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 Review

Dustin Abbott

June 20th, 2022

TTArtisan has continued to surprise me with lenses that in some way exceed my expectations.  Whether it was a surprisingly sharp full frame fisheye lens, a shockingly competent macro lens that cost right over $100, or tiny little prime lenses like the 23mm F1.4 that are surprisingly competent…and cheap.  The most recent way that I’ve been surprised is with TTArtisan’s 50mm F0.95 lens. Lenses with maximum apertures like this are notoriously difficult to engineer, and I’ve yet to see a truly sharp lens at F0.95.  TTArtisan hasn’t quite managed to break that trend (as we’ll see), but where I was shocked was when I put this lens designed for APS-C camera mounts (Sony E, Nikon Z, Fuji X, M/43, Canon EF-M and RF) on my full frame Sony E-mount cameras and discovered that it functioned about 95% normally as a full frame lens.  Here’s what my distortion and vignette chart looks like on my a7IV (full frame camera):

Sure, that’s a lot of distortion and vignette, but what’s interesting is that I’m able to essentially correct for all of it on a full frame body.

A quick switch to APS-C does show that most of that distortion and vignette gets clipped off by the crop factor (1.5x on Sony).  The vignette is actually very low for an F0.95 lens on APS-C, and TTArtisan clearly achieved that by seriously overengineering this lens for the smaller sensors.  As a result, though, I’m able to credibly use this lens even on a high resolution body like my Sony Alpha 1 (50MP).  Here’s a wide open shot from that combination:

It’s not flawless.  While there isn’t any mechanical vignette (permanent black vignette where light is completely blocked by a too-small lens opening), the corners will never quite get sharp on full frame because the lens doesn’t quite resolve the final 3% of the full frame image circle.  It could be argued, however, that this isn’t really necessary on a lens like this while will be more valued for its dreamy rendering and very shallow DOF rather than sharpness from corner to corner.  The effect in the corners of the frame, while technically flawed, add some aesthetic character akin to some of the old Soviet Helios lenses:

In short, I found this lens a lot of fun on both full frame and APS-C, though, as always, you have to properly calibrate your expectations for what a lens like this can and cannot do.  The TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 is a little more expensive than many TTArtisan lenses, though still a bargain at less than $220 USD

Is this inexpensive little lens with a wonderfully vintage aesthetic a good option for you?  For a deep dive, check out the video review below…or read on.

 

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I want to thank Foto Vision (retailer) for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review.  The opinions here are completely my own.  *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a6400 along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).

TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 Build, Handling, and Features

The TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 has a focal length equivalent (in most mounts) to something like a 75mm full frame angle of view on cameras with a 1.5x crop factor (Sony and Fuji), with a slightly longer focal length on M/43 (2x).  I actually prefer the lens on full frame for that reason, as it then is the classic 50mm focal length.  It’s nicely compact at 60mm (2.36″) in diameter (with a common 58mm filter thread) and a length of 68mm (2.67″).  Because of an all metal and glass construction the weight for the little lens is surprisingly hefty at 411g (14.5 oz).

Take a look inside, and it’s easy to see why.  This is a metal barrel that is basically full of glass elements (there are only 8 elements in six groups, but they are BIG elements).

I love the unique aesthetic of the lens, which has a black barrel punctuated by deep grooves filled with silver paint.  This provides a different kind of textured grip than the standard fare.  Both the aperture ring (near the front of the barrel) and the larger focus ring that dominates the barrel use this style, and it looks very unique (and stylish!).

There’s a smooth black section near the lens mount that does have some textured ridges for grip, those these are painted in black and don’t stand out the same way.  There are also hyperfocal markings on this section for those that like to zone focus, though the standard distance scale is incorporated onto the focus ring.

I liked the focus ring, which moves smoothly and with excellent weight and damping, though if I focus fast I feel just a slight bit of slippage in the damping.  The focus throw isn’t exceptionally long (about 110-120 degrees of rotation), but it seems sufficient for accurate focus.  There is a minuscule amount of barrel extension during focus, but it is so minor as to almost imperceptible because it occurs in the center of the lens rather than the front barrel.  I felt like I had good focus results due to being able to magnify the image to confirm focus, though as per usual I found focus easier on my camera with higher resolution EVFs.  You really miss a quality EVF when you are manually focusing on a camera that lacks one (hello, a6400!)

The aperture ring isn’t exceptional.  It relies on a single red dot engraved on the side of the lens to indicate aperture position.  The aperture seems to have half stop intents through F4, where the range narrows and there is only room for full aperture stops from F4 to F16.  It moves fairly well, though, with clearly defined “clicks”.  There is no “declick” option.

The aperture iris itself has ten blades and stays fairly rounded as you stop it down.  The look of it when stopped down is actually rather gorgeous.

I’m not in love with the lens cap, which is a very thin “screw-on” variety.  While it is has a very small footprint, it takes considerably longer to remove or put back on (due to having to thread it on) as opposed to the near instant convenience of a pinch-style cap.

There isn’t a lens hood available that I can tell, which is somewhat curious in a lens with such a huge maximum aperture (and one prone to some flare issues!)

Minimum focus distance is not all that impressive at 50cm (19.7″), and the resulting magnification isn’t that great, either (it looks like roughly 0.12x).  Contrast is very low at that minimum focus distance, leaving a rather unimpressive result with my test chart:

You can see that low contrast in real world results, too, though the gorgeous bokeh and the dreamy quality of the image works better in the real world than it does on a test chart.

There is no weather sealing or electronics on the lens, meaning that while metering and other camera-related functions work as normal, you won’t get anything like automatic magnification of the image, lens-specific EXIF information (focal length or aperture), and you’ll have to manually input the focal length for in body stabilization if your camera is so equipped.  Things like focus peaking will still work, however, as that is handled by the camera, no the lens.

As is typical with TTArtisan lenses, the complaints are mostly focused on what’s not here (electronics and weather sealing), as what is here is nicely executed and feels very high quality for the price.

Image Quality Breakdown

As I noted in the intro, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the image quality from a number of TTArtisan lenses despite their very low price, but taking on a lens with such a large maximum aperture is a whole other challenge.  I’ve yet to see a truly sharp lens with this large of a maximum aperture, and I didn’t really expect a $200 lens to be the first.

It isn’t.

On a technical level, the TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 is never what you would call “pin sharp”, though it does achieve decent levels of sharpness when the aperture is closed to the prime aperture values of F5.6-F8.  Where the lens excels is in the beautiful quality of the rendering and bokeh, which can produce some stunning images at wider apertures even if contrast isn’t exceptional.  Here’s a shot around F1.4:

This was shot on the 33MP Sony a7IV, and if you pixel peep, you can see that there’s actually a pretty good amount of sharpness that is held back by unexceptional contrast.

But this lens isn’t about technical perfection; it is about the feel of the images at large, and on that note it thrives.

We took a look at vignette and distortion previously, and while both are heavy if you put it on a full frame body, on its native APS-C it has only a small amount of barrel distortion (+6 in my corrections) and minimal vignette (I used a +28 for a clean correction).  You can see the corrected result in my comparison in the opening section.

On full frame the defects are arguably a part of the unique “look” of images used on a larger sensor than what it was designed for.  Here’s a case in point at F0.95 on the high resolution Alpha 1:

When composing near the center, the vignette and corner sharpness naturally focus the eye towards the center of the frame.  If you want a technically perfect full frame result, you need to buy a different lens.  The TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 is going to be far more appealing to those who value the “feel” of images over technicalities.

I didn’t actually find that the lens struggled with a lot of Longitudinal CA (fringing), though you can see some general fringing and “blooming” on high contrast subjects due to the low contrast.

I didn’t see a lot of noticeable fringing in bokeh highlights, however, which is a big deal on a lens like this that produces so much bokeh!

Neither did I see much in terms of lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame.  This image is an interesting one to share as it illustrates several points.  This was shot on the Alpha 1, and the first crop shows a very sharp result even on a high resolution body in the “sweet spot” of the lens.  The second crop shows both the low amount of fringing in the high contrast areas near the edge of the frame and also the spot where the lens ceases to be able to resolve the corners of the full frame sensor.  That last 3-4% of the frame becomes a watercolor.  

We’ll do our formal test on the APS-C image circle that the lens is designed for, using the 24MP Sony a6400 for this series of tests.  Here’s a look at the test chart:

High magnification crops (nearly 200%) at F0.95 show reasonable resolution but very low contrast in the center and midframe result, but nearly no image quality to speak of in the far corner:

You can see the “blooming” and fringing around high contrast transition areas that are evidence of the low contrast issues.

Stopping down to F1.4 produces a little more contrast but there still isn’t a lot of apparent sharpness.  By F2 the center and mid-frame are starting to sharpen up:

…though the corners have a long way to go!

Corners don’t look great until F5.6, where there is excellent sharpness across the frame even at high magnification:

Real world results look even better, with great detail across the frame.

That looks great, obviously, but don’t buy this lens to do that (or least as your priority).  If you buy this lens, buy it for shots like this:

Look a how gorgeous that bokeh is at F0.95!

Lenses like this have a dual nature.  You can choose the “dreamy” look at wide apertures, and then trade that for increased sharpness and contrast when you stop down…though at the cost of the creamy background.

If you want a lens that can give you both high contrast at wide apertures AND that creamy background, you’ll have to pay a LOT more money!

I mentioned that the TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 doesn’t come with a lens hood, but it frankly could use one.  I saw a variety of different flare related issues depending on where I placed the sun in the frame (and as I changed apertures):

Things really vary widely depending on the unique position of the sun.  You can go from next to nothing to extreme flare artifacts, so be careful with your composition and where you place the sun.

But technical merits aside, the TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 is the kind of lens that can reward you with really gorgeous, unique images even with the simplest of subjects.

I would encourage you to check out the image gallery below to enjoy more of the lens and its “flavor”.

Conclusion

The TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 is the kind of lens that you can have a lot of fun with if you go into it with realistic expectations of what it is…and what it isn’t.  The fact that it could also (mostly) work on a full frame camera really increased my enjoyment of the lens, as (at least on Sony) the full frame cameras tend to be much more fun to use with manual focus lenses than the APS-C cameras are.  Use it to your strengths, and this is a lens that might just give you a lot of joy.

Stop the lens down and it becomes a nice landscape lens and behaves pretty much like any other lens.

But it is when you embrace the imperfections that the potential of the lens is unlocked.  Forget about the pixel peeping and just enjoy the shallow depth of field, the beautiful bokeh, and the quirky charm of the lens.  Shoot at night, shoot in dim venues, and let the light in via that massive amount of glass.  F0.95 isn’t for everyone, but it can be a lot of fun.

Pros:

  • Huge maximum aperture
  • Creamy bokeh
  • Overengineered for APS-C and covers most of full frame
  • Low vignette and distortion on APS-C
  • Nice build quality with smooth focus ring
  • Great price
  • Great subject isolation
  • Fun in low light

Cons:

  • Not very sharp wide open
  • Low contrast until F2.8
  • Corners soft until small apertures
  • Flare Prone

 

Photo Gallery:

 
Gear Used:

Purchase the TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Pergear 

Purchase the Sony E 11mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

Purchase the TTArtisan 23mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | PerGear | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

Purchase the TTArtisan 40mm F2.8 1:1 Macro @ B&H Photo | Amazon | PerGear (Worldwide)  | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

Purchase the Sony a6600 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase the Sony a6400 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

 

 

Peak Design Leash Strap:  Peak Design StoreB&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada  | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

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Keywords: TTArtisan 50mm F0.95, TTArtisan 50mm Review, TTArtisan 50mm F0.95, F0.95, F/0.95, Review, TTArtisan, 50mm, TT Artisan, Review, Sony a6400, Sony a6600, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7IV, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Sample Video, Let the Light In, Burst, Action

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Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 Review

Dustin Abbott

November 22nd, 2021

Over the past few years, it has become increasingly common for what I call “Boutique Third Party” brands (small lens startups) to deliver some really interesting budget lenses.  Many of the early lenses were designed for the smaller APS-C sensor, but recently I’ve seen more of them tackle the more challenging full frame image circle.  That’s the case here, where lens company Brightin Star has released the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 lens for Canon RF (reviewed here), Fuji X-mount, Nikon Z mount, Sony FE mount, and Sigma L mount.  The Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 has a massive maximum aperture (a lot of glass in there!) and costs under $400.  It is (like similar lenses) a manual everything lens, with a manual focus and aperture ring and no electronic contacts.  This makes it easy for the company to sell for a variety of lens mounts, and the features of modern cameras help make up for the limitations and deficiencies of lenses like these.  The lens metered well on my Canon EOS R5 which I used for this test, I was able to program the IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) for the proper focal length so that I received stabilization for my shots, and the ability to use focus overlays and magnify the image in the viewfinder allowed me to get accurate focus results even the extremely shallow depth of field that a lens with a maximum aperture of F0.95 produces.

There are always huge challenges when engineering extreme lenses (and any lens with a maximum aperture of F0.95 qualifies as extreme).  The lens is often fairly large and heavy due to the large and heavy glass elements inside.  Contrast near that maximum aperture is typically somewhat poor, and such a lens is often flare prone due to so much glass.  The Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 suffers from some of those shortcomings, to be sure, though there are also some huge redeeming qualities.  There is something very special about the rendering from large aperture glass which makes images more than the sum of their technical parts.  Being able to produce incredibly shallow depth of field shots like this is that draws people in!

Anytime you use a “manual everything” lens, you do for one of two primary reasons.  One is if you can’t afford the equivalent autofocus lens, which typically will cost a LOT more.  But the second reason that some of us will use manual focus lenses is for the love of the organic process of shooting slowly, more deliberately, and with a lot of thought into the art of making images.

The last lens with a massive maximum aperture like this that I tested was the Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus lens; another extreme instrument.  There are definitely some similarities, though the Laowa is the more expensive lens and has a few more premium features.  That lens was clearly not for everyone, and neither is this 50mm F0.95, though the price point of about $390 USD makes this a far more accessible choice.  But is the right choice for you?  You can watch my definitive review here to find out…or just keep reading!

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Thanks to Brightin Star for sending me this lens for review.  As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and the photos shown in this review have been taken on my 45 MP Canon EOS R5.

Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 Build, Handling, and Features

It really isn’t possible to build a full frame lens with an aperture this large and also get a small lens, though the 50mm F0.95 isn’t particularly large.  It is only 70mm in diameter (leaving a 62mm front filter thread) and 90mm in length.  That’s what makes the heft so surprising; this relatively compact lens weighs a whopping 750g!

In many ways this Brightin Star lens resembles a classic Zeiss lenses in construction, and that’s never been more apt than on this more premium Argus lens.  Everything is all metal and glass, and that contributes to that uniquely dense sense of heft that reminds me of a Zeiss lens.  

The focus ring is made of ribbed metal and is nicely damped (though a bit on the heavy side), but it moves smoothly and precisely along its roughly 170° of rotation.  I wouldn’t have minded just a bit more focus throw, and you can quickly move out of focus when shooting at F0.95.

This is an all manual lens without any electronics, which does mean that both focus and aperture must be controlled manually.  The aperture ring moves reasonably well, but the “clicks” feel a little too aggressive, which does make the ring feel a little less smooth in operation. There is no option to declick the aperture.  There are only full aperture markings on the lens, and unfortunately the detents are only at the full stops.  Worse still is that the aperture ring goes right from F0.95 to F1.4, which is more than a full stop.  I would have liked to at least be able to select F1.2 as an option.

The aperture iris itself features ten aperture blades, but unfortunately those blades aren’t rounded at all, so as soon as the blades show (F1.4), you can see the aperture shape, and that becomes more obvious still at F2.

In some situations you will get a bit of a “swirl” effect to the bokeh due to the geometric deformation on the edges of the frame, but this is actually a fairly popular effect, and it looks very cool on certain images:

With the aperture blades retracted, however, you can see a LOT of glass in the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95:

As a fully manual lens, there are no switches or controls other than the rings and the aperture click control.  The lens does have nicely etched distance markings along with a hyperfocal guide.

The lens has a built in lens hood, one that slides into place by just pulling it forward, or pushing it back when not in use.  It’s a good idea in theory, but I often find with these lens hoods that they rarely stay put in either position.  I would prefer it locked into place in some way.  As we will see, however, the hood is definitely needed!

There isn’t anything like weather sealing, image stabilization, or any kind of electronics built into the lens.  If you’re not familiar with how lenses like this work, they do function largely as normal save you have to control focus and aperture.  The camera will still meter properly and takes photos as normal, though you will have to turn ON a setting in the camera to release the shutter without a lens attached.  This seems counterintuitive, since a lens IS attached, but since there are no electronics, the camera doesn’t know a lens is there.  What isn’t as normal, however, is that no electronic information is submitted to the camera, so the camera won’t know the focal length or lens designation nor the selected aperture for the shot.  There will be no automatic distortion or vignette correction; this will all have to be dealt with in post.  The EXIF data only contains what the camera provides, like ISO and shutter speed.  If you have a camera with IBIS (in body image stabilization) you will have to manually set the focal length on the lens, but then the image stabilization will work normally.

The 50mm F0.95 feels nice in the hands and operates fine, though obviously there are some drawbacks to the operation as detailed.

Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 Optical Performance

As I noted in the introduction, developing an F0.95 lens for full frame is a big achievement for any company.  As you increase the maximum aperture size you all also increase the risk of many optical aberrations.  The most typical are low contrast, high chromatic aberrations, heavy vignette, and being extremely flare prone.  You can pretty much guarantee that all of these will happen to some degree; the question is how much these aberrations can be minimized.  All of these were present in the supremely expensive Canon EF F1.0L lens that I tested.  Some (but not all) of these aberrations can be part of the “look” or charm of the rendering from the lens, so I have to revise my filter for approaching a lens like this.  It isn’t really about supreme sharpness; it’s about creating a unique, shallow depth of field look.  I still need to run my tests to determine what we are dealing with, but I also want to balance this with some real world results.  Lenses like this rarely chart well, but that doesn’t mean they can’t create compelling images.

The optical formula is 10 elements in 9 groups.  A quick look at the MTF (the green lines represent the typical 30 LP/mm standard) shows fairly low sharpness and contrast in the center and mid-frame (abut 45% resolved) with even less sharpness in the corners of the frame (down to like 6%) at F0.95:

That’s really going to show up on a 45MP camera like my EOS R5, but more on that in a moment.  First, let’s look at a few contributing causes to the unique look of images here.

Here’s a look at vignette and distortion.

There’s a moderate amount of barrel distortion that required a +9 to correct for, and at F0.95 there’s a LOT of heavy vignette.  I used a +88 to correct for it, but that still leaves a bit of darkening in the corners.  Correcting further ends up in an overcorrection elsewhere, so I elected to live with that result.  My correction information is going to be a little more important than usual, as it is unlikely you’ll see an automatic correction profile for this lens in any software, nor will it receive any correction in camera.

In some settings that vignette will look terrible (a winter scene with snow, for example), but there are also a lot of scenes where the vignette is part of the look (charm) of an image, like this:

I once had a conversation with a Zeiss executive, and he told me that the heavy vignette on a certain Zeiss lens was a feature, not a bug.  It was part of the unique look, and I did see his point.  In some images the heavy vignette really draws your eye towards the center of the frame, though this obviously works best with a center composition.  In other images, however, it just looks terrible.

Vignette improves at smaller apertures, and I didn’t see anything negative in a landscape image like this:

Heavy vignette is one of the expected optical weaknesses of a large aperture lens, and it is on full display here.

How about chromatic aberrations?  There are some chromatic aberrations (you’ll see them most often if you miss focus), but I didn’t find them to be particularly pronounced, even in a potentially difficult image like this:

There’s a lot of shiny surfaces there, but the CA really isn’t too bad.

Lateral CA (LaCA) also isn’t bad.  I saw a bit of fringing in these bare branches at the edge, but nothing serious.

What I did see, however, was a lot some surface or spherical aberrations that have the primary effect of reducing contrast at large apertures.  You can see at a pixel level in this shot how there seems to be a bit of a “smear” on textures due to these aberrations.

This is very common for ultra-wide aperture lenses, and will be pretty obvious on our sharpness and contrast chart tests.  Here’s a look at that chart for reference:

If we look at crops at F0.95 from across the frame, my results are a little random.  You can definitely see the low contrast, but also that results do have some sharpness there behind the textures.  I say the results are random mostly because it seemed like at this distance (roughly 1.7 meters/5.5 feet), I could get sharp focus in either the center or the corner, but not both at the same time.  There’s definitely some field curvature.

A real world F0.95 shot shows the lower contrast but also that there is some usable resolution in the center of the frame.

What I found in general is that microcontrast for the lens is not great (textures don’t have great acuity at a pixel level), but the global contrast results from the lens look fairly good.  That shot of Bella was a case in point; you can see the spherical aberrations at a pixel level, but the overall image looks fairly crisp and high contrast.  If you’re someone who cares more about the latter than the former, you might just be a fan of this lens.

Close up is not really a strength for the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 in general.  It can only focus as close half a meter (50cm) and has a rather low 0.12x(ish) magnification, which is a little less than the standard of 0.15x for 50mm lenses.  Here’s what that magnification looks like, and you can probably also see that contrast is lower still at this focus distance.

Interestingly, though, if you stop down to F2, contrast will skyrocket up close.

Stopping down to F1.4 increases contrast slightly, but acuity doesn’t take a big jump anywhere.  Corners show the largest improvement.

Stopping down to F2 shows a big jump in contrast and thus apparent sharpness, much like we saw up close.

By F2.8 the sharpness extends mostly to the corners (the last 3-4% is still soft), but, as noted, the sharpness profile is a little uneven still.  Centering is not exceptional for the lens.

Here’s a great case in point at F4.  Note that the center is good and the extreme corner is good, but if you look at the left side of the corner crop, the area about 10% into the frame is softer than the extreme corner.  

Weird.

At most landscape apertures the midframe is arguably better than the center, but at F5.6-F8 you’ve got very good sharpness across the frame. 

I like F8 the best as a landscape aperture with this lens for consistency across the frame, but F5.6 is a close second.  Here’s a real world landscape at F5.6, and it shows excellent detail across the frame in the crops:

Even at wider apertures like F1.4 to F2, you can get very useful sharpness while still retaining pleasant bokeh:

In some ways the lens reminds me a lot of the Voigtländer 40mm F1.2 that I tested on Sony.  It follows a similar pattern of lower contrast results at wide apertures but becomes very crisp at smaller apertures.  The Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 is capable of producing some lovely landscape images, like this:

But you can also use depth of field to creatively draw the eye even in a landscape type scene.  I find this almost has a bit of a “tilt” effect.

In mid-November (when I’m working on this review), a lot of the colors have started to leach out of the world as a lot of foliage dies back.  The glass in this lens doesn’t have Zeiss’ “special sauce” that makes colors so amazing (Voigtländer lenses are similar), but where I found a few pops of color out in the nature I thought that the images looked fairly good:

One of the best applications for the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 is to allow the lens to produce that lovely subject isolation.  Even if you stop down a bit (this image is F1.4, I believe), you keep a really shallow depth of field along with a nice three-dimensional pop to your subject:

Here’s another image that shows off that amazingly shallow depth of field.

This is obviously a lens capable of producing a great amount of bokeh, and so shots that use that to advantage are obviously going to really work with this lens:

I also think that this is a lens that has a lot of appeal for video work (particularly if you are on a budget).  You can really go for some shallow depth of field looks, and so that is obviously really intriguing.

Don’t hesitate to shoot through foreground objects, too, as the very shallow depth of field allows you to create unique, visual interesting points in an image.

This is the kind of lens that opens up a lot of creative options for the right kind of photographer.


So let’s talk about portraiture… A lens like this has some unique portrait applications.  One of my favorites is to use the shallow depth of field to create natural frames and depth to an image, like this:

You can see the two different looks created by playing with the aperture.  On the left, at F0.95, you can see the softer, low contrast, “dreamy” look that has a bit of color fringing.  Stopping down to F2 (on the right), really boosts contrast and clarity, though the background isn’t as soft.  You have multiple options for how to approach a scene.

I found this an enjoyable lens to use in a portrait session because of images that were creatively fun.  I could really do a lot of editing and enjoy up with something very vintage and unique.


 

There’s one final area of weakness to cover, however, and that is that (unsurprisingly), the lens is a quite flare-prone.  The lens hood is very shallow, and that’s a LOT of glass for the sun to be hitting and bouncing around in.  I found that the severity of the flare effects depended a lot on how I composed the shot, but, at its worst, I saw a lot of veiling (loss of contrast) and some ghosting artifacts (blobs of color):

Now some will find these unique flare patterns artful, but that won’t be true for everyone.  It’s important for you as a consumer to decide what does and doesn’t work for you.

Overall, the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 is about what I expect from this kind of lens.  This is not a highly corrected lens without any optical flaws, but the byproduct is that it is also a lens with a lot of character…the kind of character that certain photographers will love because it feels vintage and analog rather than modern and clinical.  Others will consider it soft and not particularly useful.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I hope this section has helped you determine your own feelings about the optical performance of the lens.  Feel free to check out more images by visiting the image gallery here.

Conclusion

The Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 is not a lens for everyone.  We knew that from the outset, however, because it is a manual everything lens.  The huge maximum aperture will be the headline getter, however, and I expect there will be some definitely interested in the lens due to that.  It helps that this lens has a variety of lens mounts, so it can potentially intrigue some buyers whether they have a Canon RF, Nikon Z, Sony FE, Sigma/Leica L, or Fuji X-mount cameras.  Platforms like Canon RF and Nikon Z have relatively few inexpensive options, so to get a lens like this in a native mount will be somewhat intriguing.  This is a lens designed for a certain kind of photographer.  That photographer tends to be creative and deliberate, one who treasures unique rendering over technical perfection and who isn’t afraid to move a little slower in the capture process in order to get the right shot.

I know that there are plenty of photographers who feel that a lens that gives dreamy images at very wide apertures and crisper, more modern results when stopped down a bit is almost like having two lenses.  They give two different ways to approach a scene.  I stopped down to F2 for this shot of Loki, and the detail shows a pretty modern looking amount of detail even on a demanding 45MP sensor:

But can also create the shallow depth of field, more artsy shots that some photographers love.  Portrait photographers in particular will enjoy the ability to shoot unique images with foreground objects blurred out, like here:

If the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 isn’t for you, that’s perfectly okay.  No lens with a massive aperture like this is going to be mainstream because, frankly, it takes more skill to use, and that’s doubly true when you are talking about a fully manual lens.  But I am convinced that there is an audience for this lens, one that’s intrigued with the idea of using the ultimate big aperture and seeing what they can create.  That lens is here, and with a price tag of roughly $400, it is also a lens that is attainable for many photographers.  If your creative style tends towards the artistic and dreamy, this might just the lens that gets your creative juices flowing again!

Pros:

  • Nicely built lens
  • Budget Price
  • Focus Ring and Aperture ring move nicely
  • Relatively compact
  • Nice, soft bokeh rendering
  • Creates really creamy foreground bokeh when layering images
  • Quite sharp when stopped down
  • Has good global contrast even though micro-contrast isn’t great
  • Comes in variety of popular mounts

Cons:

  • Very flare prone
  • Low contrast at F0.95
  • Lens hood design
  • Aperture blades can be seen by F1.4
  • Uneven sharpness profile at times

 

Gear Used:

Purchase the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 @ Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK  

Purchase a Canon EOS R5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Canon EOS R6 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

 

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Peak Design Leash Strap:  Peak Design StoreB&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada  | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like.  Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

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Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

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Purchase the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 @ Amazon https://amzn.to/3ccVI3O | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3cbDsIk | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3cbJLvj 

Keywords: Brightin Star 50mm F0.95, F/0.95, Brightin Star, 50mm, Bright Star 50mm Review, Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 Review, F0.95, 0.95, Manual Focus, Bokeh, Review, Canon EOS R5, EOS, R5, EOS R5, mirrorless, full frame, EOS R5 Review, Canon R5 Review, Canon EOS R5 Review, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Astro, Astrophotography, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, Astro, 45Mp, Sony, Fuji, Nikon

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 Image Gallery

Dustin Abbott

November 21st, 2021

Over the past few years, it has become increasingly common for what I call “Boutique Third Party” brands (small lens startups) to deliver some really interesting budget lenses.  Many of the early lenses were designed for the smaller APS-C sensor, but recently I’ve seen more of them tackle the more challenging full frame image circle.  That’s the case here, where lens company Brightin Star has released the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 lens for Canon RF (reviewed here), Fuji X-mount, Nikon Z mount, Sony FE mount, and Sigma L mount.  The Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 has a massive maximum aperture (a lot of glass in there!) and costs under $400.  It is (like similar lenses) a manual everything lens, with a manual focus and aperture ring and no electronic contacts.  This makes it easy for the company to sell for a variety of lens mounts, and the features of modern cameras help make up for the limitations and deficiencies of lenses like these.  The lens metered well on my Canon EOS R5 which I used for this test, I was able to program the IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) for the proper focal length so that I received stabilization for my shots, and the ability to use focus overlays and magnify the image in the viewfinder allowed me to get accurate focus results even the extremely shallow depth of field that a lens with a maximum aperture of F0.95 produces.

There are always huge challenges when engineering extreme lenses (and any lens with a maximum aperture of F0.95 qualifies as extreme).  The lens is often fairly large and heavy due to the large and heavy glass elements inside.  Contrast near that maximum aperture is typically somewhat poor, and such a lens is often flare prone due to so much glass.  The Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 suffers from some of those shortcomings, to be sure, though there are also some huge redeeming qualities.  There is something very special about the rendering from large aperture glass which makes images more than the sum of their technical parts.  Being able to produce incredibly shallow depth of field shots like this is that draws people in!

Anytime you use a “manual everything” lens, you do for one of two primary reasons.  One is if you can’t afford the equivalent autofocus lens, which typically will cost a LOT more.  But the second reason that some of us will use manual focus lenses is for the love of the organic process of shooting slowly, more deliberately, and with a lot of thought into the art of making images.

The last lens with a massive maximum aperture like this that I tested was the Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus lens; another extreme instrument.  There are definitely some similarities, though the Laowa is the more expensive lens and has a few more premium features.  That lens was clearly not for everyone, and neither is this 50mm F0.95, though the price point of about $390 USD makes this a far more accessible choice.  But is the right choice for you?  You can watch my definitive review or read the text review to get my conclusions…or just enjoy the photos below.

Follow Me @  Patreon  |  My Newsletter |  Instagram | Facebook | DA Merchandise | Flickr | 500px

Thanks to Brightin Star for sending me this lens for review.  As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and the photos shown in this review have been taken on my 45 MP Canon EOS R5.

Images of the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 

Image from the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 

Gear Used:

Purchase the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 @ Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK  

Purchase a Canon EOS R5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Canon EOS R6 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

 

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Peak Design Leash Strap:  Peak Design StoreB&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada  | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like.  Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

B&H Logo

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

Check me out on:  My Patreon  | Sign Up for My Newsletter |  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Flickr | 500px |  Google+ |


Purchase the Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 @ Amazon https://amzn.to/3ccVI3O | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3cbDsIk | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3cbJLvj 

Keywords: Brightin Star 50mm F0.95, F/0.95, Brightin Star, 50mm, Bright Star 50mm Review, Brightin Star 50mm F0.95 Review, F0.95, 0.95, Manual Focus, Bokeh, Review, Canon EOS R5, EOS, R5, EOS R5, mirrorless, full frame, EOS R5 Review, Canon R5 Review, Canon EOS R5 Review, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Astro, Astrophotography, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, Astro, 45Mp, Sony, Fuji, Nikon

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus Image Gallery

Dustin Abbott

September 13th, 2021

Lenses with huge maximum apertures have become a little more common in recent years as newer technologies paired with a little more room for experimentation due to the proliferation of mirrorless cameras.  Mirrorless cameras have proven to be more accessible to third party brands (particularly those that produce manual focus lenses) and also have many more manual focus aids.  Typically, however, those massive maximum apertures are found on APS-C lenses, where the smaller sensor and image circle is easier to engineer for.  Laowa has already gone there on APS-C with the Laowa 33mm F0.95 Argus APO lens.  But now they have taken the big step and tackled a full frame massive aperture 35mm lens – the Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus (which we’ll call the Argus 35 for brevity).   *The tests and the photos shown in this review have been taken on a 45 MP Canon EOS R5.

This is a huge engineering challenge.  Developing a functional lens with this large of a maximum aperture is incredibly difficult.  I once had a chance to review the extremely rare and expensive Canon EF 50mm F1.0L, one of the few autofocusing lenses with a maximum aperture that large.  While the technical accomplishment of that lens was impressive (and spawned the much more practical F1.2 50mm and 85mm lenses), the lens itself was not particularly practical, and, frankly, it was not an easy lens to use.  It was more of a novelty to me.  The Argus 35 has a larger aperture still, as F0.95 is about 1 and 1/6th stops faster than F1.4 (the typical large aperture for a professional 35mm lens).  That means that this lens can let in more than twice as much light as, say, my Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II lens.  On a practical level, that means that in a lighting situation where the Argus 35 requires a 1/100th shutter speed, an F1.4 lens would be close to 1/40th second.  This could be significant in very low light situations.  It also means that the Argus is going to be capable of some massive subject isolation when you’re close to your subject, like above.  Depth of field is tiny!

This can also lead to some rather stunning subjective isolation even a little further away like in this shot, where the wide angle of view is also accompanied by only Loki’s head being in focus:

The Argus 35 is being released in Canon RF, Nikon Z, and Sony FE mounts.  I requested a Canon RF mount loaner, mostly because Sony sees so many more releases and I needed a reason to use my lovely Canon EOS R5 for a change!

The challenge for Laowa is going to be whether they’ve managed to produce a lens with some practical value to potential customers, or simply a novelty.  Check out my text or video review for my thoughts on that, or just check out the pretty photos from this intriguing new optical option.

 

Follow Me @  Patreon  |  My Newsletter |  Instagram | Facebook | DA Merchandise | Flickr | 500px

Thanks to Laowa for getting me a prerelease loaner of the lens.   As always, this is a completely independent review.

Photos of the Argus 35

Photos taken with the Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus 

Gear Used:

Purchase a Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus @ B&H Photo  | Amazon | Camera Canada | Laowa | Amplis Foto  | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase a Canon EOS R6 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Canon EOS R5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Sony a9M2 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Sony a9 Camera:  B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada  | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 
Sony a7RIV Camera: B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Peak Design Leash Strap:  Peak Design StoreB&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada  | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like.  Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

B&H Logo

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

Check me out on:  My Patreon  | Sign Up for My Newsletter |  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Flickr | 500px |  Google+ |


 

Keywords: laowa 35mm, laowa 35mm F0.95, laowa 35mm F/0.95, laowa 35 argus, argus, 35mm, F0.95, F/0.95, laowa, laowa 35mm F0.95 review, laowa 35mm argus review, Review, Dustin Abbott, Portrait, Canon EOS R5, R5, R6, EOS R, Sony a7RIV, Sony Alpha 1, Sharpness, Resolution, Bokeh, Video Test, Sample Images, Real World

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus Review

Dustin Abbott

September 13th, 2021

Lenses with huge maximum apertures have become a little more common in recent years as newer technologies paired with a little more room for experimentation due to the proliferation of mirrorless cameras.  Mirrorless cameras have proven to be more accessible to third party brands (particularly those that produce manual focus lenses) and also have many more manual focus aids.  Typically, however, those massive maximum apertures are found on APS-C lenses, where the smaller sensor and image circle is easier to engineer for.  Laowa has already gone there on APS-C with the Laowa 33mm F0.95 Argus APO lens.  But now they have taken the big step and tackled a full frame massive aperture 35mm lens – the Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus (which we’ll call the Argus 35 for brevity).   *The tests and the photos shown in this review have been taken on a 45 MP Canon EOS R5.

This is a huge engineering challenge.  Developing a functional lens with this large of a maximum aperture is incredibly difficult.  I once had a chance to review the extremely rare and expensive Canon EF 50mm F1.0L, one of the few autofocusing lenses with a maximum aperture that large.  While the technical accomplishment of that lens was impressive (and spawned the much more practical F1.2 50mm and 85mm lenses), the lens itself was not particularly practical, and, frankly, it was not an easy lens to use.  It was more of a novelty to me.  The Argus 35 has a larger aperture still, as F0.95 is about 1 and 1/6th stops faster than F1.4 (the typical large aperture for a professional 35mm lens).  That means that this lens can let in more than twice as much light as, say, my Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II lens.  On a practical level, that means that in a lighting situation where the Argus 35 requires a 1/100th shutter speed, an F1.4 lens would be close to 1/40th second.  This could be significant in very low light situations.  It also means that the Argus is going to be capable of some massive subject isolation when you’re close to your subject, like above.  Depth of field is tiny!

This can also lead to some rather stunning subjective isolation even a little further away like in this shot, where the wide angle of view is also accompanied by only Loki’s head being in focus:

The Argus 35 is being released in Canon RF, Nikon Z, and Sony FE mounts.  I requested a Canon RF mount loaner, mostly because Sony sees so many more releases and I needed a reason to use my lovely Canon EOS R5 for a change!

The challenge for Laowa is going to be whether they’ve managed to produce a lens with some practical value to potential customers, or simply a novelty.  I’ll do my best to help you make that determination for yourself in this review.  You can watch either my long format definitive or shorter standard video reviews…or just keep reading!

Follow Me @  Patreon  |  My Newsletter |  Instagram | Facebook | DA Merchandise | Flickr | 500px

Thanks to Laowa for getting me a prerelease loaner of the lens.   As always, this is a completely independent review.

Argus 35 Build, Handling, and Features

It really isn’t possible to build a full frame lens with an aperture this large and also get a small lens, though the Argus 35 isn’t impractically large.  It is 76.8mm in diameter and 103mm in length, so roughly similar to the aforementioned Canon 35mm F1.4 lens.  The Argus 35 is actually slightly smaller in size and even (surprisingly) 5g lighter at 755g.  I say surprisingly because the Argus has Laowa’s typical heavy duty, all metal lens construction.  Everything is a lot of metal and glass, giving it a beautiful, quality feel to it.

I’ve compared Laowa lenses to classic Zeiss lenses in construction, and that’s never been more apt than on this more premium Argus lens.  Everything is beautifully made, up to and including the shallow metal lens hood that bayonets on the front.

The focus ring is made of ribbed metal and is perfectly damped, moving smoothly and precisely along its near 270° of rotation.  That means there is a LOT of focus possibilities due to the shallow depth of field, but the beautiful manual focus action does allow you to focus with precision.

This is an all manual lens without any electronics, which does mean that both focus and aperture must be controlled manually.  The aperture ring also moves smoothly, and you have the choice of using it “clicked” or “declicked”.  There is a switch on the left side of the barrel that allows you to choose between the two.  When “clicked”, you will feel light detents at the major aperture stops (F1.2, F1.4, F2, F2.8, etc…)  This is the typical arrangement for photographers.  In the “declicked” mode the aperture will smoothly move throughout its whole range without any stops.  This allows for videographers to do aperture “racking” and is typically the preferred approach for videography.  

In either case, the aperture is pretty awesome.  It sports an incredibly high 15 blades, and does an amazing job of staying circular in shape as it is stopped down.  It’s a treat to watch those blades open and close as you slide that aperture ring.

You can see the shape of bokeh highlights stays round as you stop the lens down from wide open to F1.4 to F2:

In some situations you will get a bit of a “swirl” effect to the bokeh due to the geometric deformation on the edges of the frame, but this is actually a fair popular effect.

With the aperture blades retracted, however, you can see a LOT of glass in the Argus 35:

As a fully manual lens, there are no switches or controls other than the rings and the aperture click control.  The lens does have nicely etched distance markings along with a hyperfocal guide.

There isn’t anything like weather sealing, image stabilization, or any kind of electronics built into the lens.  If you’re not familiar with how lenses like this work, they do function largely as normal save you have to control focus and aperture.  The camera will still meter properly and takes photos as normal, though you will have to turn ON a setting in the camera to release the shutter without a lens attached.  This seems counterintuitive, since a lens IS attached, but since there are no electronics, the camera doesn’t know a lens is there.  What isn’t as normal, however, is that no electronic information is submitted to the camera, so the camera won’t know the focal length or lens designation nor the selected aperture for the shot.  There will be no automatic distortion or vignette correction; this will all have to be dealt with in post.  The EXIF data only contains what the camera provides, like ISO and shutter speed.  If you have a camera with IBIS (in body image stabilization) you will have to manually set the focal length on the lens, but then the image stabilization will work normally.

The Argus 35 feels dense and well made (Laowa can be proud of the build quality), though I would like to see some further progression by Laowa on both the electronics side along with some weather sealing on these premium lenses.  The Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus is priced at $899 USD, which is fairly reasonable for a premium lens with such a large maximum aperture, but it’s also far from an inexpensive lens, too.  I want to see Laowa go to the next level of lens development, as I know they are capable of it.

Argus 35 Optical Performance

As I noted in the introduction, developing an F0.95 lens for full frame is a big achievement for any company.  As you increase the maximum aperture size you all also increase the risk of many optical aberrations.  The most typical are low contrast, high chromatic aberrations, heavy vignette, and being extremely flare prone.  You can pretty much guarantee that all of these will happen to some degree; the question is how much these aberrations can be minimized.  All of these were present in the Canon EF F1.0L lens that I tested.  Some of these aberrations can be part of the “look” or charm of the rendering from the lens, so we’ll try not to get lost in the technical weeds here.  It might be sufficed to say that the Argus 35 is capable of producing a lot of different kinds of images.

The optical formula is 14 elements in 9 groups, including 1 Aspherical Lens, 1 ED glass element, and 4 UHR elements.  A quick look at the MTF shows a small sweet spot of high sharpness and contrast in the middle of the frame with a rapid dip towards the mid-frame and slide into fairly low sharpness and contrast in the corners of the frame at F0.95:

That is particularly true on a higher resolution body like my EOS R5 (45MP).  You will see a performance somewhere between the blue and red lines on a lower resolution body like the R6 or similar camera on Sony/Nikon.

The Argus 35 showed some fairly typical Laowa optical flaws along with some of the Laowa strengths (this is the 9th Laowa review I’ve done, so I’m pretty familiar with their optical designs).  One of each shows up in our distortion and vignette test:

Vignette is one of those Laowa weaknesses, and it is very evident here.  I had to max out the vignette correction slider to achieve the result on the right above.  A typical Laowa strength is low distortion, and that’s true here.  I needed only a -4 to correct a mild amount of pincushion distortion.  The vignette is going to be factor, though, even at smaller apertures.  I went out on a foggy morning to shoot with the lens, and got some very obvious vignette in the corners because the foggy morning produced something akin to white in the top portion of the image.

I’ve found Laowa lenses aren’t my favorite in winter, either, for similar reasons.  

Even at smaller landscape apertures I could still see some vignette effects:

Like many Zeiss lenses, this can be part of the overall look of the images, however.  A feature rather than a bug, so to speak.  In some images the heavy vignette really draws your eye towards the center of the frame, though this obviously works best with a center composition.

Heavy vignette is one of the expected optical weaknesses of a large aperture lens, and it is on full display here.

How about chromatic aberrations?  I actually didn’t often see real world chromatic aberrations in any kind of pronounced way, though you can certainly see some longitudinal chromatic aberrations in this shot:

But in most of my nature type shots, I saw fairly minimal LoCA, certainly not enough to ruin images:

Lateral CA (LaCA) is even better controlled, with nice, crisp transitions from black to white on the edges of the frame on my test chart. 

What I did see, however, was some surface or spherical aberrations that have the primary effect of reducing contrast at large apertures.  This is very common for ultra-wide aperture lenses, and will be pretty obvious on our sharpness and contrast chart tests.  Here’s a look at that chart for reference:

If we look at crops at F0.95 from across the frame, we see the kind of pattern suggested by the MTF charts.  The center is quite good, with very usable resolution and contrast, but there is a steep drop-off to the midframe and the corners are softer still.  

A real world F0.95 shot shows the lower contrast but also that there is some usable resolution in the center of the frame.

Laowa did tell me that the lens is optimized for one meter to infinity, and that close up results would be softer, which I found to be true.  That’s slightly unfortunate for my style of photography, as I love using a 35mm close up.  Close up is not really a strength for the Argus 35 in general, however, as it can only focus as close half a meter (50cm) and has a rather low 0.1ox magnification, which is half (or less) what is common for 35mm lenses.  Here’s what that magnification looks like, and you can probably also see that contrast is lower still at this focus distance.

The amazing subject isolation can still make for some very interesting images at closer distances:

Stopping down to F1.4 increases resolution and contrast in the center and moving out a bit quickly, though the edges and corners remain soft:

The midframe is excellent by F2.8:

…while the corners take until about F4 before reaching peak sharpness:

By landscape apertures (F5.6-8), the lens is sharp across the frame, resolving fine details in a beautiful fashion:

In some ways the lens reminds me a lot of the Voigtländer 40mm F1.2 that I tested on Sony.  It follows a similar pattern of lower contrast results at wide apertures but becomes very crisp at smaller apertures.  The Argus 35 is capable of producing some lovely landscape images, like this:

I noted another Laowa trend, and that is that colors are not extremely saturated.  They are a bit muted out of camera, though one can always process to taste:

This will work fine for those that like to edit to a certain “look” anyway (particularly a lower contrast look), as I find the images naturally take to presets like Lightroom/ACR’s “Warm Contrast” creative look:

One of the best applications for the Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus is to allow the lens to produce that lovely subject isolation.  Even if you stop down a bit (this image is F2, I believe), you keep a really shallow depth of field along with a nice three-dimensional pop to your subject:

Here’s another image that combines that 3D subject isolation with one of those trendy filters to nice effect:

This is obviously a lens capable of producing a great amount of bokeh, and so dreamy, artsy shots are easy to get with it:

 

I also think that this is a lens that has a lot of appeal for video work.  The wonderful manual focus ring allows for excellent focus pulls, and the declicked aperture option allows for aperture racking.  You can really go for some shallow depth of field looks, and so that is obviously really intriguing.

Don’t hesitate to shoot through foreground objects, too, as the very shallow depth of field allows you to create unique, natural framing around your subjects, like I’ve done by shooting through this tree:

This is the kind of lens that opens up a lot of creative options for the right kind of photographer.

There’s one final area of weakness to cover, however, and that is that (unsurprisingly), the lens is a bit flare-prone.  The lens hood is very shallow, and that’s a LOT of glass for the sun to be hitting and bouncing around in.  I found that the severity of the flare effects depended a lot on how I composed the shot, but, at its worst, I saw a lot of veiling (loss of contrast) and some ghosting artifacts (blobs of color):

Compose carefully, however, and you might get some unique, artful images out of the lens in some flare situations.

Overall, the Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus is about what I expected – optically nuanced.  This is not a highly corrected lens without any optical flaws, but the byproduct is that it is also a lens with a lot of character…the kind of character that certain photographers will love becomes it feels vintage and analog rather than modern and clinical.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I hope this section has helped you determine your own feelings about the optical performance of the lens.  Feel free to check out more images by visiting the image gallery here.

Conclusion

The Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus is not a lens for everyone.  We knew that from the outset, however, because it is a manual everything lens.  The huge maximum aperture will be the headline getter, however, and I expect there will be some definitely interest in the lens due to that.  Add to this that there really isn’t a huge variety of native mount lenses available for Canon RF and Nikon Z (Sony FE is well covered at this point), and I suspect there will be some interested parties.  This is a lens designed for a certain kind of photographer.  That photographer tends to be creative and deliberate, one who treasures unique rendering over technical perfection and who isn’t afraid to move a little slower in the capture process in order to get the right shot.

I love the 35mm focal length, so I do appreciate the creative options that the Argus 35 brings even despite some of its technical imperfections.  I discovered when I did the Voigtländer Nokton 40mm F1.2 review that there are a lot of photographers who are more concerned with unique and beautiful rendering than just sharpness and contrast.  We need lens choices that service unique kinds of photographers, and I think that the Argus 35 does just that.  It can do a bit of the conventional at smaller apertures, like this:

But can also create the shallow depth of field, more artsy shots that some photographers love:

If the Laowa 35mm F0.95 isn’t for you, that’s perfectly okay.  No lens with a massive aperture like this is going to be mainstream because, frankly, it takes more skill to use, and that’s doubly true when you are talking about a fully manual lens.  But I am convinced that there is an audience for this lens, one that (for once) looked at the extreme wide aperture options that have become available for APS-C and wished that one for full frame would become available.  That lens is here, and while the price tag of roughly $900 USD isn’t cheap, it is also not ridiculous for a beautifully made lens like this one.  Laowa has always been a company willing to take chances, and here’s hoping this latest wild imagining pays dividends for them.

 

 

Pros:

  • Gorgeous build quality and design
  • Metal everything
  • Fantastic focus ring – buttery smooth
  • Choice of either clicked or declicked aperture
  • Massive, massive maximum aperture
  • Fabulous amounts of bokeh…with character
  • Some vintage charm and quirks in rendering
  • Low distortion
  • Reasonable price
  • Good video lens with creative options

Cons:

  • Fairly low contrast and resolution at large apertures except center of frame
  • Low magnification and poor performance up close
  • Somewhat flare prone
  • Very heavy vignette that lingers even at smaller apertures
  • Colors a little muted

 

Gear Used:

Purchase a Laowa 35mm F0.95 Argus @ B&H Photo  | Amazon | Camera Canada | Laowa | Amplis Foto  | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase a Canon EOS R6 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Canon EOS R5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase a Sony a9M2 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Sony a9 Camera:  B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada  | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 
Sony a7RIV Camera: B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Purchase a Sony a7C @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Peak Design Leash Strap:  Peak Design StoreB&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada  | Amazon UK

Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like.  Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

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Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

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Keywords: laowa 35mm, laowa 35mm F0.95, laowa 35mm F/0.95, laowa 35 argus, argus, 35mm, F0.95, F/0.95, laowa, laowa 35mm F0.95 review, laowa 35mm argus review, Review, Dustin Abbott, Portrait, Canon EOS R5, R5, R6, EOS R, Sony a7RIV, Sony Alpha 1, Sharpness, Resolution, Bokeh, Video Test, Sample Images, Real World

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

7Artisans 35mm F0.95 Review and Images

Dustin Abbott

February 19th, 2021

I had my first experience with a 7Artisans lens not quite a year ago when I reviewed the 55mm F1.4 from them.  I had seen 7Artisans mentioned a number of times because they fill an important niche in the market.  They design affordable wide aperture manual focus lenses in a variety of mounts, giving both photographers and filmmakers on a budget some creative options.  Perhaps none so creative as the new 7Artisans 35mm F0.95, a compact, well made made prime lens with a huge maximum aperture.  It is available in Sony E-mount (tested here), Fuji X-mount, Canon EF-M mount, Nikon Z mount, and Micro 4/3rds.

Despite the modest focal length (35mm with Sony’s 1.5x crop = 52.5mm full frame equivalent), that huge maximum aperture assures that you can create a lot of defocused area, and the resulting bokeh is nice and creamy.

The 7Artisans 35mm F0.95 has a very nice build quality.  Everything is made of metal and glass, and both the focus and aperture (declicked) rings move smoothly.  There is about 115 degrees of focus throw, and focus ring is beautifully damped.  There are no electronics in the lens, so you won’t get any EXIF reporting, and there isn’t any weathersealing.  This is also a lens that costs less than $250 USD, however, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect the latter.  One thing that 7Artisans does very well is designing beautiful aperture irises, and this one is no exception.  The 35mm F0.95 has a beautiful 12 bladed aperture that helps retain a round aperture even at smaller aperture values.

The 35mm F0.95 has a very useful amount of image sharpness on tap even at F0.95 in the center 2/3rds of the frame, though the corners lag significantly behind.  Contrast at wide apertures isn’t incredibly high, though I found that when using the lens wisely (to its strengths), both resolution and contrast surprised me.  In other situations where the lighting was more harsh, the flaws became more apparent.  The lens seems optimized for closer distances, and I was less impressed with its performance at infinity at wider apertures, though when stopped down the center 2/3rds looks great while the outer 1/3rd is less impressive even at smaller apertures.

There is a fair amount of both lateral and longitudinal chromatic aberrations in the from of green and purple fringing, though again those are more apparent in harsher lighting conditions.  Vignette is (surprisingly) not bad, though I think this stems from the fact that the lens actually covers a larger part of the image circle than just APS-C (I estimate more like APS-H, or 1.3x crop).  Stopping down increases contrast as the longitudinal CA clears up.  Flare resistance is not fantastic, though I never expected it to be with a lens that has such a large maximum aperture.

Bokeh is beautiful, however, soft and creamy.  The strength of the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95 is that is capable of providing adequate sharpness and contrast at very wide apertures while also delivering beautifully defocused backgrounds.  This gives you all kinds of creative options for either stills or video.

I think the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95 is a lens with a lot of character.  It tackles a very wide maximum aperture with aplomb, and I find using a lens like this a lot of fun…so long as you have time to shoot a little more deliberately.  It’s great value for money optically, and is definitely worth considering if you are looking for a budget prime that will open up creative opportunities.  If you want a detailed breakdown of performance and features, check out my video review of the lens…

…or just check out photos below.

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Photos of the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95

Photos Taken with the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95

Gear Used:

Purchase the 7Artisans 35mm F0.95 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | PerGear | Ebay 

Purchase the Sony a6400 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Sony a6500: B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon.ca | Amazon UK | Ebay
 

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

 

Peak Design Slide Lite:  Peak Design StoreB&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK

Peak Design Leash Strap:  Peak Design StoreB&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada  | Amazon UK
BenQ SW271 4K Photo Editing Monitor – B&H Photo  | Amazon | Amazon.ca | Amazon UK
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud 1-Year Subscription
Exposure Software X6 (Use Code “dustinabbott” to get 10% anything and everything)
Visit Dustin’s Amazon Storefront and see his favorite gear

Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like.  Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.

B&H Logo

Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!

Check me out on:  My Patreon  | Sign Up for My Newsletter |  Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Flickr | 500px |  Google+ |



 


 


Use Code “DUSTINHDR” to get $10 off ($15 CDN) any Skylum product:  Luminar, Aurora, or AirMagic


 

Keywords: 7Artisans, 7Artisans 35, 35mm, F0.95, F/0.95, 35mm F0.95, Review, 7Artisans 35 Review, Sony, Fuji, Portrait, Sony a7RIII, Sony a7III, Sony a9, Bokeh, Sharpness, Resolution, Video Test, Sample Images, Real World, Bokeh, Sharpness, Sony a6400, Sony a6600, Fuji X-S10, Fuji X-T4

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.