The engineers at Laowa certainly had no ambition to create a perfect lens when they designed this super wide and compact lens. Instead, they wanted to create a small, light and budget friendly lens, that would allow you to go super wide without breaking the bank or your back. When assessing this lens, I think it is important to measure the success based on how well they succeeded with their ambition, rather than the obvious drawbacks this lens also has.
This lens was announced 12th of November 2024 and at that point had a retail price around 400 USD. Laowa kindly sent me this lens for review, but has had no influence on the content here.
The promise on the tin: wide angle, low distortion, compact and full frame.
Compact
The Laowa FF 15mm F5.0 Cookie Lens is indeed a cookie! Mounted on my Nikon Z6ii it almost looks a bit lost. And the 160 grams it adds to the weight of the 700 gram camera indeed makes it a lightweight combo!
Laowa FF 15mm mounted on my Nikon Z6 mk II. Notice the aluminium handle that controls the focus ring.
F5.0
With an aperture range of F5 to F22 it is not the fastes of lenses, but I doubt you want to shoot razor thin depth of field with this lens. As is often the case with wide lenses, you can go crazy close to your subject – 0.12cm!
The aperture blades are straight! Yes, yes, yes! This will give some bokeh balls that are edgy, unless you shoot wide open, but the big benefit is that your sunstars will be beautifully cut out. In my book, sunstars are more important that bokeh balls, but of course your milage may vary.
Sunstar a la iPhone!
Minimalist
The Laowa FF 15mm lens has no electronics whatsoever. No CPU contacts, no auto focus, nothing. It is really back to basics – metal and glass all the way.
You need to be disciplined when it comes to setting up the lens in the camera as the camera has no idea what lens is being mounted. Especially if you – like me – sometimes sort and filter your images based on the focal length. On the Nikon you have to configure a non-CPU lens and make sure to select it before shooting.
You may think that the lack of auto focus is a big drawback, but when you work with a lens this wide, you probably don’t want to capture birds in flight or a football player on the move. Landscapes and architecture has a tendency to be more still and you can take your time to get the focus right. Assisted by the focus peak highlights in the camera, I find manual focus to be a breeze.
Laowa FF 15mm has a focus ring closest to the camera and an aperture ring closest to the front.
The Laowa FF 15mm lens has the aperture ring closest to the front of the lens and the focus ring towards the camera. This is opposite of what I am used to, so it took a little while to familiarize myself with this setup. Also, the focus is operated via a little handle sitting on the focus ring, and the throw is very short – only 70-80 degrees. Had this been a macro lens or a portrait lens, I would have considered this to be too short, but for landscapes and architecture, this will be less of an issue.
The user guide is as compact as the lens!
Image quality
You can find a small sample of test shots using this link to Flickr.
Both sharpness and contrast with this lens is good. The classic stress test is shooting wide open (F5) and looking at the corners of the image. You will notice that both contrast and sharpness drops significantly when you shoot wide open, but most lenses act the same way. And most worry about the center sharpness rather than the corners, although architecture photography may be the exception to that rule. But in my book, this lens is approved when it comes to sharpness and contrast.
F22 to the left, F5 to the right. This is heavily zoomed in on the top left of the image.
Although the tin promises “low distortion”, I do notice some distortion setting in when shooting tiles in my bathroom. If you are to shoot architecture with this lens, you need to make sure this will not be a problem for you.
The lens produces a rather dramatic vignetting, but you can fix this in post, so for me that is less of an issue.
Both at F5 and F22 there is noticeable pin cushion distortion. It is especially at the top of the lens I notice this distortion.
The green colour of the flare shows the dampening at work. Also notice the heavy vignetting (darkening of the corners).The flare is dampened via coating on the glass and it gives the well known green colouring of the light. Some photographers are fans of flare while others absolutely want to avoid it, so when it comes to flare dampening we are in personal preference territory. I have seen better dampening of the flare than what this lens has, but it is clearly having a reducing effect on the strength of the flare.
Close up shot of the light in an iPhone. Apterture at F5. The green color of the flare shows the dampening at work. Also notice the heavy vignetting clearly visible towards the white background.
As noted earlier, I absolutely love the simple and sharp sunstars the lens produces and I wish more lens producers would go with straight blades and prioritise the sunstars over the bokeh.
Summary
Clearly this is a highly specialised lens where low weight and low price has been prioritised by the lens designers. The vignetting is heavy and I cannot ignore the distortion when shooting wide open either. But if these are not issues for you and you are comfortable with manual focus, this lens may be the budget friendly wide lens you have been looking for. For me, I find that the price tag is a notch too high to justify the otherwise fun lens that probably many will enjoy as a light companion in their backpack.
I have the Nikkor 16-35mm zoom lens for the F-mount and I have so far been a happy camper as this lens allows me to do both landscape, architecture and street photography. But recently I took some photography training and the coach was rather insisting that I gave a 35mm prime a try. The training was otherwise very much about the process of photography and very little about camera gear and technique as such, but having seen my style of shooting, he was very insisting!
So approximately 2/3rds into the training (a 10 week course) I got this lens and fell in love with it immediately! And my assessment of the lens was confirmed by my fellow students, who noticed the difference in quality of the images I presented as part of the training! It was quite convincing as they noticed the lift in image quality without me mentioning the change of lens.
Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 S mounted on my Nikon Z6ii
The lens as such
Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 S is surprisingly long measuring 8-9 centimeters.
If you were hoping of a small and flat pancake like lens, then I have to disappoint you! This lens is surprisingly large given that it is only 35mm and I measured it to be around 8-9 centimeters (3.5 inch) long without the lens hood. Adding the lens hood, you are looking at a lens around 13-14 centimeters (5.5 inch) in length. Not exactly a lens where it is easy to hide what you are doing if shooting street photography where discretion can be a blessing!
It is not particular light either – around 370 grams. Not that it feels heavy in any way sitting on my Nikon Z6ii, but I was surprised that it was this heavy. I am not a lens engineer, but my guess is that Nikon prioritised performance and let the lens take the size and weight required to reach that goal.
The lens comes with a large and easy to find focus ring. The ring takes up half the length of the lens (approx 4 cm) and is obviously very easy to find when you have your eye in the viewfinder. Other than the A/M switch for moving between auto focus and manual focus, this is the only movable item you will find on the lens.
The design is very tight – some will say boring, but you will not be confused by a lot of buttons and dials as this lens is basically only a black “tube” with a focus ring and an A/M switch. Actually, I should not say focus ring, because the function of the lens control ring is configurable in the customs control menu f2. Here you can configure the lens control ring to control aperture, exposure compensation, ISO or focus (obviously). You can also select to give the lens control ring no function at all.
The auto focus motor is super silent. I have a lot of Nikkor lenses (both for the Z and the F-mount) and this is probably the most silent I have tried. It is not super fast – but with a 35mm I doubt you will be dependent on a speedy AF motor as you would when shooting birds in flight with a 500mm. I just enjoy that when half pressing the shutter the viewfinder moves from blurred to tac sharp with hardly any sound. I find it to be a bit fascinating (you may be thinking “nerd alert!” and you are absolutely right!).
Aperture and blades
The aperture ranges from f/1.8 to f/16. There are faster alternatives, but I do have a 50mm f/1.2 and although I enjoy all the fun you can have with a super slim depth of field, I have also come to realise how seldom I use the lens wide open. So for me it is not an issue that the lens is not able to open up to say f/1.4, but we are in personal preference territory here.
In the other end of the scale I was surprised that the ability to close down stopped at f/16. I know that some will start talking about diffraction going beyond f/16 but with other lenses I actually enjoy closing down to more than f/16 especially when shooting into the sun and working with the sunbursts produced.
Sample sunstar produced by the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 S at f/16
I love straight blades as I do a lot of work shooting into the sun to produce sun bursts. Rounded blades do not work well here, as they give a less well defined sunstar. However, I think Nikon in this case has found a good compromise between rounded blades (and nice bokeh) and straight blades producing nice sunstars: closed down to f/16 it appears to me that the blades are almost straight or as straight as they can get when still being part of a more rounded structure when the lens is not fully closed down. In the image above the sunburst is well defined IMHO, but not as well defined as in the case of straight blades. But as as compromise between sunstars and bokeh, this works well for me.
An example of the blurred background produced by the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 S. Here at f/1.8, 1/1000th of a second, ISO 200. Nikon Z6ii.
In terms of the out of focus elements or bokeh, I have no complaints in this department with this 35mm lens, but I do know that there are other reviewers who care more about the bokeh that I do. Above and below are examples of how the lens renders out of focus elements so you can see what you think of it.
Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 S – sample image with out of focus elements both in the distance and close up.
Price
The Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 S set me back around 700 EUR in November 2023. With the cost of living crisis and inflation sky rocketing, quoting a specific price is perhaps not all that useful, but it is clearly an expensive lens! I have gotten used to all the great AI/AIS/AF/AFS glass that Nikon has produced and the associated bargain prices, so paying that amount of money for a lens is clearly new territory for me! But I was not disappointed! However, if you do not need the last few percentages of performance relative to say an AF-S lens, then paying that amount of money for a short prime seems eye watering expensive. But for me it made sense as I could use all the detail the lens provides. And I expect to use the 35mm for a very large part of my shooting. But if you find it expensive, I agreed, and F-mount alternatives certainly can and do produce a more meaningful price performance ratio.
Technical performance
As mentioned, I find the image quality to be absolutely astonishing, and the MTF chart below seems to confirm my observations. As you probably know, high and straight is better and especially the contrast shows an exceptionally high level, and be mindful that this is at f/1.8. Stopped down a bit the lens will show an even more impressive MTF chart, but unfortunately Nikon has only provided the MTF chart wide open for a prime.
Nikon 35mm f/1.8 S MTF chart – source: Nikon home page.
Some will miss vibration reduction in the lens, but with a short lens and knowing that the image stabilisation in the Z-bodies will do a great job stand alone, I have never missed image stabilisation in this lens.
Control of chromatic abberation (purple fringing) is some of the best I have tried. I usually have a little test where I shoot a ball of curled up tinfoil with a flash throwing hard light at it, but there was noting to see with this lens and for all practical purposes as far as my shooting goes, there is no CA at all, period.
The minimum focus distance is 24 centimeters. This is close (!) but it is not unusual for a wide lens. You can really make some fun and creative shots with a lens that is able to go this close to the subject, especially when you consider that the focus distance is measured from the where the sensor sits and not from the tip of the lens!
Image quality
The image quality of this lens is simply amazing. I did not only notice this myself, but my fellow students in my training course did as well as I reported earlier. Be mindful that the quality of this lens is to some extend lost on my Nikon Z6ii as you would need a high resolution sensor with way more resolution than 24mp. But even on my Z6ii it has impressed me.
An example of the details and contrast the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 provides.Low light image of a laundromat. The image is exposed for the highlights. Notice all the details on the silhouettes of the bikes.Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 SNikkor 35mm f/1.8 SNikkor 35mm f/1.8 SNikon 35mm f/1.8 S
Conclusion
I know that this has not been a technically focused review, but I think you can find such in other reviews – there is an excellent one by DxO Mark where they also look at alternatives to the Nikon 35mm lens. Here I just want to share that I am very happy with this lens that I mainly use for street photography and landscapes. And, as those of you who follow my youtube channel knows, I repeat the point that the Z-lenses from Nikon are next level. Yes, they are expensive, yes, not everyone needs this level of performance and yes AF-S glass price / performance wise is often superior. But when you have tried this lens and seen what it will do to your images, you don’t want to go back. Sorry, that was a generalisation: I don’t want to go back. Thank you for reading this far!
Sample images
I have a Flickr album where I have collected some of the shots I have done with the . You can find the link clicking here. The Flickr page gives you some options for viewing the image quality in greater detail and see for yourself what you think of the lens performance.
There are many 50mm lenses. It is probably one of the most versatile focal lengths of all, and loved by most photographers. So every vendor has at least one 50mm lens, and Nikon – being a big player – has many 50mm, both in current production and as vintage lenses.
Aperture blades on the 1.8G lens – and the coating is also clearly at work here.
In this blog post I want to dive into two current Nikkor 50mm lenses and point to some differences to help you decide between the two. I will not make the decision for you as it comes down to your personal preference and decision criteria, but I will give you some information that can help you make an informed decision.
Looking at the names of the lenses, one could be tempted to go with the Nikkor 50mm 1.4D lens, as it is faster. And faster is better in many cases.
Relative to the 50mm 1.8G lens, the 1.4 wide open lets in 2/3rd stops of light more than the 1.8G lens, and if you need the light intake because you shoot in low light settings where flash is not an option (say restaurants at night), then the fast lens may be the right option for that reason alone. The faster lens also gives a more shallow depth of field (DOF) when wide open – shooting at a distance of 2 meters on a FF camera, the 1.8 lens has a DOF of 17 cm and the 1.4 lens has a DOF of 13 cm. And for making the subject stand out against a soft background, this extra shallow DOF may be exactly what you need.
Technical performance
One of the challenges for lens designers is that the wider the lens needs to go, the more difficult it is to have the lens yield good sharpness and contrast.
Wide open performance of the 50mm 1.4D – Credit to Nikons homepage.
The above is the MTF chart for the 50mm 1.4D lens wide open. If you are not too familiar with an MTF chart, then the gist of it is that lines that are flat and high is better, and that the red is sharpness and blue is contrast. And all above 0.7 in my book is good performance. As you can see, the 1.4D is not a top performer in the MTF chart above.
If you compare it to the MTF chart in for the 50mm 1.8G that you’ll find in the review of that lens, the performance is much better. But be mindful that the charts are wide open, and as the 1.8G cannot go as wide as the 1.4D, we are not comparing apples and apples. But you will find that the 1.4D is a bit soft wide open – stopped down, it will perform better. But then again, the point with wide lens is to be able to use it wide, right? That is what you pay for and what carrying the extra glass around is all about.
The lack of sharpness and contrast in the corners may be less of an issue for you if you are a portrait photographer, where the centre sharpness is vital. And some softness (and hence forgiveness) may be the preference for some photographers, that may not need the super clinical and technically perfect image that will survive a pixel peeping scrutiny and MTF chart mapping. In other words, sharpness and contrast may not be the deciding factor for all photographers.
Comfort and silence
The AF-S or G lens comes with a built in autofocus motor. The AF-D is dependent on the AF motor to be built into the camera body and driven mechanically via the “screwdriver” link between the lens and the camera.
In my experience, the AF-D works well and fast in general, but it is a bit noisy relative to the built in motor in the AF-S lens. And the dependence on the motor in the camera body means that you cannot use the AF if you later want to move to the mirrorless (ML) cameras from Nikon, as the ML cameras have no AF motor built into them. And if you plan to use the lens on some of the entry level APS-C cameras like the Nikon D5600, the situation is the same: no motor in the camera body, and you are left with manual focus.
The Nikon 50mm prime lens 1.8G – a general purpose focal length.
Size and weight
Usually you get a big weight penalty for faster glass, but in this case it is not too bad, as the 50mm focal length does not require that much glass after all. The weight of the 1.4D is 230 grams whereas the 1.8G is 185 grams. In absolute terms this is a small increase, but if you are a hiker running up and down mountains all day with your camera, this could be a factor in your decision.
In terms of the size, the diameter of the 1.8G is larger at 52mm versus 42mm for the AF-D lens; my guess is that the focus motor in the 1.8G lens takes up some space outside the glass itself and yields the larger diameter. The 1.8G lens is also a bit taller at 72mm versys 64mm, but I would say that both lenses are rather compact despite these differences.
Prices
The 50mm 1.4D over at mpb.com is available here in December 2022 for around 150 EUR used, whereas the 1.8G is available for a little less, around 120 EUR used. It is quite common to see that faster lens is more expensive, even factoring in the auto focus motor on the G lens. But both lenses, if you ask me, are a bargain and yields an outstanding price/performance ratio.
Conclusion
I have only zoomed in on a subset of differences between these lenses, in the hope that these differences are the vital ones for making your decision.
There are other factors of course like bokeh, aberrations, vignetting, distortion, color rendition, etc. But I think you will find that these two lenses are close in comparison on these other relevant parameters.
Best of luck with your search and decision making!
An 85mm lens is the classic focal length for portraiture, but I use it for many other purposes. If you are in the market for an 85mm prime, this could be your lens, but let me start with five cons before we get to the pros.
Price
First, this lens is not cheap. It may be because I am used to all the budget friendly high quality NIKKOR vintage lens glass, but a price around 670 EUR for my copy February 2022 is to me a lot of money. Here in October 2022, I found a used copy over at MPB for 650 EUR and Amazon offers a new copy for around 700 USD. Btw, this day and age the Dollar and the Euro is about the same.
Speed
Secondly, this lens is not super-fast. At 1.8 you may want more, say f/1.4 or f/1.2 and here we are in personal preference territory. I will say that I find that I can get a lot of background blur even when the subject and the background are close. But if you need a faster lens than 1.8, then obviously this is not the lens for you.
Appearance and Features
Third, if the look and feel of the lens is important to you, then this lens may disappoint, especially if you are used to the vintage lenses – all metal, all glass, made in Japan. This lens is not bad in terms of build quality or appearance, but I think many will find it a bit boring, like sticking your tung out the window; it doesn’t really taste of anything.
The switch from autofocus to manual focus
There is a switch to move between manual and automatic focus plus a large configurable control ring, but other than that the lens is just a black metal tube with a flimsy lens hood made of plastic. That’s it. No golden ring. No programmable buttons. No switch for vibration reduction, as it has none and you must rely on the VR in the camera body. Just a weather sealed black tube.
The front of the 85mm lens
Minimum focus distance
Fourth, the minimum focus distance is 0.8 meter which is way too much for me – I want to get closer to my subject. If you are like me, the 105 macro lens is worth a consideration as it has a minimum focus distance of 0.3 meters.
Focus breathing
Finally, if you are a videographer, you may not like the focus breathing this lens has. It is significant. When you move the focal plane, it changes the field of view so much that you avertedly may think that you are working with a zoom lens. This is normally not a problem for photographers, but if you are a videographer, you will not like this “feature”.
Sharpness and contrast
So, why did I then buy the lens anyway? Well, let me say that if there is an academy where they teach lens designers what a MTF chart for an outstanding lens looks like, they could pull out this chart as an example for the students.
Credit: Nikon’s homepage.
But this is not a theoretical example, this is the MTF chart for this lens. This is outstanding performance in terms of both sharpness and contrast. Centre to edge. If you don’t believe me or don’t know what a MTF chart is, see here the words of DXOmark. They test lenses and sensors day in and day out:
“We tested the Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.8 S on the high-resolution Nikon Z7, where the lens combined with the 47 MP sensor achieved a DXOMARK score of 49. This short tele has very high and uniform sharpness at all apertures and ranks as one the best performing NIKKORs in our database.”
Notice especially the last part “one the best performing NIKKORs in our database”
And DXOMar continue: “Overall, this Nikkor lens is a top-tier performer which can rival more expensive models in optical quality.”
This lens is a top performer. Full stop.
Chromatic Aberrations
One of my few party tricks is that I can get any lens to exhibit purple fringing. The reason being that I shoot a lot into the sun. And in high contrast areas almost any lens, especially wide open and in the corners, will yield chromatic aberration. This lens is no exception, but it is by far the best controlled aberrations I have ever seen. Only in the corners was I able to squeeze purple out of it, and you really have to pixel peep to see it.
Chromatic aberrations are very well controlled
Distortion and vignetting
The lens has very little distortion and vignetting and whatever is there, is automatically corrected. You need to switch off the correction in post in order to see it. I doubt you will shoot architecture with an 85mm lens, but if you do, I doubt distortion and vignetting will be an issue for you.
Flare control
Nikon has thrown all its coating technology into this lens, and flare is probably some of the best controlled I have seen in a lens. Videographers love flare and will not like the suppression this lens provides, but as a photographer I am happy with the results this lens yeilds.
Bokeh and sunstars
The lens comes with 9 rounded blades, and I appreciate that rounded blades are necessary to get good bokeh.
Sample bokeh
But it comes at a price, the price being the quality of the sun stars. I really don’t like the sun stars this lens produces, but I respect the prioritisation of bokeh for a portrait lens. I wish the lens producers would give us 2 sets of aperture blades – straight and rounded, and a button to select between the two.
Sample sunstar
Color rendition
Colour rendition is subjective, and I am in general cautious to comment on this in a lens review. If you in general like the way Nikon lenses renders colours, then this lens will not disappoint you. You could fear that all the coating this lens had would influence the colour rendition, but as far as I can tell, this is not the case.
Sample color rendition
Auto focus
The auto focus is both silent and fast – maybe not as fast as you want for a wildlife lens, but for portraiture this is all you need. Nothing is fully silent, but it is very discrete, even when you shoot with continuous focus.
Conclusion
You have probably guessed that I love this lens. And that is the bottom line of this review. I think it shows that the Nikon mirrorless lenses have taken the quality of photography gear to a new level.
A phony salesman once said to me that the product quality lingers on long after the price is forgotten. I laughed at his pitch back then, but today I must admit he had a point.
A lens at f/1.4 or f/1.2 I consider to be extremely fast, but when TTArtisan kindly sent me this lens for review, I learned that even faster lenses exist! An maximum aperture at f/0.95 enables you to isolate your subject from the background to an extreme degree! As an example: if you shoot at the minimum focus distance of 50 centimeters on a Sony a6500, the depth of field is less than 0.4 cm!! You really have to look twice to make sure your subject is in focus!
Beautiful bokeh.
No-nonsense
The lens is all back-to-basics and no-nonsense: No autofocus, no vibration reduction and no CPU contacts! It is only metal and glass that in total makes your camera 411 grams heavier. But on the other hand it does not make your wallet that much lighter, as it retails for around 220 USD, which is a very budget friendly lens.
It comes with the Sony e-mount that fits Sony’s mirrorless cameras, both full frame and APS-C. You can mount the lens on a full frame camera as I did for this test, and to my surprise I found that it did cover the entire full frame with only little vignetting, but the sharpness in the corners was so bad, that I quickly set-up my A7Rii to crop the image size down to APS-C. In doing so, the crop factor turns the lens into 75mm FF equivalent.
The TTArtisan lens on the Sony A7R2.
The lens is approximately 6 cm tall and 6 cm in diameter, and hence a few millimeters smaller than the e-mount itself, so I think it will look natural on all e-mount cameras, both full frame and APS-C.
The filter thread size is 58mm and allows you to mount both the metal lens cap that comes with the lens, and whatever filters you may wish. Unfortunately the lens does not have a rubber gasket around the lens mount, and hence you need to be careful to protect your camera from both water and dust.
The TTArtisan lens on the Sony A7R2.The markings are not painted, but engraved into the aluminium. Built to last.
There are 10 slightly rounded aperture blades, and you can stop the lens down to f/16 as the smallest aperture, and at the other end go wild with f/0.95!! In the image above you can also see the green color in the light reflected in the front glass – that is the coating at work to counter flare.
Manual focus is controlled with a nice wide and well dampened focus throw, that turns roughly 100 degrees. I could have wished for a longer throw, especially when shooting wide open, but you’ll get used to it. The focus peaking highlights on my Sony A7Rii is brilliant aid to focus manually. And when I really want to nail focus: the ability to zoom in, in the viewfinder, comes really handy!
The vertical bars that you see on the focus throw above is not painted on the lens, but recess that has been milled out in the aluminum! This underlines the solid built quality of the lens. The distance is shown both in meters and feet, and I even found a DOF scale closest to the camera – not many use those this day and age, but to me it underlines that this lens is back to basics!
The aperture ring is rather narrow and sits just below the red dot you see in the picture above. It is also nicely dampened, but in addition the aperture ring has very soft clicks. It is also possible to position the blades between two clicks if that is to your liking. With my eye in the viewfinder, I found the aperture ring a bit difficult for my fingers to find, but you get used to it. However, a little wider aperture ring would have been nice.
So all in all a very solid built lens – all metal, all glass, and absolutely no electronics!
Sharpness
I am only too aware that many consider an MTF chart as boring as watching paint dry! But you can learn a lot about a lens studying an MTF chart, and it reveals that when wide open (fmax) the resolution is below what I would normally consider acceptable (from 0.6 to 0.7 and upwards).
The MTF chart for the TTArtisan lens.
Now, had this been the corner sharpness, it would have been less of an issue, as most really only care about the center sharpness in real life, but here the lens is soft in the center wide open. It does get better fast when you stop down, but I did find that going faster than f/1.1 made the center of the frame so soft that I started noticing.
Left f/8, right wide open.
In the image above, I have zoomed in 200% with f/8 to the left and wide open to the right. I think you can see the difference in sharpness immediately.
Sometimes a bit of softness is not all that bad, especially if you shoot portraits, but for my style of shooting (landscapes, nature), the softness is an issue, and I did find that due to the softness, I only really used the lens from around f/1.2 and onwards. But mind you that it still is a very fast lens!
Aberrations
If you like me shoot very often in high contrast situations, then aberrations can be a real pain, as it gives colors of green and purple that can ruin an image or at least give more work in post processing.
Chromatic aberrations.
In the image above, both both zoomed in at the center of the frame, you can see that wide open to the right, there is a green tint to the black areas to the right of the mouse. To the left, at f/8, all is grey as it should be. So wide open, this lens suffers from significant amounts of aberrations. You can also see the graphics in front of the mouse has both a green and pink tint in the image to the right. And finally also the color rendition suffers from the aberrations – look at the blue color, it is clearly more “mint” to the right than to the left.
Chromatic aberrations.
In the example above, notice the green line at the top edge of the book to the right. It is significant.
Again, this problem seems to be reduced when stopped down to f/8, but if you plan to use this lens in a high contrast scene, for example sunlight behind a model, you will likely find that high contrast areas has a green tint to it.
Distortion and vignetting
The lens has a bit of distortion, but it is so little that I doubt you will notice unless you have some dominating straight lines in your image.
Wide open the lens does show a bit of vignetting, but it quickly disappears as you stop down.
Distortion corrected in Lightroom.
Just to give you an impression of the distortion and the vignetting, above in Lightroom I have pulled the slides to correct for both, and as you may be able to see, distortion is at +8 and vignetting at +28. Also notice how the sides of the image has white “gaps” as a consequence of the correction. Obviously, this image also needs to be cropped.
It is an easy fix in Lightroom, so I do not normally consider distortion and vignetting a problem in general. Here it is a bit more cumbersome, as the lens has no CPU contacts, and Lightroom does not know which lens it is and cannot help with applying the corrections automatically. But for most scenes and situations, I doubt you will ever notice the vignetting and distortion this lens has.
Flare control
Green dots of flare.
As far as I can tell, this lens as good flare control. In the image above, I have tried to stress the lens with the sharp light from my iPhone, and all the flare I could produce was the small green dots you see towards the bottom right corner.
Flare!
If I really go to extremes and let the light hit the lens almost vertically, then you get the result above, but it is more to see how the lens reacted. If you use a lens hood, then this angle of light will not hit the lens. So if you use a lens hood, I think that you will find that flare is well controlled in this lens.
Focus breathing
This lens suffers from focus breathing and to a significant degree. Actually so much that I think videographers will stay clear of it. As a photographer, I find this to be less of an issue.
Bokeh and sun stars
Bokeh is perhaps a bit into the personal preference territory. Some see “nervous bokeh” and “onion rings” where others just see out of focus areas. And it is probably mainly amongst photographers that bokeh is “a thing”.
Beautiful bokeh.
Shooting with this lens for a few weeks now, I can say that I really like the bokeh it produces, both wide open when the blades are not engaged, and stopped down then the 10 slightly rounded aperture blades start to kick in.
Bokeh balls.
Wide open, as you would expect, nice round shapes.
Bokeh balls stopped down.
Stopped down a bit, you start to notice the shape of the aperture blades if you look carefully, but with 10 rounded blades, the shape still looks nice to me.
Sunstars.
And finally stopped all the way down to f/16, the lens produces sun stars that to me look absolutely ok. It is not as beautiful sun stars as a lens with 100% straight blades can produce, but a very good compromise between quality of the sun stars and the bokeh.
Conclusion
The first thing to notice about this lens is it’s price bracket – 220 USD. And I think the lens performance has to be viewed in that light, and as such I think it is unfair at that price point to expect auto focus or vibration reduction, although I for completeness will list them as cons in the summary below.
I would have loved to see some CPU contract to help me get EXIF information into Lightroom, but it seems to me the TTArtisan philosophy is to stay clear of any electronics, and just produce solid built glass that will last. And when you hold this lens in your hand, you are clearly left with the impression that it will last – a simple construction, all metal, all glass, well built and with no electronics.
There are two areas where I struggle with this lens.
One is the softness and the aberrations wide open. I find that in real life I only use the lens from around f/1.4 and onwards, and the space from f/0.95 to /f1.4 is simply too bad for me to usable. In other words, the super fast lens is for me more on paper and in the specs sheet, than it is in real life. It is a very usable lens stopped down a bit, but not wide open. So if you got attracted to this lens due to its crazy fast aperture, then I caution you to make sure the softness and the aberrations in the wide end is acceptable to you.
The other is the aberrations throughout the aperture range. It is there, and it is noticeable in high contrast scenes. If you don’t shoot much in high contrast, then this may not be an issue for you, but I do, and I find it annoying to spend time in Lightroom, removing purple and green colors where light meets darkness.
If you can live with the above two, then this lens is a steal. A fast “f/1.4 lens” for your APS-C camera that will not break the bank. It is sharp and with good contrast if you stay clear of shooting wide open. So if you can accept that and you don’t mind manual focus, then this lens should definitely be on your short list of nifty-fifty primes for your Sony APS-C camera.
You can find a small sample if images shot with this lens here, if you want to see better resolution samples than what is in this blog.
Pro
– Price / value for money
– Build quality
– Fast lens (f/0.95)
– Bokeh
– Sun stars stopped down
– Sharpness/contrast stopped down
– Vignetting/distortion not too bad
– Flare control
Cons
– Chromatic aberrations
– Lack of CPU contacts (no EXIF info)
– Relatively short focus throw for an all manual lens
– No auto focus (or VR)
– Sharpness and contrast wide open
– Focus breathing
– No weather sealing
The TTArtisan 50mm f/1.2 lens was kindly sent to me by TTArtisan for review. It retails for around 100-110 USD here in May 2022, so it is really a budget friendly lens. It is made for the Nikon Z-mount, and can be used on e.g. the Nikon Z50, which is what I used for the testing. With the crop factor, the FF equivalent is 75mm, and hence a lens that many will find attractive for portraiture photography.
The TTArtisan lens on the Nikon Z50.
The first thing I noticed when unboxing is the weight. The lens is relatively small (6×6 cm) but at 335 grams it feels compact, if not heavy. The reason is simple: it is made of metal and glass altogether. No plastic or lightweight materials here. If feels solid and well built.
The focus throw is well dampened, but relatively short (130 dgs), but I did not find this to be an issue, although I know that some will prefer a longer focus throw to aid the precision in manual focus.
Solid build quality.
The aperture ring sits in the far end of the lens, and it took me some time to get used to – I am used to the aperture ring sitting close to the camera. The ring comes with only 2 jagged “wings” to aid you finding the aperture ring, and I really would have liked a few more of these, but this is not a major point.
There is no electronics in this lens – just metal and glass. If you were hoping to find autofocus or even vibration reduction, then you will be disappointed, but at this price point I think it is not fair to expect such comfort.
CPU contacts
What I find more hard to live without is the CPU contacts – there are none on this lens. So your camera does not know which lens is mounted, and EXIF information is not available. This also means that automatic profile correction in Lightroom is not possible and I found that I had to do correction of distortion and vignetting in LR by pulling sliders manually. With distortion and vignetting at a well controlled level, this is less of an issue, but I do miss the EXIF information as I use it for indexing and organizing my images.
Sharpness and contrast
I am only too aware that studying MTF charts is not very sexy and that seeing picture examples is much more interesting. I have made a collection of images shot with this lens over at flicker and you can follow the link here to get some images in much better resolution than what this blog allows.
MTF chart.
But that said, you can learn a lot about a lens looking and the MTF chart, and what the below tells is very consistent to what my tests shows: stopped down to f/5.6 this is a very sharp lens with good contrast, both center and corners, but wide open it is soft – also in the center. Many don’t mind a lens is soft in the corners wide open, as long as it is tac sharp in the center. Unfortunately this lens is soft wide open, and maybe this is not a problem for you as a portrait photographer, but for me who use the lens for landscape and nature, it is too soft.
Speed
This lens is fast and lets in a lot of light. Normally this is less of an issue, as I enjoy shooting wide open with paper thin depth of field to maximize isolation of the subject. However, my Nikon Z50 “only” shoots at 1/2000th of a second as the fastest shutter speed. Therefore I often had to stop down a bit to avoid over exposing the images. If you plan to use the lens wide open in scenes where there is lots of ambient light, you may need to add a 52mm ND filter to the lens.
Color rendition
I tested this lens and the color rendition compared to the Nikon kit lens (16-50), and as far as I can tell, they render colors very much the same way. When just looking at some colorful images shot with the TTArtisan, my immediate reaction was that red was rendered a bit too saturated, but compared to the Nikon lens, it actually came out a notch more pale. In general I found that the TTArtisan renders colors very close to Nikon, so if you happen to like the way Nikon gets the job done, then you will probably also like the way the TTArtisan renders colors.
Minimum focus distance
Minimum focus distance.
The minimum focus distance is 50 cm according to the specs, and that is precisely what I measured it to be as you can see above. Subject to what you shoot, this may not be an issue, but for me it is a lot! I always want to get closer to my subject. That said, due to the crop factor, the lens is 75mm FF equivalent and has an angle of view of 32 degrees, and hence I found it more easy to fill the frame with my subject than what I have experienced with other and wider lenses.
Focus breathing
This lens suffers from focus breathing and to a significant degree. Actually so much that I think videographers will stay clear of it. As a photographer, I find this to be less of an issue.
Aberrations
Aberrations are not well controlled, unfortunately. You can see the tinfoil below has a purple tint.
Chromatic aberrations.
And when I do my more “brutal” testing using a flash light aimed at a piece of tinfoil, it lights up with green and pink colors that should not be there. And when shooting landscapes in stark contrast, the edges around high contrast areas have a purple line.
If you do not shoot high contrast scenes, this may be less of an issue for you, but for me it is a major issue and strikes right into the heart of my type of photography. This is the biggest drawback I see with using this otherwise fine lens.
Vignetting and distortion
Vignetting and distortion is well controlled with this lens. There is some and you can see it if you shoot a brick wall or the like. But you have to look for it. As there are no CPU contacts, the correction has to be done pulling a few sliders in Lightroom. However, I doubt you will ever notice the distortion if you are a portrait photographer or other “organic” subjects with little straight lines.
Flare
My flare test showed that this lens dampens flare pretty well. You can see a green dot or a green area where the flare would otherwise have been, just like you may know from glasses. But when the light enters from a steep angle, the lens start showing some dramatic flare as the example below shows.
Significant flare.
You may think that a lens hood can save you here, but no: I shot this with the lens hood that TTArtisan kindly provided together with the lens.
I am not fan of what you see above, but we are into personal preference territory, and Stanley Kubrick fans may just absolutely love it!
Bokeh
Bokeh.
With a lens as fast as f/1.2,you’d expect it to deliver a very shallow depth of field and blurred backgrounds, and this lens certainly does.
I am however puzzled by the design of the aperture blades. It is not straight and not round.
Bokeh stopped down.
In the image above, you can see the shape of the blades – it is shaped like a wave as far as I can tell. I think this blade design is chosen as it gives some beautiful sun stars when the lens is stopped down.
Sunstars.
And of course fully open when the blades are not engaged, the bokeh is absolutely round. So I really like the bokeh fully open and stopped down max, whereas in between the wave design of the blades start so show. However, I think it is only photography nerds that will really notice.
Beautiful bokeh.
Conclusion
My list of pro’s and cons below. The third group named “neutral” and “personal preference” is things where I think it is not necessarily a pro or a con, but more observations that may be important to some and irrelevant to others, and hence difficult to categorize as either good or bad.
Pro
– Price / value for money
– Build quality
– Fast lens (f/1.2)
– Bokeh IRL
– Sun stars stopped down
– Sharpness/contrast stopped down
– Vignetting/distortion not too bad
Cons
– Chromatic aberrations
– Lack of CPU contacts (no EXIF info)
– No auto focus (or VR)
– Sharpness and contrast wide open
– Focus breathing
– Minimum focus distance (50 cm)
– No weather sealing
Neutral / personal preference:
– ND filters necessary wide open when bright
– Color rendition (close to what Nikon does)
– Flare control
– Lens weight (335 gr)
Viltrox is a Shenzhen based company in the People’s Republic of China. They have produced lenses since 2019. The company was founded back in 2009 and also does many other photography related products like adapters, lights and monitors.
Despite its young age in the lens line of business, Viltrox produces APS-C lenses for both Sony, Canon and Fujifilm. The lens in review here is the Viltrox 33 mm 1.4 prime for the Nikon Z mount. The Z mount is used by Nikon in their mirrorless series of camera bodies (say Z50 or Z6ii), and hence this lens cannot be used with Nikon DSLRs that use the older F-mount.
Introduction to this lens
You can get a 23mm and a 56mm lens for the Z-mount as well, but I chose to take a closer look at the 33 mm. You can read more about the alternatives here.
Viltrox kindly sent me a copy for review.
The Viltrox lens mounted on the Nikon Z50 camera body
You probably already know that due to the crop factor, a 33mm APS-C lens is a 33×1.5=49.4 mm full frame equivalent. In other words, it is a nifty fifty 50mm, one of the most versatile general purpose focal lengths. Primes are more simple constructions than zooms, and hence often both cheaper, lighter and sharper than zooms, but I will stay clear of the pros and cons of primes vs zooms in this review and just assume that you are in the market for a 50 mm FF equivalent APS-C prime lens for the Nikon Z-mount.
You can use this lens on a full frame body like the Nikon Z6, but as it is intended for APS-C, you will either only use a fraction of the sensor of the FF camera (DX crop) or you will experience heavy vignetting where the corners are very dark. So in this review I have only tested the Viltrox lens on my Nikon Z50 – a little APS-C camera that I use a lot.
First look
The first thing I noticed was the weight of the package with the lens – around 300 grams! That may not sound like much, but relative to other APS-C lenses it is quite some! I like heavy lenses as it signals lots of glass and metal, and this lens is exactly like that – all metal and glass; even the lens hood is made of metal – no plastic here! Wonderful!
The aperture ring is here set to “A” and that means the aperture is controlled from the camera. As soon as you turn the ring, the lens takes over the aperture control.
The solid build quality continues with the manual focus ring which is wide and easy to grip, and dampened just enough to give a bit of resistance without making the ring difficult to turn.
You can select the aperture on the lens by turning a click less ring close to the camera. If you turn it all the way to the right, so the mark is aligned with the red A, the lens allows you to select the aperture on the front command dial as you are used to, but as soon as you start turning the ring, the lens takes over control. I find that this works really well, and many Fuji shooters will love this feature. It will take me some time to get used to the lack of clicks on the ring.
The lens has a 52mm filter thread and there are no external parts that move due to the Internal focusing mechanism, making the use of filters easy. For the price point around 280 USD I did not expect to find autofocus (AF), but my expectations were surpassed, and the AF is both fast and silent.
Demanding videographers with microphones close to the camera may pick up a bit of noise from the motor, but the rest of us will be very happy with both the speed and the silence of the AF system in this lens. Perhaps needless to say, the lens comes with no stabilization – not that I would find it necessary in a lens this fast.
You can see the aperture blades at the center of the lens – here closed down.
On the rear of the lens I found no rubber gaskets to give weather sealing and instead I found a little USB-C connector for future software updates. It is of course super useful when Viltrox is to push out new versions of the lens software either as improvements or to keep up with whatever changes Nikon may do. But it does certainly not give the impression of a lens that will withstand heavy rain or the elements on a stormy day at the beach. So I will not grab this lens for heavy weather conditions, unless wrapped in a plastic bag or similar to give protection from the elements. In all fairness, the Nikon Z50 is not weather sealed either, but I just think it would have been nice if Viltrox had gone to some length to protect the interface between the lens and camera from dust and moisture.
Use
The lens clicks onto the Nikon Z50 body like any other Nikon Z-mount lens. And from there on it just works. The AF is fast and silent and works in tandem with the Nikon camera body and I cannot tell the difference between a Nikon lens and a Viltrox lens in this regard.
The manual focus ring is big and wide and easy to use – I like the way it is dampened a bit but not too much and the focus peaking highlights makes manual override a pleasure. The only thing to get used to is the lack of clicks on the aperture ring, but I simply put the lens in mode “A” and control the aperture from the camera body.
This is a lens you will get used to in a matter of minutes.
Sharpness
Without bothering you with the more technical testing presented in a MTF chart, I can reveal that the sharpness of this lens is quite impressive, especially center sharpness. As with any lens that opens up as wide as f/1.4, you would expect some softness wide open and the lens to get sharper when stopping down.
Center sharpness – look at the branch top right and don’t be confused by the shallow DOF at f/1.4 to the left. The center sharpness is impressive in both cases.Corner sharpness at 1.4 left and 5.6 right. It is clear that stopped down the corner sharpness is much better.
But this lens has impressive center sharpness also when fully open, whereas the corner sharpness leaves something to be desired. As soon as you stop down, then also the corners become very sharp.
Bokeh
There are 9 slightly rounded aperture blades. I prefer straight blades as I like sunstars when shooting stopped down into the sun, but on the other hand the rounded blades help produce rounded bokeh, so I guess you can’t have both. Aperture ranges from super fast f/1.4 down to f/16.
Focusing at the lights in the foreground and shooting fully open at f/1.4, the fireplace in the background is rendered out of focus beautifully.
With a lens this fast, I guess that many want to use it for rendering beautiful blurred backgrounds. I find the bokeh absolutely beautiful and the 9 rounded blades certainly deliver according to my expectation. I know that bokeh experts will look for both cat’s eyes and onion rings, but I am not that advanced or demanding, and I simply find that the bokeh this lens produces when wide open is all I need.
Chromatic aberration
We all have different preferences and different things that are important to us. And when it comes to CA, I am one of the more demanding photographers. The reason being that I often shoot into the sun or in high contrast situations, and fixing CA in post processing is simply a nuisance. And on top of that, LR often does not remove the CA and I have to use an eyedropper tool and manual setting to get an acceptable result.
The classic book page shot with noticeable CA to the right fully open at f/1.4 – to the right at f/5.6, it is completely gone.A piece of wrinkled tinfoil shot close up in stark light. The CA is noticeable in two different colors.
Unfortunately this lens suffers from CA and it is quite significant. The CA shows both as coloring of the letters when doing the classic “book” shot and also as clear lines of coloring when I do my party trick number one: shooting curly tinfoil in stark light. I know it is a brutal test, but my use of lenses when it comes to contrast is also brutal.
Minimum focus distance
The minimum focus distance for this lens is around 40cm according to the spec sheet, although I managed to get down to around 38cm in my own testing, measuring from the position of the sensor to the subject matter.
The little shell on a big stone. Would be nice to move closer to the subject in this caseI managed to focus around 38cms as the closest minimum focus distance.
If you, like me, like to fill the frame with your subject, then a minimum focus distance of 38-40 cm is a lot, and you will find it annoying that you cannot get closer to the subject. In the picture with the little shell on the big black stone, you can see an example where it would have been nice to move closer to the subject. I had hoped for more, but if you shoot landscapes or portraits entirely, then the minimum focus distance may not be important to you at all.
Color rendition
I am very cautious when it comes to an assessment of color rendition, simply because it is super subjective and subject very much to personal preference and what color cast you are used to. If you have ever tried working with post processing of an image where you e.g. change the color temperature a lot, then take a 10 minute break and go for a cup of coffee and then come back to study your own work, only to find that the color rendition has been tweaked so badly that you immediately think “why did I not see this – it looks horrible?”. But the answer is that you slowly got used to it as you worked with the picture.
Beautiful sunset with the silhouette of a boat.
Long story short, then I think you will like the color rendition of this lens. I will give you some links to Flick towards the end of the review, so you can see some landscape images. The good image quality of Flickr can hopefully help you assess what you think of the color rendition.
Distortion
Back in the day when there was film in the camera, distortion was a big thing to avoid, as it would sit on your film after the shot was taken and there was very little you could do about it. With a digital image, lens profiles and smart post processing software, the removal of distortion is but a click away. And that is why I think that lens producers in their work to design the best lenses, simply let go of the ambition to contain or diminish distortion – there are other design criteria to give priority.
In that vein, I have not tested the lens for distortion. And even if I could not remove the problem with a few clicks in LR, I think that you will find that distortion – irrespective of barrel or pincushion – seldom is visible, unless you are a demanding architecture or real estate photographer that needs a straight line to be straight.
Focus breathing
Testing for focus breathing is really easy: Grab the manual focus ring and turn it back and forth and check in the viewfinder if the field of view changes, i.e. if it looks like the lens zooms in and out while you change focus point. If your lens has focus breathing, then you will see the field of view changing – your lens is “breathing” as it focuses near and far.
For videographers the absence of focus breathing is vital, as they often change focus in a scene where they need to shift focus from one actor to another. And exactly in those situations you don’t want the field of view to change. You want it to be rock steady.
I am happy to say that this lens has NO focus breathing, or at least so little that I cannot spot it. In combination with the fast and silent AF, the lack of focus breathing checks an important requirement for videographers.
Conclusion
I like a lens that delivers great value for money, and this lens checks that box in full. The Viltrox 33mm f/1.4 is a breath of fresh air to the Nikon Z-mount cameras, as you now can get a fast lens with great AF for a price well below the Nikon alternatives. And Viltrox did not spend all their focus on the inside of the lens – the build quality of the lens is great and the manual focus ring is a pleasure to use.
At this price point I did not expect to find AF, but it is there and works well, and further at this price point the expectation to find VR would be a bit unreasonable if you ask me – so I have put lack of VR as a point not assessed. I think at this price point it would be unfair to bring it up as a con.
Nobody’s perfect, and this lens has some weak points. One is corner sharpness that is less of an issue for me (and should be if you want to use this lens for say street photography or portraiture). Another is the strong CA in high contrast situations and the minimum focus distance that makes it hard to fill the frame with your subject. These are clear limitations for me that will influence what I will use this lens for.
So can I recommend this lens? Yes, if minimum focus distance and corner sharpness wide open is less of a concern for you, then this is a fast and well built value for money AF lens that can take up the 50mm FF equivalent spot in your APS-C prime lens collection for your Nikon Z-mount.
You may have seen the post where I adapt a Canon FD 1.8 50mm lens to a Nikon DSLR with an adapter from Urth. If not, you can find the post right here. What I learned from that attempt was that the glass that has to be added to make a Canon lens work on a Nikon DSLR has some side effects that are unfortunate, to say the least. The reason for adding the glass is that the lens otherwise will not focus to infinity.
The Canon FD to Nikon Z mount adapter. As the pencil shows, there is no glass in this adapter, it is basically a metal ring.
Mirrorless are different apparently. An adapter for Canon glass to a Nikon camera body has not glass as the image below illustrate.
The adapter I bought was from K&F Concept, but there are many other options available out there. Be aware that if you buy from K&F concept, then the delivery time (judging from my case) is around 3 weeks for the parcel to travel from China to Europe (Denmark), so be prepared to be patient! But once you got it, the combination of the Canon lens, adapter and Nikon Z50 camera looks like this:
Nikon Z50 with the canon FD 50mm 1.8 lens, and the K-F concept adapter inbetween.
Mounting the lens to the adapter is straightforward, but be aware that the adapter has to be set in position “locked” to allow the aperture blades to change position. If not, the lens is fully open irrespective of how much you turn the aperture ring on the Canon lens.
Performance
I am happy to report that all the issues I found with adapting the Canon lens to a Nikon DSLR are simply gone. The 50mm lens from Canon performs as you would expect: no Vaseline like look fully open, but solid performance at all apertures.
Centre sharpness is excellent at f/5.6 and although not as good wide open, it is certainly a solid performance from a vintage lens:
Centre sharpness at f/1.8 left f/5.6 right.
Also the corner sharpness and contrast is approved, although you again can tell the difference between wide open and stopped down:
Corner sharpness at f/1.8 left f/5.6 right.
The lens suffers from aberrations especially wide open, and it looks dramatic in the image below. However, it is a 400% (!) zoom and I successfully removed the purple fringing by using the color selector in the manual removal of chromatic aberrations in Lightroom.
Wide open the aberrations are noticeable, but gone as soon as you stop down – f/1.8 left f/5.6 right.Bokeh fully open f/1.8 to the left, and stopped down to f/5.6 to the right.
The bokeh is maybe where the lens has a weak point, as it only has 5 blades and they are rather straight. So stopped down you get bokeh that is less pleasing IMHO – of course subject to personal preference. You will also notice in the blue bokeh balls to the right, that there is a bit of onion rings; something that bokeh experts do not fancy. To the left fully open you have a more pleasing result, but the edges are brighter than the center, also a no-go for bokeh enthusiasts.
So in conclusion I am very happy with the performance of this lens. It is not the lens with the best sharpness or contrast I have ever tested (that was the Nikon 135mm DC), but it is certainly not bad performance. You can get one of these lenses with a bit of luck on a flea market for around 10 USD, but be prepared to pay more when the seller is knowledgeable. Still, a lot of lens for your money.
Of course you will have to regulate the aperture by turning the ring on the lens itself, and you are left with manual focus entirely, but I don’t think anyone would expect it any different when you mount a Canon vintage lens on a Nikon mirrorless body. And in terms of “the look”, I really like the way Canon renders colors; it is a bit different than Nikon and as far as I can tell it has a bit more “coffee”-ish look that I actually like. So I look forward to shooting more with this combo.
I got my Nikon AF-S 85mm 1.8G lens over at mpb Europe for 334 EUR used – this was October 2021. The lens was rated by mpb to be in excellent condition, which in my experience is close to brand new! The same lens from new in Denmark is around 500 EUR, but mind you that here in little Denmark prices are per usual some of the highest in Europe. But still, I find that I save a lot buying used gear in good to mint condition.
Nikkor 85mm AF-S 1.8G lens
The first that I noticed when mounting the lens is how big it is in terms of circumference. It protrudes beyond the f-mount size significantly as the images above and below show. I knew the 1.4G lens is a “dramatic” lens in terms of size, but it surprised me that the same can be said about the 1.8G lens.
The 85mm 1.8G mounted on a Nikon D750
The lens does not have a golden ring on the nose, so apparently Nikon does not think this is a professional grade lens; my guess is they left this to the 1.4G lens instead. The body is made up of plastic, and the f-mount is metal as we know it. The feel and appearance of the lens is quite good considering we have left the days of “all metal, all glass and made in Japan”. This one is made in China.
The weight is around 350 grams which is super light, especially considering the lens volume. Although Nikon does not market this lens as weather sealed, I did notice that there is a rubber gasket on the f-mount, so at least dust will have a hard time finding way in between lens and body.
Speaking of the 1.4G lens, your question is probably why I did not buy the 1.4G? I would have loved that lens, but the price tag is around 3 times as much as the 1,8G! And although I love fast lenses, I simply could not cough up the cash to go for the 1.4G.
The lens comes with a lens hood of good quality albeit plastic, it takes Ø67mm filters and there is no issue with moving parts out front, your filter will be sitting in the same position as when you mounted it!
Here the lens hood is mounted on the 85mm 1.8G
The lens has no aperture ring – all adjustments to aperture are done via the camera body. There is only one button on the lens itself, and that is the auto focus to manual focus switch. The former can always be overruled by manual focus as soon as you start turning the focus ring.
I am happy to say that the focus ring works really well. There is no play as I reported for the 50mm 1.8G lens. The feel of the manual focus ring is not super smooth, but it works ok. The AF-S is as you would expect both silent and fast, but not the fastest Nikkor I have tested. But as this is mainly a portrait lens, maybe some street as well, I doubt that you would need blazing fast AF as you do for wildlife and sports. The built in AF motor allows you to use the lens also with AF on Nikon entry level bodies like the D3x00 and D5x00.
Minimum focus distance measured to 75cm; official numbers say 80cm.
The distance scale is there working from the minimal focus distance of 0.8 meters to infinity, although my own non-scientific testing showed that I could get 5 cm closer than that. They have even found space for DoF markings on the distance scale, although only for f/16. There are 7 rounded aperture blades, which is a bit on the low side, especially for a portrait lens where the bokeh per tradition is vital.
The lens comes with what Nikon calls SIC – super integrated coating, and the dampening of flare when pointing the lens to a street light at night is some of the best I have ever seen. The SIC is really sick, pun intended! There is no ED glass at all, so it is really a “back to basics” construction with no modern fancy stuff, but just good glass in a relatively simple construction.
Performance
This lens is sharp! You may have guessed that if you took a look at the MTF chart from Nikon or read other reviews, but it really is! Take a look at these two images from Lightroom measuring the center sharpness at 300%:
Center sharpness.
Wide open left (f/1.8) and stopped down a bit to the right (f/3.5). If you have seen other of my reviews, you know that I like to shoot a whiteboard with a few dollar and EUR bills to test sharpness and contrast, and when I can read the state names, then I know I am dealing with a very sharp lens. In this case I can read that NY is to the rightmost! The sharpness gets slightly better stopped down, but this is impressive performance!
Looking at the corner sharpness, it gets even better (still 300%):
Corner sharpness.
This is from the bottom left, and the performance wide open (left) is impressive! I may be able to see that it stopped down has slightly better contrast (look at the white in the EUR sign top left), but still this is some of the best corner performance wide open that I have ever seen! Well done Nikon!
And when you shoot at f/1.8 you really get a shallow depth of field! I know that f/1.4 or even f/1.2 will give you more, but still:
Out of focus elements – notice the cat to the left.
Same motive, but 2 different focus points: left the flower in the foreground and right the cat in the couch. Even when there is only 1.5 meter between the subject and your background elements, the latter gets rendered beautifully out of focus!
The bokeh I have found to be beautiful. When shooting wide open, the aperture blades are not engaged, and hence you of course get nice round bokeh balls, although the bokeh towards the corners tend to be more oval and shaped like an American football:
Out of focus elements at f/1.8.
I had high hopes for aberrations, but apparently I can get any lens to generate at least purple fringing:
Noticeable chromatic aberrations to the left.
Wide open to the left you can see purple fringing in the high contrast zones of the tinfoil. Not so much stopped down to the right (f/7.1). So there is a bit of aberrations and shooting streetlights at night (yes, a hobby yours truly practices) it gets noticeable – but I have always been able to remove it in Lightroom by pulling a few sliders. And speaking of streetlights at night, my test of flare showed that this lens has some of the best control of flare that I have ever seen.
The lens does suffer from focus breathing, so if you are considering it as an option for videography you may find that this is a showstopper. Especially when you ALSO consider how well flare and ghosting is controlled by this lens (videographers for some reason love this stuff and do not want to well dampened lenses in this regard).
In my reviews I don’t test distortion or vignetting. The simple reason being that you can fix this in Lightroom with a push of a button. Only for demanding architecture or real estate photographers can I imagine that distortion and vignetting would be a problem, and I am pretty sure they are not in the market for a 85mm.
Conclusion
Pro:
Super sharpness, both center and corners
Super contrast, both center and corners
Light – 350 grams
Ok build quality, albeit no gold ring from Nikon
Well working manual focus ring
Takes filters with no issues
Good handling of flare and ghosts
Price performance
Works on Nikon entry level cameras
Con:
Not the widest of wide – there is the 1.4G to mention an alternative
Some aberrations in high contrast areas wide open
Not for videographers (flare too well controls + some focus breathing)
AF not the fastest in the AF-S family
Not sure how long-term durable the build quality is
You probably have picked this up reading the review above, but I absolutely love this lens. It is clear to me that all attention has been given to the internals of this lens, and hence you get a “budget-feel” lens on the outside and a top performer on the inside. If you are to prioritize, then if you ask me, this is as it should be.
Right now, I cannot think of a lens where the price / performance ratio is better than this one when we are talking modern lenses (vintage lenses you buy on a flea market may have a better ration, but that stems from the price primarily). So if you need a 85mm prime from Nikon, this one should definitely be on your short list.
My only concern is if the lens will stand the test of time – will it survive the constant use in a demanding pro environment? I am not sure; maybe better to go with a gold ring lens if you are a demanding pro.
I have always been a bit curios when it comes to Canon. Peter McKinnon and his delicious videos and images with a coffee color tint has always led me to believe that the Canon glass is a bit special. So, as a Nikonian, I decided to buy a classic Canon lens – the nifty-fifty FD 50mm prime – and of course a vintage one, to see how it would work out on my Nikon D750 DSLR camera body.
Canon lens FD 50mm 1.8 SC – a true vintage lens made in Japan
What I did not know at the time I ordered the Urth adapter is that adapters comes in two versions: one with glass that enables you to focus infinity, and another with no glass which unfortunately does not allow you to focus to infinity. Introducing an extra layer of glass is never good – it is one more layer the light has to travel through and the lens performance could be negatively influenced. Not so with the adapter without glass, but you may need to focus to infinity as part of your photography work, and then there is no way around the adapter with glass. I bought the one with glass more as a coincidence than an enlightened decision!
The Urth adapter of course sits between the Nikon camera body and the Canon lens.
I must admit that I was quite shocked when I started to test the lens and adapter combination when I saw the results shooting wide open (f/1.8). The image was covered by a slightly white halo, almost like the lens had been covered with a thin layer of Vaseline:
f/1.8 left and f/5.6 right.
Stopped down to f/5.6 the problem is completely gone and the image quality is as you would expect with a 50mm prime that has made the test of time – I think most will agree that the 50mm FD lenses from Canon offer excellent optical qualities for a fraction of the costs associated with a modern lens. But combined with the lens adapter that gives focus to infinity, the wide open shots are of unacceptable quality.
I then suspected the lens adapter from Urth, but googling a bit I could find YouTubers and other users that had tried the same type of adapter but of different brands and reached the same conclusion. So there is something about the concept or the design that does not work.
F/1.8 left, f/5.6 right. Notice the line between the cat and the carpet in front of the cat.
I also tried to put the lens+adapter on my Nikon Z50 – and APS-C camera – just to see if that would help, as it uses a smaller part of the glass. The answer is no – I got exactly the same result wide open on the Z50 as I did om my Nikon D750. So there is something about the adapter design that simply does not work wide open.
What to do…
My take on this is that you have these options:
Buy the adapter with the glass that gives focus to infinity, but don’t use the lens wide open; always stop down a bit for good results
Buy the adapter without the glass and work around the fact that it will not focus to infinity
Buy the adapter for a Nikon mirrorless (say a Z50, Z5, Z6 or Z7). The flange distance on a mirrorless camera is different from a DSLR, and hence the adapter comes without glass and you can focus to infinity.
Don’t try to adapt Canon glass to Nikon bodies – use Nikon with Nikon and Canon with Canon.
Which one works for you is of course a matter entirely dependent on your decision criteria and personal preferences.
The promise on the tin: wide angle, low distortion, compact and full frame.
