This is the second 7artisans lens I own now, the first one I own is the 35mm F2 in M mount.

I was surprised by that 35mm lens, and my intent is now to own all of their M mount lenses, since I can interchange them between both my Leica M6 & my Sony A7 mk1.

I received my copy of the lens on the 16th of August, which i consider pretty quick shipping/customs, as I bought it directly in 7Artisans eBay shop a week earlier (the day it became available).

Now since this is my first ever piece of text i write about a lens, don’t expect this to be the best review ever about a lens 🙂

First up, opening up the package.

The lens came well packed, the style of the box is different from their previous ones, I quite like it.

Contents of the package:

• lens
• manual
• adjustment tool
• focus tab (to be mounted seperately)
• wrist strip for your camera
• soft bag (forgot to include in the picture)

What I am wondering is if the lens is pre-calibrated for Leica M rangefinder cameras. My previous 35mm came with a calibration chart. This one doesn’t. I guess I will quickly find out after running a roll of film through it.

Build Quality

Removed the lens from it’s plastic, and turned some aperture and focus rings. Everything feels very solid. There is no lateral movement on both aperture & focus rings. All the protection caps sit really snug on the lens. The front cap has some felt in it. Aperture rings feels smooth rotating it. The focus ring makes a bit of a grinding noise when you’re near infinity, well grinding is a big word, but you can hear it’s not as smooth as when in the close focus area of the ring movement. EDIT: This has now completely disappeared after using the lens for a an hour of 2.

Image quality

Mounted the lens on my Sony A7, and took a few shots. Unfortunately the whole day here in the Netherlands has been overcast, so no nice light in the evening.

All shots are at f1.25 because why else would you get this lens :).
None of the shots have been processed, straight of the camera, and if you do right-click/view image, you will get the actual 6000*4000 resolution picture. EXIF information will show iso & shutter speed.

I took some inside shots, outside shots and a test range going through all apertures to check the following:

• differences in aperture for bokeh/sharpness
• see vignetting
• if there’s any purple fringing going on

Then in the evening, i took some shots on ISO 640.

Inside shots

I’ll just let the images speak for themselves, all shot @ f1.25

Outside shots

I’ll just let the images speak for themselves, all shot @ f1.25

Aperture range f1.25 – f16

My takeaways from taking this lens through it’s apertures:

• Colours are warm at f1.25 & f1.4, f2 and up they are suddenly cooler
• Vignetting not that much, and almost completely gone at f2.8
• purple & green fringing goes away in non focused areas at around f4
• bokeh sometimes a bit busy at f1.25 , but generally good
• sharpness off center seems pretty good to me
• I like this lens

Evening shots

These shots are taken at ISO 640

Conclusion

Now, since I’m not an official lens reviewer, and just thought that it would be nice to write something about this lens, my conclusion is just some ramblings about other lenses and price comparisons.

I like this lens, it’s about 1/23rd of the price of the Leica f1.25 lens, which is probably with regards to image quality in a different stratosphere/insanely better, but for this price, I’m happy I bought the lens. Even though i have never played with that lens, and probably never will.

I’ve also not ever played with the voigtlander 75 f1.5 that just came out, which is about double the price. I’ll let the know lens reviewers on the web take a conclusion on which one is better. I just hope that lens is twice as good as this 🙂