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 p.15 #9 · 7Artisans 50mm f/1.1 in Leica M Mount | |
I decided to goof around with this lens after dropping off my oldest McNugget at Yochien (Japanese Kindergarten) on Sacramento State campus. I had my model for the day in a stroller as we strolled around campus taking in the fresh air and watching the squirrels go nuts on the wet grass. It rained yesterday, so the ground was still wet, the air clean and the clouds stood out against a nicely saturated blue sky...which is a bit rare over in these neck of the woods. I had the lens mounted on a VME M to E mount adapter on my monochrome converted A7RII, or A7RII(m) as Vivek and I call it. 
I did try a 55mm B+W Yellow Green filter the day the lens was deilvered, but that filter made the lens vignette wide open. I opted to leave it off and keep the lens "stock". One thing to note, when this lens is stopped down all the way to f/16, vignetting is very present and the corners never clear up. No biggie! I wasn't expecting this to be anything other than a character lens. 
The lens is small...ish and yet dense. This is the fastest lens I own, and other than playing with the 50/.95 Nocti at a Leica boutique, I was impressed with the speed of this lens for its size. As mentioned from others, the focus throw is not very long at all. It's less than a 90º throw. My guess would be ~75º-80º throw. The lens cap is metal and slides over the lens like some of the Leica Summarits or the 50/2 APO, but much larger (in diameter). The focus throw is very smooth and even with the short throw, it isn't difficult to discern what's in focus with in-camera focus aids (peaking).
Having never owned a lens this fast before, I quickly learned that when shooting wide open, your center (Zone A?) is the sharpest area. (Duh! Haha) I tried some rule of thirds compositions wide open where Mini-Me never seemed to get acceptable sharp...yet his shoulder or lower part of his sweater was, which was either in or very close to the center. Lesson learned after loading up the photos in LR when I got home. I didn't bother to 100% zoom after taking the shot as I assumed the photo would be soft anyways.
Wide open, the low contrast glow is very apparent and stopped down to ~f/1.4, the contrast increases and the glow is pretty much absent. For the photos below, with the exception of one, I shot wide open up to f/2. If you see glow, that's a dead ringer it was captured wide open. The other shots aren't very obvious as far as aperture (and character) goes despite a slight increase in DOF. Also, it doesn't take much to make this lens flare at all, especially so wide open. I kind of actually like the flared look.
After a short lap around campus with this lens on a nice sunny day, I can say that I wasn't expecting much, but came away really liking the lens. It is a character lens and won't be my usual walk around lens, but if I'm feeling a hankering from some moody shots or some distinct portraits, then this lens will be either on my camera or in my bag. In fact, I'm thinking of taking it with me for Fanime in May, with some stobes and modifiers for a different than my usual take on convention cosplayer portraits.
The Zeiss 50/1.5 ZM should arrive sometime this coming week. If the weather plays nice, I should have some more shots and a better understanding on how these two lenses compare at similar apertures.
All photos were converted to DNG format with Monochrome2DNG (who also makes FastRawViewer) which saves the original Raw file as a true monochrome DNG. (Automatic monochrome recognition and mosaic pattern suppresion). This is practically a MUST for monochrome converted cameras!!! Once the files were batch converted to DNG, they were imported in LR and tweaked very slightly.
Last shot @ f/16
7artisans 50mm F1.1 by Alpha Geist, on Flickr
7artisans 50mm F1.1 by Alpha Geist, on Flickr
7artisans 50mm F1.1 by Alpha Geist, on Flickr
7artisans 50mm F1.1 by Alpha Geist, on Flickr
7artisans 50mm F1.1 by Alpha Geist, on Flickr
7artisans 50mm F1.1 (@f/16) by Alpha Geist, on Flickr
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