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 p.30 #13 · Thypoch Simera 50mm f/1.4 ASPH. Review | |
With only short intervals separating their times of release, each Simera had little time to gather interest, and it seems fair to say the lenses are targeted at the fringe of the Leica fringe of photography in any case. They seemed completely foreign.
So the 50mm seemed a strange fit for any niche. It's quite different from the source design (the Summilux 50/1.4) in most respects. It will eventually come to be seen as the quiet achiever of the range, most likely.
Thypoch's approach is much like that of Light lens Lab. Working inside the narrow envelope imposed by the desire to remain faithful to the rendering styles of the source lenses, they embarked on a thoroughgoing attention to detail and where they saw fit, engineering improvements. A modernising makeover, if you will, where success is measured by the final image quality and feature sets.
It's a great method if it works for you, because you end up with both the idiosyncratic pictorial style of the source lens AND modern, digital-friendly improvements to deal with base-level aberrations of importance, like CA and distortion. If done well.
For users of this one, below is a recent YouTube video, unusually shot on film - Ektar 100. The presenter visits a fine village and, as part of it, compares this Simera with a CV 50/2.2 Color-Skopar and TTArtisan 50/1.4.
Thomas's analysis starts at around 8:00. He's got a good eye, overall. He does say Thypoch could not deliver higher image quality (sharpness, I imagine) due to the size constraints on M lenses. That's not true here because high MTF is not the primary engineering design criterion, and certainly not wide open.
The Chinese makers don't lack for easy access to a very fine glass catalog, all of it very affordable, as we see reflected in final RRP. No, it's a cine lens in disguise - the exact design is used in the rather more esteemed and popular Simera-C range. But little to quibble about, other than that.
Of note is the MFD and close focus comparison between these lenses, and the Simera 50mm performance specifically. At f1.4, it produces dreamy soft fade and conventional bokeh at 0.45m, but at 0.7m is has more of the expected deep image lens 3D model with smoothed visual hints at background content.
It's also very good at MFD. I tend to think of these kinds of characteristics as 'extra arrows in one's quiver'. And close focus seems to be a very good fit for digital, and it's assuming greater attention in reviews nowadays. (8:34)
At 11:20 we see a very effective focus pull demo and bokeh examination. It's a very smooth lens, smooth in its center-corner fade, its vignette, color tone gradation, and of course bokeh. I knew how good it gets at f5.6-f8 and its low light ability, highlight handling, but the close focus is a good gain. He thinks the focus ring helicoid geometry is strangely scaled, but Simeras are set up for fast action so the focus range you will need is fast to reach. It's pretty common now for street lenses.
The Simeras are all slightly warm (cine), so much so that the Voigtlanders appear a little frosty in low light after using the Simeras. These are much closer to Zeiss and Leica from 30 years ago, the CVs more akin to modern Zeiss and Leica, as what I see. The 50mm seems good in pretty much every department that matters to most people, leaving aside ergo/haptics issues.
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