Review: 7artisans 35mm f/0.95 (EF-M)

Quick Summary

  • Excellent build quality, premium feel, makes me want to take photos with it
  • f/0.95 is very fast but it’s actually a T-1.4 despite being f/0.95
  • Shooting wide open has chromatic aberrations and softness
  • Excellent value for money

In a youtube video, a while back, I came to know about a lens that can open it’s aperture up to f/0.95 and I was amazed by the photos and videos it took. I believe it was a TTArtisan lens. From that video, I got my first inspiration to buy a lens that would have similar low f-stop. I fantasized about all the creamy bokeh I would get from a lens like that. Then one day, while browsing a local e-commerce site – Daraz, I saw they are selling some 7artisans lenses which can go up to f/0.95. I started checking out some 7artisans lens reviews. I found some videos, read some reviews and joined a couple of facebook groups about 7artisans lenses. People posted their experience and more importantly photo samples in those groups. Seeing those, I was now hyped. 

I did some browsing and found that I can order the 7artisans 35mm f/0.95 EF-M mount for my Canon M50. Before buying these lenses, I usually bought EF lenses and mounted them on Viltrox speedbooster. But this time decided to try a lens that works on EF-M natively. (If you would like to better understand the different mounts, you can read more about them in this blog post – Canon Cameras and Lens Mounts). I ordered the lens on Daraz and it took around 20-22 days to ship from china. 

Expectations

While I waited for my lens both eagerly and patiently, I couldn’t help but find all the information I could find on this particular lens. I searched on Youtube for review videos. Watched them carefully, taking notes in my mind. I went on to visit different photography forums and of course reddit and checked out other people’s opinions. These thorough reading and watching got me a good idea of what to expect from this particular lens. There were some good sides and some drawbacks. 

From the various reviews, I expected a lens with premium build quality. A bit weighty. The lens would be super fast (What is a fast lens? Read about – Fast Lens ), bringing in a lot of light, should be really good in low light situations. The bokeh should be amazing. My Canon EOS M50 is a crop sensor camera so it would be affected by the Crop Factor. The 35mm lens would actually behave like a 56mm lens on a full frame sensor. So it would not be as wide as a 35mm lens is supposed to be on a full frame. But that’s alright, I like the 50mm range, specially the portraits – I was really excited to see how the portraits come out. I was also worried about the manual focus a bit. As a beginner, I have barely touched manual focus with this camera. I have so far been shooting single point auto focus. In most cases that has given me great results. I was a little concerned if I would be able to maintain focus with this lens. I started watching some videos on how people use manual focus and some of the videos were really reassuring. This lens was also supposed to have extensive chromatic aberrations when wide open (f/0.95) and lens flares in bright sun light. 

First Look

The packaging was really good. It had a premium look and feel. I opened the package and brought out the lens. It was constructed with metal and very well polished. I was instantly in love and I was hoping that the lens be good while taking photos. I had a feeling this was going to be a lens I would use a lot. Like a lot!

7artisans 35mm f/0.95

The lens cap would just smoothly go in and out. There’s no screwing or anything. It simply sits there or slides out. I tried shaking the lens a few times to see if it would fall apart, it didn’t. The red and white writings on the blackish metal body looked really beautiful. The lens was not lightweight though. Unlike my other lens, it did have some weight. Once I unboxed and set it up on my camera, I couldn’t wait. My wife was preparing some chicken meal in the kitchen. I went ahead and took a shot. The kitchen was dimly lit – a good place and time for testing this lens in low light situation. 

I was pretty happy with the shot. The kitchen was dimly lit but we still got a decent photo. The colors were to my liking. Although if you zoom in, you can notice some really bad fringing on the pan’s edges. But I guess that’s expected in lenses like this. 

A Day in Khulna University

To test the lens further, I went to Khulna University with a friend and took some flower shots to begin with. We walked through the campus and took some portrait shots here and there. Then we met a couple of friends by chance and took the opportunity to take some more shots – specially portraits. 

Our first stop was the administrative building in Khulna University. The key attraction here is the garden. Usually there are different types of flowers in this garden. And I have taken many flower photos here using my phone. So I went on and took a few photos here. I mostly shot at f/0.95 and tried to see how the bokeh comes out to be. I missed focus in a couple of shots but I also got a few good photos here. These two particularly are my favorite flower photos from this session. 

We then noticed a nice old letter box in front of the newly constructed bank building. Here’s how the shot came out to be. 

After that we took a few portraits and roamed around. Then we found a couple of kids fishing near “Odommo Bangla” in a small watery place. They were having a lot of fun. I took a photo and asked them what they were fishing for and if they got any fishes. They smiled and said nothing. 

We took the road to the third academic building. This is where business administration discipline is right now. When I was doing my graduation (BBA), we used to take classes in the first academic building. The discipline switched places while I was in my final year or may be when I just started my masters – I don’t remember for sure. Next to the third academic building is our central library. Here’s a photo taken in front of my discipline building facing the central library building. 

We took the road that leads to the wide open playground in front of Khan Jahan Ali hall and here we saw two of our other friends walking by. We met and had some chit chat. Took a few portraits of my friends here. 

Then I noticed a dragon fly perched on a growing plant near this field. 

We had some street food from a vendor who had a colorful dress and I didn’t want to miss a portrait of him. Then we roamed a bit more, took some more photos and went to have coffee. 

During these photo sessions I realized how I was missing focus on people’s faces sometimes and back home, when I zoomed in, I realized what I needed to do. Those missed focus was a good lesson for me. Something to reflect on and learn from. 

An Evening in KDA New Market

From Khulna University, we went to Coffee Glory to have some coffee and cheese cakes. But after reaching the place, we came to know that the cheese cakes weren’t available. We couldn’t decide on what to eat. We ended up having some wrapped shawarma and mango mojito. Then we went to KDA New Market which was nearby. 

I took a nice photo of a rose in a low light situation.

I took a nice photo of a rose in a low light situation.

I have also taken a lot of flower photos in the nursery in there. At the very center of KDA New Market, is a decent sized nursery where they sell different types of plants, mostly flower plants. It was evening and the nursery was relatively less lit. So this was a great opportunity to take some low light portraits. They came out great too. 

Delicious Lunch

A few days later I went to a lunch with friends and couldn’t resist the temptation to put this lens to test with some food photography and some more portraits, preferably on the roof top of Hotel Castle Salam.

We had french fries, mixed steak and kacchi biriyani. Took photos of the steak and fries. Particularly loved the following photo of the steak.   

Those lamb steak was really delicious. I can still feel it’s taste in my tongue when I look at this photo. The food was so delicious I forgot to take photos of biriyani. 

We then ordered some coffee and went to the roof top but it was lunch time and a bad lighting for taking photos. There was so much light, I could barely keep my eyes open, going from indoor to an open, exposed roof top. The plans to take portraits on the roof top didn’t work out. But we had some fun time and then I got back home.    

Nursery in the rain

On the 8th of September, I had another opportunity to take the lens out on another photo walk. My goal was to explore the river side of Rupsha, near “7 no ghat”,  a local docking station for launch and boats. I was planning to practise some street photography out there. But as I reached new market to meet my friend, it started drizzling. As my Canon M50 was not weather sealed, I didn’t want to go out in an open place where there’s chance of rain. Instead we stayed inside KDA new market and went to the nursery to take some flower photos, again. 

I really loved this rose. It looked so beautiful. But I also had to be careful to keep the focus right on the flower. 

Then I came across this nice decorative thingy that is a collection of snail shell and plants growing out of them. Looked pretty interesting. 

I also took some photos of other flowers. Today I was pretty happy with my focus. Seems like I have learned how to use manual focus with this lens. 

My Experience

During these different occasions, I tried to take different kind of photos with this lens. Now let’s take a look at how they turned out to be. 

Close Up

You can get some really nice close up shots with this lens. At f/0.95, the background blurs very nicely. But the depth of field is so razor thin, I struggled with focus on small subjects like these flowers. Although the blame should go to me, not the focus ring. The manual focus ring was pretty good. I loved using it. In fact I loved it so much, I even tried to use MF on some of my other lenses and realized how much better the 7artisans focus ring was. 

Portraits

Manual focus at f/0.95 was a bit more challenging while taking portrait shots. The depth of field was so shallow, I sometimes failed to focus right on the face. Instead my focus was right behind the face. I needed some time to get used to focus peeking. After some failed shots that day, I think I now know what I need to do to nail focus – always focus on the front most part of the face and then use focus magnification to double check if the eyes are in focus. It was a good lesson I learned through a few blurry portraits. 

Because of the bokeh and quite good image quality, I loved taking portraits with this lens. But there were some softness in the photos from time to time.

Low Light and Light Gathering

I have always trusted the 7artisans 35mm f/0.95 to be my fastest lens but a recent test shed some doubts about it. I was doing a Low Light Test with my fast lenses. During the comparison of a distant, dimly lit scene, I noticed a speed boosted Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 performed better. Speed boosting allowed it to have an equivalent aperture of f/1.2 and it looked somewhat brighter than the f/0.95 of the 7artisans lens. Which piqued my interest as I have previously read about T-stop. 

We know the F-Stop tells us the size of the entrance pupil of a lens. Even at the same size, two lenses can gather different amount of light. It happens because the light travels through the different element groups inside the lens before it falls on the sensor. The more elements the light has to go through, the lesser light it may get. This is why prime lenses usually transmit more light compared to zoom lenses (lenses with variable focal length). Simply because prime lenses have less glass elements. 

With my new observation, I asked in a few facebook groups if anyone could explain what’s happening. But didn’t get much of a helpful answer. Then I found an old thread on dpreview.com – https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4558865  – which is very interesting.  People have posted their theories and observations in this thread about the light gathering capabilities of 7artisans 35mm f/0.95. 

One senior member on the forum, from his own experiments, deduced that the lens is actually a T-1.4  despite the aperture being f/0.95. Which makes sense because the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 was probably behaving like a close to  T-1.2 at f/1.2 and thus gathering more light than T-1.4. 

So yes, based on the ability to gather light, it doesn’t actually behave like a true f/0.95 lens. Although the lens may behave like a f/0.95 in other aspects. 

Misc

I also took some photos of landscape and street photography style shots. They come out nice and sharp at close range. But the chromatic aberrations were pretty noticeable in most high contrast areas. Distance subjects were not as sharp. This is clearly not a great lens for landscape shots but it is usable.

All Photos

Check out these photos in high quality on my Flickr album below. This album has all the photos I chose to keep from this lens. 

All Photos: 7artisans 35mm f/0.95

Verdicts

There are areas this lens really shines at. This lens is really fast. The f/0.95 does bring in a lot of light (although it’s actually T-1.4). It’s pretty good in taking low light shots and freezing some rain drops. The wide aperture also gets some nice background blur. I enjoyed taking portraits with it. 

With a fast lens like this, it’s very tempting to shoot wide open. I took most of the photos at f/0.95, even the landscape ones too. The photos did have some sort of softness to it, specially off center.  There are some magenta / warm casts in photos taken wide open. These are not a big deal to me, so no complains. The manual focus needs some getting used to and lack of auto focus needs you need to double check your focus. This takes time. Manual focus would also not be very convenient for moving subjects. But these are also ok in my book. 

What really bothered me is the chromatic aberration it has when shooting wide open. If you’re using this lens at f/0.95, please expect lots of fringing in high contrast areas. 

The good thing is, when we close down the aperture, things start to look better. The issues happen mostly at f/0.95 which is expected with any lens of this kind of aperture. But if you, like me, want to shoot at f/0.95 all the time, please note the issues it can have wide open. If you’re okay with shooting at f/2 or narrower, it’s an excellent lens. 

This lens feels very premium in hand. It has a certain appeal to the photographer within me. If I ignore all the technicality, this is a lens that I often reach out for. I know it’s not the very best lens I own but it inspires me to take photos with it. This experience, this inspiration, this is something that can not be measured or easily be expressed in words but should be considered as an important feature of a tool that we use in a creative process like photography. 

This lens costed me around $325 approximately. At this price point, comparing the good and bad sides, I would still say this is a very good value for money. The manual focus, the unique characteristics of the lens, the build quality and the premium feel that makes me want to shoot photos with it – all these make this lens a keeper. 

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