I love a Fast Lens any time – night or day. But when it comes to low light or night time photography, a fast lens becomes more important. When it comes to fast lenses, I have two that I love shooting with. One is the famous Nifty Fifty (Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM) on a Viltrox Speed Booster. The second one is the 7artisans 35mm f/0.95.
The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM is supposed to have a 1.6 crop factor on my M50. That means it’s supposed to have a 80mm full frame equivalent field of view. But since I didn’t choose a normal adapter and instead use a speed booster, I get a close to full frame field of view. 80 * 0.71 = 56.8mm full frame equivalent. Check out my blog post on Adapters vs Speed Boosters to understand things better. As a side effect of speed boosting, I can get more light. My camera would now let me go to f/1.2 because of this. As you can imagine, a f/1.2 lens is going to pretty good at low light.
The 7artisans 35mm f/0.95 on the other hand connects to my camera natively. I have to apply the crop factor to it. 35 * 1.6 = 56mm full frame equivalent. The f/0.95 makes it one of the fastest lenses out there. It’s supposed to be a rock solid choice in low light.
Both lenses have a 56mm full frame equivalent field of view and lots of light. So why not see which one is better in some low light shots?
Super Low Light - Wide Open
The first scene contains a tree lit by a street lamp, a bit far from my home. But it was close to 2AM and the surrounding was super dark. Both lenses were pushed to their available maximum aperture.
Let’s see the photos. I would recommend not seeing the photo details (exif data) before hand. Instead take a close look at the photos and see what differences you can notice.
You can see the photos are quite similar. They are both taken at same ISO and same shutter speed. Except the 7artisans had an aperture of f/0.95 while Canon had f/1.2.
Wide open, both lenses have some chromatic aberration. The first photo is from the 7artisans lens. The window on middle left – that area shows some fringing. The canon has very little fringing on the window area but around the lamp post, there’s quite a bit of fringing seen.
What came out as rather interesting to me – Canon EF 50mm was a bit brighter overall compared to the 7artisans 35mm. I did some digging and surprisingly found out that the 7artisans is actually T-1.4, not something close to T-0.95. This means, the light transmittance is relatively lower on this lens. I have updated my original review of this lens with this information alongside links to more detailed discussions.
Better Lit Scenes - Wide Open
Then I went ahead took photos of this under construction building that’s next to my house. Again, take a close look at the photos and see if you can make out which lens took which photo.
Again, the photos are taken using the same shutter speed and ISO but the aperture was wide open in both lenses.
The first photo was taken using Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 on the speed booster. This photo is arguably sharper and color looks natural. Although there’s a lens flare. The second photo is from the 7artisans lens. There are some fringing in the water (green fringing). And the lighting overall feels softer and has a distinct (magenta?) cast to it.
I expected lens flare from the 7artisans lens as I knew it was pretty notorious for that. But I was surprised when it didn’t have any but the Canon lens did. I can’t tell for sure if it’s an issue with the lens or the glass elements in the speed booster.
Lens Profile for ML Tools
In modern days, there are so many tools that use Machine Learning to improve photo quality. There are tools like DXO PureRAW or Topaz DeNoise AI which use certain AI techniques to reduce noise in photos. Other photo editing platforms also use Lens Profiles to correct distortions and chromatic aberrations. Being a well known and popular lens puts the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 ahead of the 7artisans 35mm f/0.95. Let’s take a look at one example below.
DXO PureRAW is a tool I have been using quite a bit lately. Since my Canon M50 is a crop sensor mirrorless camera, it tends to have a lot of noises when I use high ISO. Although I have set my camera to cap the maximum ISO at 1600 3200, you can still see a lot of noise. DXO PureRAW can use deep learning to help make these photos better.
Check out the photos from Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 now after running through DXO PureRAW.
DXO PureRAW has a camera profile for Canon M50 and lens profile for Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM. But the 7artisans lens doesn’t emit any lens data. DXO PureRAW can do some basic noise reduction. But it can do a bit more for the Canon lens.
I also tried the free trial version of Topaz DeNoise AI. This software did manage to improve the photo from the nifty fifty but couldn’t even load preview for the 7artisans lens. I believe it’s a similar issue here. Since the lens doesn’t emit lens data, DeNoise AI can’t decide how to process it.
Adobe also has similar features in it’s photo editing suite. And they have lens profile for popular Canon lenses. Tools like Lightroom can actually do more for photos taken with the Nifty Fifty compared to the 7artisans lens.
Final Verdicts
While comparing the photos during this test, I found out that the Canon lens at f/1.2 collected more light compared to the 7artisans at f/0.95. Which was quite surprising. But it is what it is and in terms of low light shots, Canon’s Nifty Fifty remains ahead because of this.
We shot both lenses wide open. As a result they would both had some minor quality issues. The Canon lens seems slightly better in terms of quality even when shooting wide open. Adding auto focus and the support in common photo editing suites makes it a better choice in low light for sure.
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