New 17mm f/1.4 manual lens is better than expected

[pierces]

Once upon a time, we had to manually turn a ring on our lenses while looking closely at a split prism in the viewfinder to focus them accurately. You could use guesstimation about distance and use the scale on the lens and at f/8 or f/11, that was usually good enough. Then everything changed. In 1985, Minolta shook the photography word and introduced the first commercially successful line of cameras with autofocusing and soon, all the majors jumped on the bandwagon. That was that. All the cool cameras now focused by themselves. Autofocus progressed in speed and capability until it became so good that we sort of forgot that focusing (except in critical situations) was part of the process. 

 

So why in 2021 are manual lenses still attractive to me. Is it nostalgia? A return to simpler times? Maybe it's because third-party manufacturers can now use computer-aided design and modern materials to produce descent or even great lenses that tend to be pretty inexpensive? Is it the challenge of "going primative"? That last one is sort of ironic since "going primative" with a manual lens attached to a camera body with more analytical power than a 1980s supercomputer is sort of like "camping" in a luxury motorhome with a satellite dish. Then again, after 35 years of autofocus, manual lenses are sort of primitive and challenging in a relative sense. I guess that makes it a challenge with a strong nod to the fact that the manual lenses tend to be cheap. I guess the bottom line is that I find them to be fun to use. And cheap.

 

I have had manual 12mm f/2 and 8mm f/2.8 fisheye lenses for my E-mount APS-C cameras for a long time and more recently picked up a tiny 7artisans 25mm f/1.8. All three produce images way better that their price would suggest and when a new company called TTArtisans announced a 17mm f/1.4 for the E-mount, I decided to check it out. After an eight month wait, the lens finally showed up on Amazon. A few testers had nice enough things to say about it that I went ahead and ordered one. Here are my first impressions and some samples:

 

 

Build. Nice. That sort of covers it. The lens barrel is all metal and the black semi-matte finish is smooth with crisp engraving on the distance scale and aperture numbers. The barrel also features an illustration of the nine lens elements for some reason. The focusing ring is narrow but knurled and turns smoothly with a nicely dampened 120° twist from minimum focus to infinity. The aperture ring has soft click stops, giving an impression of quality you wouldn't expect from a $140 lens. The aperture itself has 10 blades and produces pretty decent bokeh. The lens mount has no wobble and even has a knurled edge on the back lip of the body to offer a good grip while mounting and dismounting. I'm not sure why they chose a screw-in metal lens cap other than it sort of compliments the retro-ish design. The 40.5mm thread is the same as the kit 16-50 PZ zoom and plastic pinch-to-attach caps are available and cheap for when I tire of it or it is lost.

 

Performance. Does it have incredible edge-to-edge sharpness wide open like top-end OEM lenses? No. Not shocking since it also lacks about 90% of the cost. What is does have is good center sharpness wide open that extends to the corners as you stop down. They are pretty good by f/2.8 and the whole frame is quite sharp at f/5.6 to f/8. At f/1.4 the softness at the edges is irrelevant if you are focusing on something fairly close with the background out of focus, which is a probable use for a fast wide lens. Vignetting is fairly strong at f/1.4 and gets better but never really goes away as you stop down. Easily corrected if needed. Chromatic aberration is there and again, easily corrected. Honestly, at f/1.4 the images look pretty good at normal viewing size and distance. To me it feels like a fun walkabout lens for casual shooting. It also has a good field of view for use as a webcam on an A6x00 camera. Astrophotography lens? Nope. You'll need to spend a bit more for that. Stars are fussy. 

 

Conclusion. If you have the kit 16-50 PZ zoom, you won't a gain size or quality advantage with this lens, but it's way more fun.  It's a pretty little lens that is inexpensive and performs well enough to be fun as a casual "primitive" shooter. 

 

With minimal correction applied to both (copy settings, paste settings in Lightroom) f/1.4 version (left or top depending on your view width) and f/8 version don't look much different at web view resolution. f/1.4 was a 0.6s exposure vs. 25.0s for f/8

 

    

 

Edges show a fair amount of difference between f/1.4 and f/8 (more obvious on the monitor than pasted here), but not a shocking amount.

 

 

This week's Picture-A-Week was taken with the new lens at f/1.4. Pretty nice bokeh for a cheap lens.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

 

Not bad at all.

 

Also available in Fuji and EOS-M mount.

 

 

Dave

Edited June 8, 2021 by pierces