New era Non-camera makers lenses (viltrox etc)

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jamesev

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Has anyone tried many f the following new era lenses

Viltrox
7 Artisans
TT Artisans
Sirui

for mirrorless'., These seem to be coming out of China and some, according the the reviews seem quite well manufactured ie not with cheap plastic housings. They look to be significantly lower costs that the equivalent big 5 or so camera manufacturers. Just wondering how they compare optically and if there is any significant fall off in image output compared to the more expensive camera makers lenses (appreciating there may be some variation in the ranges that these new lens manufacturers are coming out with)?
 
Had a couple of Viltrox lenses for my Fuji bodies and they have been very good, great value for money.
 
I have a Viltrox 16mm f1.8 for my Z mount nikons and a couple of Voigtlander primes for my Zf...very impressed with the quality of both brands.
The Voigtlanders being a German brand now part of Cosina and manufactured in Japan.
 
I take my hat off to the Chinese companies. They have identified a gap in the market and are exploiting it very aggressively. I think it's a question of right time, right place. They are a huge market with low costs. And above all else, no pun intended, they are focused. They are giving people what they want, basically. Decent products, at a decent price.
 
jamesev said:
Has anyone tried many f the following new era lenses

Viltrox
7 Artisans
TT Artisans
Sirui

for mirrorless'., These seem to be coming out of China and some, according the the reviews seem quite well manufactured ie not with cheap plastic housings. They look to be significantly lower costs that the equivalent big 5 or so camera manufacturers. Just wondering how they compare optically and if there is any significant fall off in image output compared to the more expensive camera makers lenses (appreciating there may be some variation in the ranges that these new lens manufacturers are coming out with)?
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Viltrox make some good lenses they also make some crap ones as well.

They do tend to be very good value for money.
 
Both Viltrox and Laowa make some decent lenses.
 
Laowa LAB series in particular come to mind as a premium offer without the ultimate premium price tag. I'd love to try some actually; the pre-requisite is first moving away from Canon lock down ecosystem to something like Sony E mount. I have a feeling some of that viltrox glass will run circles around RF L offers.
 
I have a YONGNUO YN 25mm F1.7 M ASPH Auto Focus for M43 and it is very good
 
I've had the following Chinese MF full frame lenses...

Pergear 35mm f1.4.
Artralab 35mm f1.4.
TT Artisan 50mm f2.
Syoptic 50mm f1.1.

They all had plus and minus points the best of the bunch probably being the Syoptic although it was very soft at its widest apertures. The only one to avoid is IMO the Artralab and I really can't say enough bad things about that lens and its fantasy aperture markings. Of these I'd say that the Pergear despite having inaccurate apertures at some settings and I suspect it isn't an f1.4 either and Syoptic offer clearly better IQ than old film era equivalents but the TTA 50mm is pretty poor even against old film era 50mm lenses with the only plus points being that it's small and cheap and doesn't need an adapter but the corners are awful and there's a lot of vignetting at some distances and apertures and there were some pretty nasty looking colour shifts on my Sony A7. Oh, and both the Pergear 35mm f1.4 and TTA 50mm f2 can show really nasty flare even compared to film era lenses.

I think I largely got what I paid for with these lenses except the Artralab which I feel shouldn't be on sale in the condition it's in. I have some modern MF Voigtlander lenses and they are much more expensive but also massively better. I also have some film era lenses but good ones seem to be getting harder to find at reasonable prices and the adapters increase their size and for me take away some appeal and that's something these Chinese lenses do have going for them, they don't need an adapter.
 
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teaser from Viltrox today about a LAB series Z mount. maybe the 35 f1.2 they've been promising
 
Would like it if Viltrox did some for MFT. Had a few Fuji mount ones in the past
 
I had a Viltrox 85 f1.8 MkI for Sony. Optically it rendered very nicely indeed, but it was VERY heavy and for my copy at least focussing was more miss than hit and it was returned to Amazon within a couple of days.

I'd consider another viltrox if they had one I needed.
 
Had the viltrox 16mm f1.8, really nice lens. Only sold it to replace it with Sony's own 16mm f1.8 which is lot smaller and performs better in most aspects.
But viltrox was incredible value for quality.

Had laowa 15mm f2 and 10-18mm. The 15mm was good but shows it's age now. The 10-18 was kinda fun to use but nothing to write home about in terms of performance.
Also had laowa 100mm macro. Optically incredible but the focussing ring throw was just terrible especially for a manual macro lens that went down to 2x magnification

And had ttartisan 12mm f2.8 fisheye. Once again mostly a bit of fun, but it did perform rather well for the price.

Tried the sirui aurora 85mm f1.4. Was a bit underwhelming tbh. But it's also probably the cheapest 85mm f1.4 option. Renders rather nicely though.

Overall a lot of these lenses and manufacturers are still catching up in terms of tech. They offer great value for money. But 1st parties are still ahead, and so is sigma but that comes at a price.
For me sigma offers the best trade-off between price, size and performance these days.
 
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I have the Viltrox 27/1.2. It's a great lens. Fast, feels solid, sharp, and "cheap".

c9dfd5693c72.jpg
 
I'm currently rocking the TTArtisan 25/2 which I picked up from forum member @Petey

I managed to miss all the sunshine, but can clearly tell this thing is decent wide open and sharp across the frame by f/5.6. Built like a tank too!

TTArtisan 25mm f/2 on X-T2 by backtothefuji, on Flickr

Very little pp on these, almost straight from RAW.

f/2

TTArtisan @ f/2 by backtothefuji, on Flickr

f/5.6

TTArtisan @ f/5.6 (2) by backtothefuji, on Flickr

f/2

The dog!! TTArtisan @ f/2 (4) by backtothefuji, on Flickr
 
BacktotheFuji said:
I'm currently rocking the TTArtisan 25/2 which I picked up from forum member @Petey

I managed to miss all the sunshine, but can clearly tell this thing is decent wide open and sharp across the frame by f/5.6. Built like a tank too!

TTArtisan 25mm f/2 on X-T2 by backtothefuji, on Flickr

Very little pp on these, almost straight from RAW.

f/2

TTArtisan @ f/2 by backtothefuji, on Flickr

f/5.6

TTArtisan @ f/5.6 (2) by backtothefuji, on Flickr

f/2

The dog!! TTArtisan @ f/2 (4) by backtothefuji, on Flickr
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Glad to see it being put to good use

You can thank @Fuuudge for the deal you got as he sold it to me first.
 
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I have the 7Artisans 10mm f/2.8 II fish eye. I had the MkI version which I liked but this developed a fault. At the time I got a full refund on the lens, but never got around to buying another.
It was a lens I liked though. The good reports on the MkII version persuaded to buy one.
I am very pleased with it.

I'm going to buy the Viltrox 35mm f/1.2 LAB lens.
 
Chris_911 said:
I have the 7Artisans 10mm f/2.8 II fish eye. I had the MkI version which I liked but this developed a fault. At the time I got a full refund on the lens, but never got around to buying another.
It was a lens I liked though. The good reports on the MkII version persuaded to buy one.
I am very pleased with it.

I'm going to buy the Viltrox 35mm f/1.2 LAB lens.
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have a look at the Viltrox/Nikon falling out.https://www.dpreview.com/news/0506855771/nikon-viltrox-patent-battle
 
I've had several Viltrox lenses for the Fuji's, 85mm f/1.8 Mk11 which was excellent, 75mm f/1.2 which was outstanding, also both the 35mm and 56mm f/1.7 Air which were brilliant for the price and more recently got an 85mm f/2 Evo for the ZF, it is a beautiful lens and it produces pin sharp images, very happy with it.

No hesitation recommending Viltrox.
 
I've had lenses from all of the manufacturers in the OP, except Sirui. None of them have been bad, most of them have been excellent. I've moved away from manual focus lenses in the last couple of years, the lenses I have now are:

Viltrox 25mm Air F/1.7
Viltrox 35mm Air F/1.7
Viltrox 56mm Air F/1.7
Viltrox 28mm F/4.5 pancake
TTArtisan 8mm fisheye (this one is still manual focus)

They're all good, I'd happily recommend any of them :)
 
Toxic said:
I've had several Viltrox lenses for the Fuji's, 85mm f/1.8 Mk11 which was excellent, 75mm f/1.2 which was outstanding, also both the 35mm and 56mm f/1.7 Air which were brilliant for the price and more recently got an 85mm f/2 Evo for the ZF, it is a beautiful lens and it produces pin sharp images, very happy with it.

No hesitation recommending Viltrox.
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I have a Viltrox 85mm F/2 Evo arriving tomorrow for the Zf I am about to purchase. Glad to hear good things about it.

I also have a Meike 35mm F/1.8 Pro arriving on Friday.

BTW I ordered the lens on the Meike Global website on Saturday night and used the Free shipping option and it was due to arrive on Thursday (I delayed it by a day). How quick is that!

Looking forward to having a camera to try them on :cool:
 
I have a Viltrox 15mm Air F/1.7 for Fuji and I've been happy with it.

I've been tempted by the 25mm too, but I'm trying to decide between that and the Fuji 23mm F/2.8.
 
benington said:
I have a Viltrox 15mm Air F/1.7 for Fuji and I've been happy with it.

I've been tempted by the 25mm too, but I'm trying to decide between that and the Fuji 23mm F/2.8.
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I have a 15mm as well. Really nice little thing. I'm in deep on Viltrox on my Fujis. Have a 13mm 1.4, 27mm 1.2 and 75mm 1.2 as well. All outstanding but the 27mm in particular fits me like a glove. Love that lens. It's chonky though.

Would love Viltrox to make a Fuji 18mm 1.2 or 1.4.
 
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Check out the Pergear website for prices of Viltrox lenses.
 
Oh dear! I knew no good would come of it. I have succumbed and bought the 35mm for Fuji from the Viltrox UK site. Fifteen percent off until the end of January. Mind you, it's only the second new lens I've bought. :D
 
Plain Nev said:
Oh dear! I knew no good would come of it. I have succumbed and bought the 35mm for Fuji from the Viltrox UK site. Fifteen percent off until the end of January. Mind you, it's only the second new lens I've bought. :D
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The 9mm is looking mighty tempting at £160 ish with discount. Must resist....
 
LongLensPhotography said:
It just completely rules out nikon then. Well done, keep your mount and your overpriced lenses with carefully curated selection of 3rd rate tamron megazoom droppings

They cant even get a reasonable evf or lcd that flips out even in their flagship cameras. So amateur
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Indeed. It does beg the question as to what is the end game for Nikon in this regard.

If they want to limit lens competition to force consumers to buy their own lenses which are always at higher price (presumably in part from the R&D into the communications protocols between the camera and lens that the 3rd party lens makers don't have) then thats one thing.

However there must be a trade off between the losing sales of their own lenses vs increased pull to the brand in terms of body sales if there is more lens choice available.

Canon came out with a 100-300 f2.8 for mirrorless however Nikon don't seem to be entertaining the thought of making a NIKKOR 120-300MM F/2.8 that they had on F Mount or NIKKOR 100-300MM F/2.8 for Z Mount

:edit: I just saw Nikon Rumors had a 120-300 TC z
 
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Very impressed. I ordered my lens from Viltrox UK in the early hours of Thursday morning, and it arrived today. Very nice it is too. Although, I do miss an aperture ring. Obviously you control your aperture with the front command dial on a Fuji, but I've never used it, and it takes a little getting used too.
 
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