50mm TT Artisan

[Andrea Bianchi]

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I'm poor and can not afford a Noctilux xD

 

Have you tried the new 50mm 0.95 TT Artisan? Any comparison with the 7Artisan or the Summilux?

[Keith (M)]

 

[carbon_dragon]

I've seen two reviews on YouTube in the last couple of days with diametrically opposed views. One was a glowing review that it was great given the price in relation to the Noctilux. The other, once he put it on a digital body (a crop sensor), said it had an interesting look, but that he couldn't get it to focus properly on his film m. He tried the tape as a ground glass technique to try to change the focus using the provided tool, but kind of struck out. 

I've never really thought about how amazing it is that our rangefinders and our lenses work  so well together, even for a company like Leica who has incredible precision in their tolerances. I've used all kinds of Leica lenses and had pretty good results. On the one hand, it's pretty cool to provide tools to make that perfect, but the counter to that is that they may not devote much effort to getting it right to begin with (to calibrate it properly with modern (or not so modern) Leica bodies. To  be honest, I'm a little nervous to spend $800 on a lens that might not even focus on my camera. Course yes, the M10 has live view and the visoflex so I could focus using that (and probably should at 0.85 always). 

I'm guessing that with live view, I'd be trying to focus the lens with the rangefinder and then looking at the Visoflex or live view peaking to see if the lens actually looks like it is in focus and if not adjusting on THAT basis rather than setting up that paper target 2 meters away and then trying to set up a 30 degree tilt on the camera to shoot it.

I'd probably never buy the Noctilux, but I admit I'm tempted to see this one just to see what it could do. Or the 7Artisans version which is even cheaper. 

[Redridge]

Ive had this lens for a week now and been happy with its performance on the M10. Out of the box, it was perfectly calibrated. I use it with the grip and it handles really nice. So far Ive been happy with this lens. The metal cap is a bit clunky and risk damaging the glass, but I bought a 67mm plastic cap that works much better.

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[Andrea Bianchi]

Any experience with the 7Artisans 1.1?

 

it is smaller and lighter, but I don’t know about the IQ

[Redridge]

I had the 7Art 50mm 1.1 for a month and returned it (thank you B&H)... it reminded me of the zeiss 1.5 C Sonnar... soft focus and I wasn't always consistent with its focusing (I didnt keep the Zeiss either). The  7Art 1.1 rendering was pleasing but because I just never jelled with it, I decided to try out out the TT 50mm .95. My experience with focusing the TT .95 was much more consistent, sharper images and has a nice classic blur wide open. IMHO, the TT .95 is worth the extra money.

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[rivi1969]

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11 minutes ago, Redridge said:

I had the 7Art 50mm 1.1 for a month and returned it (thank you B&H)... it reminded me of the zeiss 1.5 C Sonnar... soft focus and I wasn't always consistent with its focusing (I didnt keep the Zeiss either). The  7Art 1.1 rendering was pleasing but because I just never jelled with it, I decided to try out out the TT 50mm .95. My experience with focusing the TT .95 was much more consistent, sharper images and has a nice classic blur wide open. IMHO, the TT .95 is worth the extra money.

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I seen quite a few reviews and samples of the 7Artisans and wide open is even worst than my canon EF 50mm f1.4, just too much haze for my taste.

This shot looks like medium format. Very nice! Can I ask you much did you pay for the TT and where did you buy it?

[Redridge]

Thank You, I bought it here https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1570047-REG/ttartisan_a08b_50mm_f_0_95_lens_for.html/specs and waited 2 weeks for it to arrive... these are all SOOC.

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Edited August 9, 2020 by Redridge

[Redridge]

22 minutes ago, rivi1969 said:

I seen quite a few reviews and samples of the 7Artisans and wide open is even worst than my canon EF 50mm f1.4, just too much haze for my taste.

This shot looks like medium format. Very nice! Can I ask you much did you pay for the TT and where did you buy it?

I agree, my pre-ASPH 50, @1.4 blew the 7art away wide open... it was a lens that would of not get much use.

[pippy]

On 8/9/2020 at 8:19 PM, Andrea Bianchi said:

Any experience with the 7Artisans 1.1?......it is smaller and lighter, but I don’t know about the IQ

I'm certainly not going to try to persuade anyone that the 7A f1.1 is in any way better than the TT (I REALLY fancy a TT myself FWIW) but once the 7A is correctly dialled-in it is (IMO) a beautiful performer. The HUGE problem is that the 'dialling-in' is almost always a massive PITA (and I have also had to return one of their 75mm f1.25 as unusable).  I have two examples of the 50mm f1.1 and each can only be used on the body for which they have been calibrated to be used.

An example of a full-frame image and a 100% crop of the point-of-focus. This image was snapped with my old M8.2 wide-open at 1/30 on a moving underground (subway) train yet still seems sharp enough for my needs;

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As I say; I'm not going to say the 7A is better than the TT  - it most probably isn't - but once it is properly sorted the 7A is a wonderful lens. I've just recently re-set both my lenses. One is now tied-in to my M9M and the other for my M-D Typ-262. The latter combination has been used extensively for the last 3 weeks (hols) and performed brilliantly.

Philip.

[carbon_dragon]

I've received my 7Artisans 50/1.1. I took this shot at my game table (I'm a board game hobbyist and I'm doing more of that than photography with the pandemic). Now I also did a lot of rangefinder focusing and then checking in the EVF and the focus on the lens seems to be right on. It is hard to focus perfectly. Just the slightest movement handheld will bring it out of focus wide open (as expected). But with that limitation, and with the knowledge that this lens is not a lens you want to use if you want to get knife sharp result, the IQ isn't bad. Stopped down it's pretty sharp. But you'll want to use it wide open and sure this isn't a Noctilux but you use this lens for the dreamy narrow depth of field and I kind of think it does the job.

 

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[rivi1969]

I been toying with the idea of getting one of those "affordable" super fast lenses. Apparently the TT is much better at 0.95 than the 7A at f1.1, less haze at least.The price difference is big though. However if I am spending almost 900 for the TT, I rather get a $1000 Voigtlander f1.2, while not as fast, the IQ is superior to any of the other 2.

[carbon_dragon]

There are a number of videos on both the 7Artisans and the TTArtisans lens and some on the Nokton as well. They might help (search on YouTube). My non scientific view based on those is that if you want a SHARPer lens, the Nokton might be better but if you want a more atmospheric one the others might be better choices. I guess I see the Noctilux as BOTH a super sharp lens and a dreamy lens wide open (though it's still very sharp wide open) but that trick can only be pulled off with unlimited amounts of money (about $12000 new). I suspect that without that, there will be compromises of one kind or another. If I was going to just go play around to see what one of these kinds of lenses might be like to use, then $369 was the right price to do it. 

[rivi1969]

12 minutes ago, carbon_dragon said:

There are a number of videos on both the 7Artisans and the TTArtisans lens and some on the Nokton as well. They might help (search on YouTube). My non scientific view based on those is that if you want a SHARPer lens, the Nokton might be better but if you want a more atmospheric one the others might be better choices. I guess I see the Noctilux as BOTH a super sharp lens and a dreamy lens wide open (though it's still very sharp wide open) but that trick can only be pulled off with unlimited amounts of money (about $12000 new). I suspect that without that, there will be compromises of one kind or another. If I was going to just go play around to see what one of these kinds of lenses might be like to use, then $369 was the right price to do it. 

Agree. The price is very attractive and I read closing it to f1.2-1.3 things get much better, so it is a very competent 369 bucks "7ArtiLUX". I might give it try to.

[pippy]

14 hours ago, rivi1969 said:

...and I read closing it to f1.2-1.3 things get much better, so it is a very competent 369 bucks "7ArtiLUX". I might give it try to.

The 7A lens was intended to have a soft, dreamy look when wide-open (look at the lower area of the hair in post #10) but once stopped-down to f2 this dreaminess disappears and it performs exactly as you would expect any 'normal' 50mm lens to behave.

I bought my first example expecting it to be a wide-open 'one-trick-pony' and was actually astonished to see how sharply it performed at smaller (than wide-open) apertures. In fact so surprised was I that I undertook a 50mm test-shoot-out with the 7A being put up against my 50mm Summicron pre-asph and, for fun, my 50mm f2.8 Elmar-M. The results were posted here (in the forum) a few years ago but in a nutshell the Summicron was only marginally sharper from f2.8 down to f11 and there was NEVER such a difference that anyone could tell which was which without seeing 100% crops back-to-back - and even then it would be very difficult to say with 100% confidence.

The 7A was slightly warmer in tone than the Summicron (in comparison the Elmar was cooler) and had a tiny amount of barrel distortion (-1 in Ps was enough to correct it) but other than that? Superb performer. Which is why I bought a second example for my other body.

In comparison to my Summicron (v4) the 7A is a big, heavy piece of glass and for carrying around all-day outdoors the former would be somewhat easier-on-the-shoulder but do not think that the 7A, in terms of IQ, is somehow a noticeably inferior performer.

One oddity which I think really should be mentioned as it could be a deal-breaker; when I bought my lenses I was using an M8.2 and an M9-P and everything worked absolutely fine. Nowadays I'm using them on M9M and an M-D Typ-262. With the latter body (CMOS sensor) there is a noticeable amount of magenta edge colour-fringing due to the deep setting of the rearmost element group. I had never experienced this phenomenon with the CCD sensor in the M9-P (the crop-factor of the M8 sensor rendered this abberation invalid). As almost all of my 'proper' images are converted to monochrome it is not a major issue for my needs - and with the M9M, of course, it's a non-starter - but it's curious that it has only become visible with the newer sensor. It might well be that the angle of incidence / sensor cover / lens array combination of the 24Mb CMOS is more affected than the 18.5Mb CCD had been?

If you are considering the 7A to use on a 24Mb body and shoot a lot of colour photographs it might be worth bearing this in mind.

Here is an example. I've chosen this holiday snap because it highlights the issue more clearly than it appears in most other 'normal' shots. This was taken at f11 - the smaller the aperture the more clearly the phenomenon will be apparent;

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Philip.

Edited August 11, 2020 by pippy