7artisans 35mm F 5.6 lens any good?

[dpitt]

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Anyone has experience with this lens?

It must be among the cheapest new lenses for the M and nice and compact too.
I also looks like a very simple concept with not much that can go wrong...

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[Huss]

Only one aperture setting - 5.6 - and no rf coupling so you have to guess focus.

[Huss]

Only one aperture setting - 5.6 - and no rf coupling so you have to guess focus.

edit - and what makes it even worse for scale/guess focusing is it only has three distances marked on the focus scale. .3m, .5m and infinity.  So even if you are really good at estimating focus distances, you have no idea what it would correspond to on the lens unless it was one of those three settings.

Of course if you are using a camera w live view, this would not matter.  But if you’re not, it does.

[ldhrads]

I have one, have used it minimally, it's a strange little lens. Even for walking around, the 5.6 doesn't give great DOF like 8, or 11 might have. So it's a meh street lens. Handles oddly too since it is just a big disc on the front of the camera.  As Huss said, focusing is a PIA. Could have been better with a tighter fixed aperture, then it makes your M camera a point and shoot!  I've had more fun with the Funleader 18/8. That's a fun lens for walking around and with the high ISO on M- cameras I've shot it late at night on the strip and alleys in Nashville and gotten some incredible shots.

 

[Huss]

21 hours ago, ldhrads said:

I have one, have used it minimally, it's a strange little lens. Even for walking around, the 5.6 doesn't give great DOF like 8, or 11 might have. So it's a meh street lens. Handles oddly too since it is just a big disc on the front of the camera.  As Huss said, focusing is a PIA. Could have been better with a tighter fixed aperture, then it makes your M camera a point and shoot!  I've had more fun with the Funleader 18/8. That's a fun lens for walking around and with the high ISO on M- cameras I've shot it late at night on the strip and alleys in Nashville and gotten some incredible shots.

 

I looked at the Funleader 18 because I dig lenses like that.  But was put off by the 50% Leica tax they add on.  If you get the lens in Nikon or Canon mount - $100.  If you want it in Leica mount - $150.  It is the exact same lens, there is nothing different in the Leica version as it is fixed focus (no rf coupling etc).  So I guess they think because we use Leicas, they can stick us with a 50% price increase.

No thank you.