TT Artisan 50mm 1.4 Asph

[GLL]

Hello all, after spruiking this lens in another thread I thought it was only fair to post some images and an impression. I thought i'd seen another thread but now can't find it, so please forgive me if i'm doubling up!

The long and short is that i'm rather taken with this lens. It's nicely put together (on par with the voigtlander and zeiss lenses i've owned, and leagues ahead of the 7Artisans 50 1.1 i had for a short spell), the iq is impressive and it's surprisingly compact.

It has some softness and glow wide open (though when I looked through my scans, I couldn't find a good example), but it's much sharper than I expected (even towards the edges of the frame), and renders with very high contrast. I've heard people mention the focus adjustment, but mine seems to have arrived spot on, and the reviews i've read have said the same. YMMV, of course.

This shot was taken around f5.6, in very harsh sun, on Superia 400.

This was from the same roll (extremely bright day) and as wide open as I could get without radically overexposing - i think around 2.8.

There's relatively little about the lens online, so i'll aim to keep posting shots and impressions in here as I go.

 

[AlexBG]

Odd that the hype for this lens is so small. 50mm 1.4 is a sort of go to for film shooters especially rangedinders due to how easy it is to focus compared to the super fast lenses. Maybe because people on this forum will be looking at this compared to a canon 50mm 1.4 of old and not seeing a huge difference.

 

[GLL]

Odd that the hype for this lens is so small. 50mm 1.4 is a sort of go to for film shooters especially rangefinders due to how easy it is to focus compared to the super fast lenses. Maybe because people on this forum will be looking at this compared to a canon 50mm 1.4 of old and not seeing a huge difference.

I suspect there's a bit of confusion about the brand, there relationship with 7Artisans and the quality of their lenses (which is all of course totally understandable).

I've never used the canon, but looking at photos I would say this is much more like the VC 50 1.5 ASPH. It's definitely not a 'vintage style lens' - the rendering and contrast is very modern.