Last week I received a rare lens for Fujifilm x-Mount, the Zonlai 50mm f1.4.
The lens comes with a well designed and easy to open box and even includes a perfectly fitting lens hood. The first haptics of the lens mounted on my Fujifilm X-PRO3 Black is promising a lot. The lens flanch is sitting tight and with no mechanical play on my camera mount. The click less aperture ring, I learned to love this from my many 7Artisans lenses and not only in producing videos, is smooth but stiff enough that its not changing setting just by handling or weight of the lens. As the focus ring the aperture ring is well damped and its fun to feel the combination of high quality materials used on that lens. I can understand that these lenses are a bit more costly then the 7Artisans and as well the TTArtisan lenses. Even I must confess that the build quality of the lately released lenses of both brands have improved so much compared to the first generation.
I took the lens on a walk with my dog to capture the smooth morning sun that has announced a wonderful sunny day. The color rendering of the lens is soft and gives a touch of pastel tones or is this just related to the smooth light in the morning. I like the sharpness and image details provided from the lens even wide open and with a bit of over exposure as you see at the flower picture below or has this been just a coincident.
These and many more questions I will answer during my next trips with this lens and you can be sure I will share the results with you.
I have a Zonlai 22mm f1.8 a good lens despite Ttartisan 23mm f1.4 seems to be sharper
hi, although its is uncommon that Chinese lens sharp wide open, i still want to ask about the Sharpness compare to other popular chinese lens like ttartisan or 7 artisan.. how is it?
Dear Hazeq,
If I compare the Zonlai 50mm f1.4 with the TTartisan 50mm f1.2 and the 7Artisan 55mm f1.4 MKII then I must commit the TTArtisan is the most sharp lens of that trio, The Zonlai is in between and the 7Artisan is on place 3.
A good image is much more then sharpness. It´s about charakter and color rendering too. The Zonlai and TTartisan are great wide open with nature and flower photography and close ups. The 7Artisans is my favorit lens for portraits. Perhaps the extra 5mm focal length are the reason for this. One thing I noticed, the Zonlai 50mm f1.4 is very compact and light weight compared to the other two lenses. Great in the bag during travel and hiking. All in all, all three lenses are really good and you will be happy in using them.
If money and weight is no issue, I can also recommend the 7Artisans 50mm f0.95. Great optical results and wonderful bokeh wide open.
One last advise, use all lenses with a lens hood. Your images will have stronger colors and contrast.
Kind regards,
Malte