Test of the budget friendly 7Artisans 50mm f1.8 lens on the Fujifilm X-PRO3
Introduction
Lately, all the new manual and autofocus 7Artisans lenses have been very light strong and of an extreme high build quality, with polished or even anodized lens mount. This is resulting in extreme good IQ and of course an outstanding haptic with well dampened run of focus- and aperture- ring or in the case of the new autofocus lenses with a fast and precise stepper motor.
Some years ago, I have received the 7Artisans 50mm f1.8 budget lens which you can buy today for 66 USD. This is no typo! A 50mm 1.8 lens for small 66 USD!
Specifications
This lens has “only” an opening of 1.8 and has a simple, very classical lens setup (please see for details the lens drawing) but that results into a very compact classical lens with only a weight of only 169g. At the end of the day, this is all not important, what matters is the performance of the lens to render images with an extra potion of character. This budget lens can´t be optically corrected as all the new high-end lenses from many different brands on the market. To be honest, many of those “perfect lenses” are to me extremely boring. Yes, they render images sharp from edge to edge even wide open, they have close to no vignetting or color fringes. Every professional will love those lenses as they make the taking pictures in many situations very simple and they can make a fast job to earn money.
Expectations
The 7Artisans 50mm f1.8 is simpler. Still, I am expecting images with a lot of character. I have added the technical data charts of this lens, published by 7Artisans.
I am a passionate amateur photograph since more then 40 years. I am not looking for perfect pictures I need one special thing, named character. The Character will make a picture unique even can make it shine. It´s the same as cars, a Mercedes is today a perfect car that will support you in all driving situations and will transport you in highest comfort from A to B. I preferer driving my 23 years old Alfa Romeo that is to me pure emotions and a lot of fun. The Alfa is not perfect but it´s a car with character.
Shooting
This has all been wonderful theories but now my plan is to find out what are the facts. Does the 7Artisans 50mm f1.8 have a character matching my expectations?
To find an answer to this question, I took the lens on my Fujifilm X-PRO 3 for a short walk and visited a coffee shop in the center of Düsseldorf on a bank holiday. I wanted to test the rendering of blur, selective sharpness, low light performance and results in architectural photography. The Bank Holiday and grey weather swiped the center of Düsseldorf empty and I was able to shoot the pictures that mattered for my test.
Conclusion
Fact to me is the lens is providing character in such a form that the room/space on the images seems to get nearly 3 dimensional. I have seen such an effect till today only with the Fujinon XF 35mm f1.4 R and Zeiss Touit 32mm f1.4. Those two lenses are iconic and so much more expensive then the 7Artisans 50mm f1.8. Also, the resolution and image quality wide open in the low light environment is appealing. The bokeh of the unsharp rendered background is creamy. In the image made from the facade of the business building, is showing no significant distortions as I would have expected using such a cheap lens.
All these are my findings. Please have a close look yourself and drop me your opinion in the comments. I am looking forward to your interaction.