Malte´s Photography

As I have announced in the last days I want to test/review the TTArtisan 23mm f1.4 lens. 23mm (34,5mm FF) is to me the perfect focal length for travel, street, nature, landscape and even portrait photography as the distortions are minimal and the proportions of the human face are still good looking to us. I have been using the Fujinon 23mm f2, 7Artisans 25mm f1.8, 7Artisans 25mm f0.95, 7Artisans 25mm T1.05 and now the TTArtisan 23mm f1.4. All great lenses that can produce good images. I love to use the 7Artisans 25mm f0.95 and T1.05 with their extreme low light capabilities. During my last business trip to India, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan I used the 7Artisans 25mm f1.8 lens and I am pleased with the images and the IQ. Today I used the first time my new TTArtisan 23mm f1.4. A manual lens that has other than the 7Artisans a clicked aperture ring. The build quality is at least at the same high level as the 7Artisans lenses with a Wonderfull smooth running focus ring. It’s smooth but also well damped. This is why I love to use manual lenses. I have the feeling to have a much better control of the image and of course the point of sharpness.

The TTArtisan 23mm f1.4 is for sure not a perfect lens as you can easily see on the image of my garden with the apple, pear, cherry and walnut tree. Wide open the corners are unsharp. This is improving a lot if you close the aperture to f5.6 or even f8. But even with this unsharp corners something is catching me on that sample pictures. Is it the wonderful bokeh, the sharp center of the images, the great color rendering of that lens? I guess its is all together which is resulting in nearly 3 dimensional images. Please look to the first images of the purpur sunhat. Yes the image is taken wide open and the field of depth is minimal but to me the flower is almost standing out of the image. This is what I call a lens with a character. A lens that is producing images that are just a bit different to other lenses that just reproduce the picture you see. The TTArtisan 23mm f1.4 is giving the image more depth, more colors and the little things that makes the difference between a good and a great image. The TTArtisan 23mm f1.4 will be my lens for my next business trip. Next to that catching something of this lens, it ´s a beautiful small lens that will be perfect in my full bag during the business trip.

In the coming days I will get this lens on my testbed and compare it there directly with the 7Artisans 25mm f1.8.