I recently acquired the 7 Artisans 35mm F0.95. With the pandemic lockdown, it is difficult to test the lens properly. All I can do is run comparisons between the Zhongyi 25mm F0.95 and Kamlan 50mm F1.1. Do note they are all manual focus lens and all have clickless aperture rings. I personally do not like clickless aperture ring for photography. Tt is too easy to move the aperture ring by mistake. Also, the Kamlan lens was the only one to come with a lens hood. I use screw on hood with the other two. Before I start, here are a few photos shot with the 7 Artisans lens at F0.95. All the photos taken for this review was shot using Panasonic GX9.
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| 7 Artisans 35mm @ F0.95 |
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| 7 Artisans 35mm @ F0.95 |
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| 7 Artisans 35mm @ F0.95 |
Here are the lenses side by side. The 7 Artisans lens is by far the largest and heaviest here.
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| Zhongyi, 7 Artisans and Kamlan |
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| Zhongyi, 7 Artisans and Kamlan |
For this comparison, I will test at the fast apertures F0.95/F1.1, F1.4, F2.0 and F2.8. Also, I framed all the lenses to give similar crop. I bought these lens to shoot mostly at F0.95 or F1.1. I am very unlikely to shoot at aperture smaller than F2.8. The focus point for all the imaages is the front of the R2D2 figure.
F0.95/F1.1
Let's start at F0.95/F1.1. First of all, the Zhongyi lens is by far the worse for vignette. Also the exposure was very dark compared to the other lenses. The Zhongyi images has +0.6 exposure added in Lightroom, but no vignette correction applied. In term of background blur, there is not much difference between them, but Zhongyi lens gave the most background blur.
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| Zhonyi 25mm @ F0.95 |
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| 7 Artisans 35mm @ F0.95 |
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| Kamlan 50mm @ F1.1 |
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| F0.95/F1.1 |
F1.4
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| Zhongyi 25mm @ F1.4 |
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| 7 Artisans 35mm @ F1.4 |
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| Kamlan 50mm @ F1.4 |
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F1.4
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F2.0
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| Zhongyi 25mm @ F2.0 |
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| 7 Artisans 35mm @ F2.0 |
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| Kalan 50mm @ F2.0 |
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| F2.0 |
F2.8
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| Zhongyi 25mm @ F2.8 |
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| 7 Artisans 35mm @ F2.8 |
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| Kamlan 50mm @ F2.8
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| F2.8 |
Verdict
Each lens gave slightly different perspective. The Zhongyi lens is by far the sharpest, followed by 7 Artisans and lastly Kamlan. For portraits, I would use 7 Artisan followed by Zhongyi. The Kamlan is still useable just does not reach the sharpness as the other two. I was surprised how dark the corners were for the Zhongyi lens, but it is by far the sharpest lens here at all apertures. These manual focus lenses should be used for their characteristic and not absolute sharpness. For that, there are many lenses by Olympus, Panasonic and even Sigma that are better and they also auto focus.
From this tests I performed here, I would choose the 7 Artisans 35mm over Kamlan 50mm unless you want to shoot at at 50mm. The 7 Artisans lens is much heavier than the Kamlan lens. It makes the camera quite front heavy.
In summary, Zhongyi 25mm F0.95 is the sharpest by far, but worse for vignette. Between the 7 Artisans and Kamlan, they both do not suffer from vignette. 7 Artisans is sharper of the two lenses. I would choose 7 Artisans over the Kamlan.
From the tests performed here, I would still use the Zhongyi lens as my walk around lens and use the 7 Artisans lens for Portraits. In the end they all fun to shoot with.
