lens test – tim dobbs photography

A twitter friend posted the other week that he was selling a recently purchased lens for a really good price that I could not refuse.

I have the Voigtlander 35mm Ultron f1.7 for my Leica M2 so the chance to add a 50mm to my bag was welcomed.

The 7 Artisans 50mm f1.1 is a pretty impressive piece of kit to be honest, it felt really well built and is pretty heavy to boot.

And when attached to the M2 it felt well balanced but it was noticeably heavy when carrying but was great to shoot.

I loaded a roll of Kodak Ektar and set out to test how well it performed.

The viewfinder on the M2 is lovely and bright normally but maybe it was in my head but it did seem brighter and the focusing patch was very easy to get focus quickly.

The lens barrel did creep into the finder but not into the 50mm framelines so it was not a problem.

Anyway here is a selection of images shot at various apertures … only the one of my son at the end was shot wide open at f1.1 as it was too bright when I was out and didn’t have an ND filter with me.

Overall I am extremely pleased with the lens, it is not as sharp as the Ultron wide open or even at f2.8 but how it renders the out of focus areas is lovely so its a keeper for me for sure.

Anyway thanks for looking ….

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All images on my blog are available as prints just drop me an email

I also have a film only blog over at usingfilm.wordpress.com if you want a peek 🙂

A few months ago I picked up a mint Zuiko 75-150mm f4 from Ebay for next to nothing, I didn’t think I would probably use it a lot as the Zuiko 35mm f2.8 is my goto lens whenever I shoot my OM1 or OM2s but for the price I had to get it.

I was going through one of my camera drawers and noticed the lens sitting there all alone in its case so I thought it was about time I gave it a test.

I loaded the OM2s with some Fuji Superia 400 and went out for a little walk to see how it performed.

It is quite a compact lens with its own pull out lens hood which as I was shooting in quite bright sunshine worked well and I didn’t get any lens flare.Out of all the frames I shot I only missed focus on one and the sharpness and contrast were good and the Bokeh was quite pleasing in a few of the frame too.