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The achilles heel of the TTArtisan 50mm 2.0 is the bad flare resistance. If a light source is anywhere close by, you can be pretty sure to catch some artefacts. With the sun outside the frame shading the lens with my hand helped very often, but this isn’t always a solution and it shouldn’t be. Lens sharpness has nothing to do with picture sharpness; every lens made in the past 100 years is more than sharp enough to make super-sharp pictures if you know what you're doing. The only limitation to picture sharpness is your skill as a photographer. It's the least talented who spend the most time worrying about lens sharpness and blame crummy pictures on their equipment rather than themselves. Skilled photographers make great images with whatever camera is in their hands; I've made some of my best images of all time with an irreparably broken camera! Most pixels are thrown away before you see them, but camera makers don't want you to know that. pixel (4.3× magnification) crop from above. bigger or full resolution JPG image from DNG data processed in Apple Aperture 3.6. I have both versions of the KamLan 50mm F1.1. The original (Mark I) is my favorite for everyday shooting. It is small and light, and feels right on my X-E1 camera. I bought it after I bought the Mark II, and I'm glad I did. The lens features a rangefinder coupling which can be adjusted yourself using a small (supplied) screwdriver. Being an owner of an M-mount camera now I cannot stretch enough what a wonderful design decision this is: the lens can easily be adjusted to be perfectly calibrated to your rangefinder camera and give best possible results without sending it in. I wish every M-mount lens would offer this.
With a lens this small I am expecting high vignetting figures and this is what we get. Stopping down steadily reduces the vignetting to average values in the corners though. TTArtisan 50mm 2.0 FE For portraits when shooting wide open, or when shooting single subject matter where sharpness on other elements in the frame are not as important as the center subject matter, the TTArtisan 50mm f1.2 produces amazing results, and I would say it’s probably the best walk-around 50mm f1.2 for this reason at this price. I also own the 50 Lux ASPH and here’s my take on how it differs (on the Leica M) from the TTArtisan 50/1.4 images in this review: Leica claims the Lux ASPH is actually an APO design yet was not branded as such (IIRC this was mentioned by lens designer Peter Karbe in an interview). This seems to be supported based on low LoCA and very low wide open purple fringing compared to the TTA 50/1.4. I rarely notice this problem in images with it. It also has very low distortion. However, it has a few flaws that can be annoying: a drop in sharpness and that becomes quite nervous in the mid zone between around f/2.5-4.5 with corresponding wavy field curvature, making rule of thirds subject placement problematic; ‘ninja-star’ aperture opening between f/2.5-5.6 (apparently to minimize focus shift); not so great flare resistance. It will produce a similar, though less colorful flare ring as the TTA wide open and IMO is generally not great at resisting veiling flare with bright light just outside the frame. It does not have to be a specular light source; it could even be an overcast sky. Unfortunately this is something I’ve noticed with other Leica lenses, particularly the various modern 90s I have owned (Summarit, Macro, APO-ASPH). The out of focus rendering of this lens is really really smooth! Wide open the specular highlights (or bokeh balls….merry Christmas 😀 ) look absolutely amazing. Round, clean, no harsh edges and no onion rings. Just amazingly clean looking bokeh! Just a couple of months ago Fujifilm announced their own XF50mm f/1 R WR lens (You can read my thorough run-through of that lens here ). A lens which is just about as fantastic as a lens can get within the X-series system. Some people proclaimed that that lens was “the worst lens of 2020”. I laughed a bit when I read that. An opinion seemingly based on sharpness alone, I couldn’t really take that moniker seriously. I wonder if anyone else will.
Build Quality and Usability
For Nikon Z, get the AF-S 50mm f/1.4G or AF-S 50/1.8G on an FTZ adapter, or the Z 50/1.8 or Z 50/1.2. Compared to the expensive plastic rubbish offshored to China by Nikon and Sony, this is a gem of domestic Chinese precision at a bargain price. This lens is like a breath of fresh air after reviewing countless high-priced throwaway plastic lenses from the big names. This lens should last at least a lifetime; there's nothing to break or go obsolete. Even at medium distances of about 5-10 meters it actually performs quite well at f/1.2. I wasn’t expecting this. The TTArtisan 50mm 2.0 is a lens I didn’t even think was possible. At home I have a shelve with some old (mostly broken) analogue cameras and among those is a Nikon FE with a Series E 50mm 1.8 lens. I sometimes look at that lens thinking “for SLR cameras such small yet fast 50mm lenses were possible, too bad this isn’t the case for mirrorless cameras anymore because of the missing mirror box”.
As usually things get more difficult at longer focus distances. In the forest I often found the Coma to ruin the bokeh in the corners a bit and looking at the picture with the statue field curvature might also play its part.
Bokeh
The TTArtisan 50mm F1.2 lens is constructed of seven elements in five groups, has a minimum focusing distance of 50cm (19.7”), uses a 52mm front filter thread and has a 10-blade aperture diaphragm with an aperture range of F1.2 through F16.
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