Walking With The 35mm 1.2 Lens 7artisans Lens

For a compilation of the morning walk images, click here.

Doodling With A Camera: Working with the manual focusing 7artisans 35mm lens has been something of an awakening. I've decided to take it, mounted on a (lightweight) X-E1 body on this afternoon walk through Cole Valley, looking for and photographing color juxtapositions and patterns that I found interesting. I appreciated the fact that I didn't have to pay for film or processing fees just to experiment in color, so I didn't care that many of the photos I made were complete duds. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and every once in a while, an image popped up worthy of inclusion in this post.

Manual Focusing Aids: The Fujis provide some interesting features to facilitate manual focusing. For that reason, one must decide exactly where the plane of focus is to be. Adding those extra seconds forces the photographer to make a conscious decision on which areas should be sharpest.

50mm Equivalent Focal Length? Meh. The  35mm focal length in an APS camera like the Fuji translates to the presumed "normal" lens (50mm) of the film camera years. Back in the day, the 50 was consider the base line of lenses. Anything longer was considered a telephoto, and anything shorter was considered a wide angle. This lens just wasn't long enough to allow for a perspective-compressing long shot, something that real telephoto lenses excel in doing.

Some years ago, many pro photographers (film) switched to a 35mm "normal" as their go-to lens. I personally choose a wider lens (28mm equivalent) as my go-to. If I'm working the street with a minimal kit, a Fuji X100T with a wide angle adapter that gives me that 28mm equivalent, will be the first camera out of the bag. So for me, wider is better.

Hat On An Armrest: I'm not sure why anybody would leave a cap on the armrest of a park bench. But here it was, giving me a photograph with a nice sample with a smooth, out-of-focus background. The aperture setting was nearly wide open, if I remember correctly. Since the lens is manual and third party, it does not transmit exposure information to the EXIF file that accompanies the JPG image. Come to think of it, film never gave me that information either.

Blowing In The Wind: For this photo, I was playing with the Saturation adjustment in post production. The colors are off the charts in some respects, the sort you might expect to see from a plastic lens on a Holga camera. The X-E1 doesn't have the "toy camera" mode found on the X-E2 and later bodies, so I decided to make do with what I had. The vignetting (darkened corners) of the lens are apparent in this shot. Also, it's not that sharp. Hey, it's a cheap lens. Deal with it. I did.

Morning Shadows: The next day, I brought the camera with me on my morning walk. I thought that the shadow of the scaffolding on the side of this house created an interesting pattern.

Speed Reminder: This photo shows upper Market Street at about 8:00am. The shelter in place order made cars and pedestrians scarce, and I need one for the speed reminder to light up. The light blinked to get the drivers attention when they exceeded the posted limit, so I shot in burst mode to be sure I got a few lit frames to choose from. I needed to dodge the "29" slightly to make it a little more visible.

Reflections: Reflections can be strange. I'm facing south, and sunlight is reflecting off of the apartment building behind me. I have no idea why these reflections are so shaped, or why they are so consistent. I suspect they are from windows that are acting like convex mirrors.

This is as excited about photography as I've ever been, and it has given me a new challenge, and an old approach, to the craft. I'm anxious to see what my subsequent mornings, and lenses, will bring.

The 7artisans 35mm F 1.2 Manual Focus Lens

I bought my lens here.

Let's Go Buy Buy! I have been doing a lot of on-line shopping during the shelter-in-place restrictions placed on Californians. Since I now have three Fuji X-Pro bodies, I felt an obligation to experiment with manual focus prime lenses using both adapted Nikkors and maybe buy some with dedicated  Fuji X mounts. 7artisans has introduced a wide variety of manual focus lenses including a 7.5mm  2.8 fisheye, a 12mm F 2.8 and a 25mm F 1.8 wide angles, a "normal" 35mm 1.2, and a 55mm 1.4 short telephoto.  My 55 should arrive shortly, and my 25 some time in April.

The 7artisans 35mm F 1.2 lens was the first to arrive, and it was ahead of schedule. Many of these Chinese-made lenses have been in short supply, probably due to factory closures and a nation of shelter-in-place shoppers needing an excuse to buy something. My lens was shipped from a dealer in New York, so delivery was well within the promised one-week delivery window. Other EBay stores based in China and Hong Kong are not due to start shipping until April.

I mounted my new lens on a Fuji X-E1 body, primarily because it was handy and much lighter than my X-Pro bodies. When viewed from above, you can see that all of the controls are visible and accessible. In fact, the lens is very close in appearance to the one on my old  Olympus 35SP, the closest thing I ever got to a grownup rangefinder camera. Carrying that Olympus daily taught me a lot about photography. I am starting to remember those lessons whenever I handle this new lens/body combination.

Lens Layout: The layout is pretty standard among the manual focus lenses, which is to say the focusing ring (right arrow) is farther from the camera body, while the aperture ring (left arrow) is closer.  This works out nicely, since it gets pretty crowded on lenses this small. You'll be making far more adjustments to focus than you will for aperture size, so place it where there is more room to move. From a design standpoint, the placement of the aperture blades in a 35mm lens is 35mm, or about 3/4", from the film plane. In the simplified design of a fully manual lens, this makes sense. In reality, the aperture adjustment ring can be placed anywhere on the lens barrel, for a price.

The focusing arc, or the rotation necessary to adjust the lens from infinity to the closest focusing distance, is about 135 degrees, close to 1/3 of a turn. The image snaps in and out of focus smartly, but precision is necessary as the slightest movement might inadvertently nudge the lens out of focus. It's quite smooth, by the way.

Indexing Marks: One on-line reviewer of the 7artisan lenses said, in essence, that there was no way of knowing what aperture one had selected. I think he's half right. There is an index mark (red arrow) that serves to identify both the distance and the aperture settimgs, but it is difficult to see.

I can't imagine that the cost of a more visible reference line would have pushed the price point out of alignment, but it goes to show how much/little the designers wanted to provide a great user experience. True, you will eventually learn where to look, but how hard would it have been to elongate the line, or put a red dot to mark the spot?

Guestimation: Since the advent of face detection, available on more and more cameras, the photographer could let the camera isolate any faces in the frame and adjust the focus accordingly. But old school photographers often relied on their ability to accurately guess the subject-to-camera distance. These adjustments, along with appropriate exposure settings, were made before the camera was brought to eye level.

Maximizing Depth Of Field: If you're grabbing shots on the run, it would be helpful if you could predict the depth of field provided by your shooting aperture. You need to set your lens to its Hyperfocal Distance setting. First, select your shooting aperture. In this case, the smaller the aperture, the greater the depth of field. F 8.0 has been selected (white down arrow). Next, locate the two depth of field indicators on the scale. Align right hand indicator with the infinity marker (red arrow). Notice that the left hand indicator is aligned with the one meter (3.5') marker. In theory, everything from 3.5 feet to infinity will be in focus, assuming that your sharpness needs are a little loose.

For this lens, the Hyperfocal Distance* is about 7 feet when shooting at F 8.0. Of course, you'd only need to remember that distance only if you didn't have a depth of field scale, which you do.


The Focal Plane Mark: While we're on the subject of manual focusing our lenses, you should know about the Focal Plane Mark (white arrow). While the position from camera to camera can vary, it indicates the location of the surface where the film, or the sensor, is positioned. The distances marked on the lens barrel are distances from the subject to the focal plane, not to the front of the lens. Consider too that the distance markings on the barrel are approximate, so don't attempt to use them for anything too precise.

Okay, get out there and focus those lenses manually!

*A detailed explanation can be found here.

Down The Rabbit Hole - The XPro 1 and 2

Read Ken Rockwell's evaluation here.

One Toe In The Water: I am known for my excesses. Back in July 2019, I purchased my first X-Pro1 body, an Excellent Minus specimen from Adorama, in July of 2019. Since then, I've acquired an X-Pro 2  body in January 2020, and another X-Pro 1 body in February, both used and in very good shape. I'm obviously hooked, but the path to this current state of camera-induced euphoria was somewhat predictable, given the circumstances.

The Back Story: I managed to drop my X-T2 body onto my living room floor, and for a moment, feared it would need some serious repairs. You see, the drop sheared off the rubber eyepiece, leaving some important-looking fragments of mounting hardware still attached to the body.   In fact, I could swear I saw the stubs to two brass machine screws protruding from the wreckage. Fearing the worst, I temporarily retired the body, making my 16 megapixel X-T1 body my primary camera, and used an X-E2 body as my second body.

"Flash", the Seawood Photo store cat

Not Enough Dots: It wasn't that long ago when I considered my 12-megapixel Nikon D300 body my ultimate "big gun". Now, I find myself relying on the high-resolution files provided by my 24 megapixel Nikon D600 and my Fuji X-T2. Now I was stuck with a paltry 16, and I started to notice the lack of detail in my extreme enlargements. Until I resolved my "broken" camera issue, I felt I truly needed another 24-megapixel body.

I found several used X-T2 bodies for about $700.00 at some on-line dealers. Having two identical bodies had some appeal, but I didn't leap on that option, mainly because this would probably involve an internet purchase, the intellectual equivalent of an blind date followed by an obligatory commitment, truly an "until death do us part" affair. I got cold feet and sought solace locally. I wanted to meet my new love face to face.

My "love at first sight" moment came when I encountered a very VERY clean X-Pro2 at Seawood Photo in San Rafael. I had considered buying one when it was first introduced, but instead chose the X-T2 for its rotating LCD and lower price tag. The X-Pro before me had a price tag of under $900, and after considering its almost pristine condition, I bought it. It came with one battery, a charger still wrapped in its original plastic bag, but nothing more. I surmised that its former owner had other Fuji cameras and therefore already had a battery charger, and other bodies that needed all the available spare batteries.

Too Good To Be True? As Indiana Jones said to Marion Ravenwood, "It's not the years, honey, it's the milage". The number of shutter actuations ("clicks") is good indication of how hard my camera had been driven. This number proved elusive, since this information wasn't provided by the camera or accessible through an application capable of reading the EXIF data. Using Google, I found a website, Apotelyt, that claimed it could extract the shutter count from an unaltered image  uploaded to their website. I tried it, and to my delight, found my new prize had slightly more than 6,000 clicks, a small fraction of its potential lifespan. Huzzah!

Epilogue: Meanwhile, there was still the problem of my ailing X-T2. I learned from my brick-and-mortar dealer that repairs to Fuji cameras was both slow and expensive, and if the damage to the camera was more that superficial, it would be VERY expensive. I also learned that Fuji would trade my ailing camera for one similarly worn but fully warranted for about $500.00, somewhat cheaper than buying a used one on the open market, but expensive just the same. Since I planned on using this camera until it disintegrated, I decided to re-examine the damage, and even considered gluing the broken eyepiece back onto the body.

Product description can be found here.

I was idly searching Ebay for a replacement eyepiece. I happened upon this image of a third-party replacement that showed the back side of the eyepiece. I noticed the heads of two phillips machine screws (see white arrows), and realized that the two screw studs that protruded from the what I thought was the back of the camera were actually part of the eyepiece itself.

I cautiously pushed on what I now know to be the eyepiece's mounting plate, and removed it from the body. The body proper was undamaged. Elated, I found a dealer who carried the OEM eyepiece, and in one week, the T-2 was back in action, proud and competent as ever.

The upshot of this mini-adventure was that I now had two additional X-Pro bodies, and the desire to get to know these cameras better. They hold a certain fascination, a strange bonding to the rangefinder cameras I had never used, but knew well enough to imagine them as the proper equipage for the concerned young photographer I believed myself to be.

The adventure continues.