Jerry Green Loc: Huntsville, AL

I recently got the TTArtisan f/2.8 AF lens for Nikon Z. Excellent lens.

mffox Loc: Avon, CT

I have 1 Artisan lens, seldom use it. Image quality is ho-hum. Need I say more?

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Yeah, don't be too quick to dismiss some of the lenses coming out of China, Korea, etc. these days. There are a lot of good ones.

Many are quite well built, all metal barrels. A lot of them are simple... fully manual: both focusing and aperture control. Slower to use, but capable of very nice images.

Below are some examples shot with various "budget" lenses. The most I paid for any of these was $124 (incl. tax and shipping).

Meike 12mm f/2.8 (same as Opteka, I think)

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Rokinon 21mm f/1.4 (also sells under Samyang brand)

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Tamron SP 90mm f/2.5 Macro (vintage Adaptall 2 lens)

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jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

User ID

You nailed it: "Artistic Purposes". Manual lenses are meant for interesting images. This flys in the face of the local tradition of using very high end lenses to make very low end boring images.

"Interesting" does NOT mean optically weird or flawed. It just means that they operate too slowly to get perfect focus on the eyelashes of BIFs. Acoarst a few such lenses really are (intentionally) optically "interesting" ... but most are squeaky clean. And nearly all are solidly built.

For folks hooked by low tech heavy metal lenses, but who couldnt stomach putting cheap lenses on their expensive camera, theres a great solution: Voigtlander Zeiss offers a full range from mildly expensive to genuinely exhorbitant "heavy metal".

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gwilliams6

FYI, there is a difference between 7Artisan and TTartisan lenses, two different companies.

The simple truth is that TT artisan is a different company, but It has a complicated relation with 7Artisans, one of the 7 co-founders of 7Artisans started a new company named TTartisan on 2019, and 7artisans was established on 2016, 3 years earlier than TTartisan.

https://fotobargain.com/what-is-the-relationship-between-ttartisan-and-7atisans/

"Are 7Artisans lenses good?
Performance. Sharpness is highly impressive at apertures of f/2 and narrower and, for such a fast-aperture lens, holds up very well even when shooting wide-open at f/1.05. What's arguably more important for this type of lens is the quality of bokeh, and that's where the 7Artisans really excels. Sep 29, 2021"

Cheers

Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

gwilliams6

Very nice,

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I'll pass.
--Bob

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Clearly manual focus lenses are not very usable for BIF, and sports and wildlife but there is a lot more to photography than those disciplines without getting into the realm of the purely artistic.

These were taken this past Thursday at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City Long Island, the original site of the Army Air Corps' Mitchell Field. They are all SOOC Jpegs taken with my Nikon Z fc and a Voigtlander 23mm f/1.2 manual focus prime lens. There was no additional artificial lighting used and no post processing applied to any of these images, although I will eventually crop, straighten, and bring out more shadow detail from some of them. The Voigtlanders are more expensive than the lenses mentioned in this thread, but like them, they also have their quirks and limitations.

The advantage of many of these wide aperture manual focus and AF models from some lesser known brands, is the quality of their sharpness, contrast and color rendition. While they may not always be as analytical as some better known lenses, using them can often result in more pleasing images. With the tools available in modern mirrorless bodies, and with practice and care, manual focus lenses are capable of capturing sharp, contrasty images, even in very low light. Many of the attached images are examples of that. Click on Download to view these images at full resolution.

Front entrance

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Early rocket. Not sure if it is real or a mock up

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Small private plane

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World War 1 military vehicle

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Early hot air balloon wicker basket

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Blue Angels jet

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WW II glider cabin

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mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Excellent images. I love my Voigtlander fast manual focus primes which are more pricey than the lenses you used for these images. However, for me the results I get are worth the price. Of course, manual focus lenses are not for everyone. They are not an efficient tool for fast moving subjects, They also significantly slow down the photographic process which is an issue for some shooters. Additionally, many people don't have the interest or patience needed to get the best from them. Using them I find I shoot far fewer images than with my AF lenses but still have a higher percentage of keepers. I believe that may be the result of greater attention to my settings and composition than when I use an AF lens.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I'm surprised at how many companies I've never heard of are making inexpensive Z lenses. I came across one last night - Brightin Star 23mm f/5.6 totally manual for $70. This is not a lens that a wedding photographer is going to use, but it does capture light, and it's cheap. You don't have to search for reviews to find out if it's any good. I think you already know. Still, it's a lens that actually works, and it's cheap. You could say this would push your abilities as a photographer.

There are lots of Brightin Star lenses available, all for low prices.

https://www.google.com/search?q=brightin+star+nikon+z+lenses&oq=brightin+star+nikon+z+lenses&aqs=edge..69i57j0i546j0i395i546l4j69i64.8502j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Come to think of it, I wonder why camelcamelcamel sent me a notice about a price drop because I didn't even know this lens existed, let alone have it on my Amazon list.

gwilliams6

It is good that companies are making affordable Z lenses, like all those making affordable autofocus and manual focus E-mount lenses. Nikon and Sony (longtime partners with their sensors) are smart enough to allow and encourage this, it helps both brands sell more cameras to people of all budgets and gets them into their mirrorless systems.

Cheers and best to you.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY