Belize … part duex

To get a feel for a country, you have to step aware from the glitz and glamour of the tourist areas (isn’t that true for all tourist destinations though). In some places this can be life threatening but in others it can very rewarding. Belize seems to be a lot like Costa Rica in this regard. Just about anywhere you go the people are nice and helpful from what I have seen.

We saddled up and headed first to the Mayan ruins (it is an active archaeological site) and we got a wonderful “tour” of the rural part of southern Belize on the way over including things like the main modes of transportation being motorcycles and buses as well as seeing many traditional homes made with thatch roof construction. Many of these homes had no electricity or water service to them that I could see while others did. It is always interesting to learn how other parts of the world live.

We arrived at the Nim Li Punit site and get a class on decoding some of the Mayan glyphs that were carved into several stela that were found on the site. We learned how they counted and their numbering systems and how they marked their calendars as well. It was really awesome to see how all this worked on an actual artifact that you can touch.

This site is a smaller site that is easier to access with less crowds and therefore more freedom to navigate yourself without the pressures of large tour groups moving through . There were some tour groups but they were much smaller and didn’t choke off the entire area while there.

I am not sure if the remains that were intact were originall or if they were reconstructed for tourism, but it was really interesting to see it nonetheless. I know some was reconstructed as there was mortar in places holding a couple of stones together but the bulk looked original so I let my mind play that game.

On the return trip we stopped for lunch at a spice farm and toured the farm. It was incredibly interesting to see how many different spices they had at one place. Another thing that was interesting was seeing the spices in their natural form in nature. Things like black pepper vines and vanilla as well as other spices I had never heard of before. It was really informative as well as entertaining. After that it was a fairly long drive back to the accommodations for supper and a nap. Haha.

After our stay in Placencia we travelled to another small community called San Pedro on an island. You can get there by plane or ferry.

We flew Tropic Air which uses this fleet of 10 or 12 passenger planes as seen in the photo above. Every plane they have is this particular make and model as well as their competitor, Mayan Air. It is kinda neat to do low altitude flights from town to town. You can see a lot of things normally not within your view. I also pack my camera gear in my pack for travel and stow all of it except my action camera in my pack for safe keeping. This way I don’t leave something behind when changing locations. Another side effect though is that I get no high quality photos when the gear is in this condition so it isn’t a perfect system by no means… Once on the ground in San Pedro, I will recover it for the evening. I have high hopes that San Pedro will have more photography opportunities than where we stayed in Placencia. Actually, there was a ton of things I wanted to photograph but didn’t have time due to the schedule being so full. Lol.

Well, I really dont care for San Pedro to be perfectly honest about it. The whole atmosphere is geared towards liberating money from tourist’s wallets… this is not enjoyable at all to me. I dont mind paying a fair price for things that cost money but if you are not very careful, you will overpay significantly for the same activities offered just a few hundred meters away. I just want to be left alone to enjoy my time in peace. I really don’t know how I feel about this yet to be honest… one thing is I am here in their country kind of in the way and on the other hand the infrastructure is literally being built to support that attendance… tough call to be honest.

The first day we went into town for coffee as our villa doesn’t have any means to make coffee in it…(not cool)… but it did afford us an opportunity to see some stuff in the early morning that we would not normally see. Like the “Central Park” of San Pedro which is where they put up all the big Christmas and New Year’s decorations. It also has the giant sign at this park as well. It is common in Central American culture to have this kind of sign in each city for some reason. I kinda like it though as it is a cool photo opportunity.

The sheer number of golf carts on this island is staggering to say the least. Golf carts are the primary means of transportation here and really are convenient to be honest about it. We have a golf cart too so l can’t complain but wow, there are a lot of them. There are enough that they become a focal point of some photos.

It was fairly interesting to me to see the Belizean people in their day to day lives more than to see all the tourists two streets over. I found them to be wonderful subjects for simple street photography and I saw several more that would have been great photos if I had been able to spend more time out with my camera.

Above are some photos from our 3 mile photowalk that I was able to capture. The locals are so much more interesting to me than the tourists for some reason. Almost the whole photowalk was shot at f11 and range focus so I simply composed the photo and pressed the shutter. This makes for fast photos if you are attempting to capture a fleeting moment. Another thing you will notice is how a lot of them are looking at me. This is the reason I don’t do more street photography in Chattanooga, I stick out like a sore thumb due to my physical stature. Here though, I play the tourist card and get away with it. I just photograph all the things and sort it out later since my time here is limited.

This was taken in Central Park at night…obviously, but it was neat to find these displays still setup and under power a week later. Lots of municipalities in the USA would already be taking all this down.

Below is a photo I captured while waiting on supper to come out of the kitchen at a beachside restaurant. I simply sat the camera on a rock wall and leveled it with my iPhone under one corner since it is a 20 second exposure. My goal here was to get ocean smoothed out some for a cool foreground element. I also had to level the image a little and also set it to 16:9 crop as there was a lot of black sky above the buildings. Would it be better at blue hour? Only if you wanted some color in the sky. I like what I got and I was there at this time too so it worked out well for me.

On our last day we just rode around and looked at the island in general and I found many things that were really interesting to me. The first photo below was interesting to me since I am American and in the USA you would never see this on an official construction site. These poles are locally cut sapling trees and they are holding up the concrete forms for the second floor of this building that is under construction. It was crazy, just how many poles were inside this building like this.

Thanks for tagging along here and I hope to share something new with you soon. Until then, get your camera out and take a picture with it.

Belize in a nutshell…(blogpost)

This is a trip log of sorts.

Day 1 - We wake up at 4:30 and get ready to leave and pack the last few items we think we will need and head off to the airport.

Something we learned from the trip to England last year that was a basic revelation to us was that we don’t need as much stuff as we think we do. This was because we had decided to hike the Canterbury trail in England. This forced us to leave everything behind that wasn’t essential for the hike since we had to carry everything we wanted in our backpack. Let me tell you, you can get brutally honest with yourself when it comes to hiking and weight in your pack. To the point of removing packaging from items to simply cull the dead weight.

This led me to also take a very hard look at my camera kit. I normally would take all sorts of lenses in the off chance I would get to do this or that kind of photography. I learned over the years though that I would end up carrying all this gear and never touch it.

Well, I looked at what we would be doing and what I figured I wanted to capture and I took just one camera and two small prime lenses. A crop sensor camera and a 17mm along with a 35mm lens is all I needed. This would cover 99% of what I would be shooting and I would be able to carry it easily in my backpack.

Now, I am on another trip out of the country and I am applying the same principle again. The kit is just as small as last time but with less charging gear. I only brought chargers for USB only this time. This may prove to have been a mistake but we will see. I am also carrying only the back pack again as well.

The reason I like to travel with a backpack now is that there is no baggage to check or pickup…or lose, since I have it with me at all times. Plus the airport maneuverings is also much easier too. Much easier since you just go in and get your boarding passes (we still haven’t transitioned to using our phones yet), pass through security ( which you still do even if you check a bag) and go straight to your gate. Easy. Not to mention that I dont have to drag my roller bag around with me AND both of my hands are free as well.

You see, I despise airports and air travel to be quite honest about it. That is a blog post all it’s own. Haha.

Flying out of Chattanooga is also better to me since it is a smaller airport, the whole vibe is just lower key. This also gets me past the long lines at the big airports at check in as well as the long lines at the TSA checkpoint too. I don’t normally bother with photos at the airport like others do but here are a couple for fun. All photos of travel are taken with my phone so I don’t have to break out the camera.  The below photo is of note though, this is what overcast skies looks like from the other side of the clouds. Looks almost looks like a desert somewhere, doesn’t it?

The camera kit is shown below. I didn’t bother with lots of items I normally carry to the point of probably a fault. Lol. No lens cloths, no rocket air, no card wallet, no spare lens caps, no tripod plates (or tripods either for that matter), not even a camera bag… officially. The bag you see is actually a lens “dump pouch” that goes on your belt. It happens to be big enough to hold almost all of the camera equipment I brought. What doesn’t fit is in a ziplock bag, like the battery charger and cable and the DJI Osmo Action that I usually vlog with. I didn’t even bring all of my spare batteries as I only used two a day at the most so I brought three. Lol…couldn’t help myself.

I didn’t bother with a spare battery for the Osmo as I never ran one down on my normal days anyways and it USB charges so the same cable will charge the action camera as my camera charger.

The inventory is longer than I had originally planned with me adding the DJI Osmo Action and the Lume Cube Panel Mini (fill light) was a couple of luxuries I really wanted for vlogging but fit in the pack easily enough. I have almost decided that I can vlog on my phone just about as good as the Osmo Action…almost.

Once on the ground in Belize we pass through customs and then board a smaller plane to Placencia where we will be staying for a couple of days.

You can also tell that they play by different rules in Belize. Notice how there is no copilot, I wonder what the protocol is for a incapacitated pilot? Makes you wonder… anyway, he did just fine and we arrived in fine order. It was actually kind of nice to take the little plane down to Placencia as it flies at a much lower altitude and I could see the towns along the way really well.

I also noticed that our plane had a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator installed…haha. It is actually neat how technical the instruments have become but still display like the old ones did. It displayed EXACTLY like the old instruments but just on a digital display. I just thought it was really neat to see that.

After we arrived and got settled in, we went to the beach and walked in the ocean. It was really surreal to wake up and the outside temperature be 29 degrees and that evening it be almost 80 degrees.

Once settled in, we went to the beach for a bit the relax a little and for this I took my 17mm f1.4 lens on the Leica CL. This is a great focal length for general photography as well as some landscapes. After our beach excursion it was time for some great food and fellowship.

We ate a wonderful meal for supper and hung out a while then it was off to bed. I used the 35mm at f0.95 for a change just to see if I could get some photos in focus at f0.95 and it was a success! Day 2 was an off day from photo and video collection as I wanted to just be in the moment. This meant no camera gear of any kind. It was really nice to “unplug” for a while. Next installment will be the “ruins”…I DID take my camera this time…

Episode 2 of the Canterbury Pilgrimage

So we pick up the adventure in Arlesford and head out for Alton, this turned out to be a longer day that I thought it would as I would decide to hike all the way from Inn to Inn on this one…

This is a quaint little town that is really neat and I did some street photos the evening before we left as the light was too good to pass up.

This is the hotel we stayed in and it was simply adorable. The whole first floor of the part you see here is a restaurant/pub and the hotel is L shaped with a significant portion out back behind this street facing portion. The rest of the town is also really neat to me as well. Like the image below of the building supply.

You can tell that they have been in this one spot for a long time. I was not able to get photos of the inside as I didnt not get out to take photos till it was well past closing time and we would be leaving in the AM before they would be open too. I kinda wished we would have planned the trip a little differently so that we could have stayed in a few of the towns an extra day to be able to explore them better…

So the next morning we leave out for the next town and make pretty good time. Alton is a larger town and we are hoping to be there by lunch, well turns out the girls decided to take public transportation after about 5 miles or so and I decided to leg it on in… this would prove to be painful.

I had looked at the map and speculated it to be about 10 miles to Alton and figured I would probably cover the remaining 5 miles in about 3 hours since I would be stopping to get photos and the erratic nature of the trail layout and such as that. Well, this turned into a 6 hour slog that added up to an additional 13 miles for the day! It even got to the point where I realized I needed to cover ground more rapidly or I would miss supper so I stopped capturing video for the YouTube channel all together and just grabbed the occasional photo instead.

Now to be fair, I did cross a lot of beautiful countryside on this leg of the trip and I don’t regret making the trek this day, but I failed to drink enough water and had debilitating cramps later that night from dehydration. The lesson here is to drink more water, especially if you are doing an activity that is physically demanding in any way.

The English countryside is some of the most picturesque terrain I have ever laid my eyes on and for the local is it just …home… I have seen a lot of beautiful places on this earth and they all have a charm. The charm here is the people and how they groom the landscape for agriculture beautifully. It is literally a post card in almost any direction you look. So I did just that, took photos in every direction, and wound up with something like 1400 unique images when I got home two weeks later.

Here we have the road crossing into Alton where you walk under the road to get into the town proper. This is the kind of things you don’t see much where I live and I found interesting. The footpaths are so important to the English that they build this kind of infrastructure to keep them operational. I wished we would have done this with the old hiking trails from our countries early settlements and made them into hiking trails today…just a thought.

The next day we really didnt do much hiking as I escorted Sierra to the airport and then went back and linked up with Teresa and we made our way by train over to Farnham. We really wanted to explore the town and Kelly had already went ahead on her own so it was the perfect opportunity. We had a great time in Farnham and found Kelly later so it all went great. Then the next day we leave Farham and make our way over to the stepping stones which is a huge deal on this trail and I didn’t even know about it till this morning.

These stepping stones are part of the trail system and when we found them we decided to make a small event of it and enjoy a few minutes at this location to make it a little more memorable. If you would like to see the stepping stones just watch the video linked above. I didn’t get my camera out of the dry bag here for obvious reasons so I only have video from this location. These kinds of treks are not just about seeing how fast you can cover ground or seeing how many miles you can hike in one day, but about stopping and smelling the flowers or grabbing some photos. This is what this pilgrimage was about for me.

How important is the time of day when you shoot a photo?

When you take the photo is just as important as what you photograph

Seems there is all sorts of information out there about what to take pictures of, but no one (other than landscape photographers) talk much about the TIME you take your photo. In this article, I want to explore this a little with a simple location that is right down the road from my apartment and show the difference that just a few hours can make in the mood and feel of a location that is being captured.

The camera of choice with my the Leica CL with the TTArtisan 17mm f1.4 lens shot off of a tripod so shutter speed isn’t a problem. I will be maintaining an ISO of 100 for all photos and an aperture of f11 on all photos, so shutter speed will be what I have to change to keep the exposures to where I like them.

The time of day is something that a lot of people think about a little but really don’t put much effort into the planning of the photo. It takes a good bit of reconnoitering to get the location scouted with the vibe you are wanting in the photo. I see these locations all the time, when I am driving around in the day time and when I see them at night it is a completely different scene. Some people like shooting in the daytime, some like the blue hour or golden hour and some, like me, prefer the night… So seeing a night photo while viewing the scene lit by the sun is a problem. I can get somewhat of a visual based on previous photos I have taken of other locations, but until you see it lit by the street lights and 8’ fluorescent tubes, you just don’t know what you will be getting.

I don’t know why I like shooting at night so much, but I do. The low light and the negative space just do something for me and the photos reflect it.

Ybor City has some interesting light that is only available at night.

I do like some blue hour stuff to add the touch of blue sky to my images at times, but not always. Another perk to shooting at night is that it is cooler in the summer months, with temps being generally lower and the sun in not beating down on me, I am more inclined to stay on a location longer and get better images. Street photos at night are a little tougher as I need larger apertures to keep ISO manageable, and this means focus is a lot more of an issue as depth of field is significantly shallower than in the daytime, but it is manageable if you think about it first.

I normally set focus traps and shoot in burst mode and this will usually net me a sharp photo of a scene at night at even crazy large apertures like f1.4 or f0.95… It just takes a bit of practice and patience.

The gear matters…

The gear you use at night matters just as much as the subject you are shooting. If you have the wrong equipment, you simply won’t get the shot.

Fast glass gives you options.

Take for instance, street photography, this is dynamic and has movement in it. For most human movement, a shutter speed of 1/250 second will freeze action sufficiently. 1/200 in a pinch if the subject isn’t moving too much will net sharp photos. Well, to get a decent exposure, you will need fast glass, shot wide open and will still probably need a fair amount of ISO to compensate.

Now, if you are shooting static subjects like buildings or scenes and motion isn’t an issue, you can just let the shutter stay open until the exposure is good, but once you cross about 10 seconds, humans tend to vanish from the scene… Cars make long lines with their headlights as they drive by and things begin to look different. So you can see it all depends on what you want to capture to drive your gear choices here.

I personally like to have fast glass if possible as this is the most versatile lenses. These lenses can still be stopped down for times when you want deeper depth of field and opened up when you need the extra light gathering power of “fast glass”. So whenever possible, I will always opt for the larger aperture option over the smaller, if just makes sense to me to have that extra optional aperture when needed. The old adage “better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it” comes to mind…

Water reflections are magical in low light or night photos.

Now that lenses are talked to death, what about the camera? Well, honestly any camera will do. It is the least important part of the equation to be honest. As long as it can be controlled manually for all three major functions, it will do. You see, it must be able to adjust shutter speed, ISO and aperture manually to be able to get creative results at night. The camera running in automatic mode will make choices in these controls that will not be what the photographer wants most of the time. It is guessing and will most likely guess wrong… But just about all reasonable cameras will let you control these functions and this is where it gets good…

The time of day.

Back to the original subject. Here are two photos taken from the same location, with the same camera and lens combination, at two different times of day.

Here we have a daytime scene of a garage.

Here is the same composition at night. Notice the change in mood.

Here is the same scene, but the overhead lights are turned off (different day). This changes the mood even more and gives the scene a different feel. Take a look at the scene below of the Dutch Motel sign I found the other evening. The daytime photo isn’t much to look at, but the night time one has all sorts of interesting features that make it unique and otherworldly since it is distorting time so much with the incredible shutter time of 10 seconds!

The Dutch Morel sign isn’t much to ponder during the day…

1/400 second ISO 100 f8

Once nightfall comes and you slow down the shutter, the magic happens

10 seconds ISO 100 f8

This is just a couple of examples too, there are many others that I have noticed over the years. So if you want a certain feel from an image, the time of day absolutely matters. There are some things that a strobe just won’t overcome and the sun is one especially if you are shooting buildings and not portraits.

So if you want to learn more about low light photography, check out my youtube channel here. David Saylors Youtube Channel.

What does lens focal length do to me psychologically when shooting street photography?

Photography and the human mind…

I have found that when I put on a wide lens, I suddenly loose the fear of getting close to people for some reason. I am still guarded with people and don’t approach a lot of them, but I will still get closer. This is a real struggle for me and I find it even harder due to time constraints that I have to shoot street. I don’t normally get to go shoot street when the large crowds are out and about. I end up being in the areas when there is little to no activity. So for me to get a good candid street photo is pretty special. I don’t get dozens a week like some photogs I see, but maybe one a month…maybe.

17mm APS-C photo on the Leica CL

I find that I like to get two kinds of photos when I shoot wider than 35mm and a different kind of photo when I shoot 35mm or longer. I didn’t even realize it until the other day when I put the 17mm on my Leica CL (like a 28mm on full frame) The 28mm is also what happens to come on the Leica Q series cameras. This particular machine is quite costly and you can’t change the lens either. But for street photography , the 28mm is a great choice and lots of people LOVE the Leica Q2 and Q2 Monochrome just for this reason!

17mm APS-C photo on the Leica CL

When I put the 17mm TTArtisan APS-C lens on the camera I consciously know that the lens is very wide and that I am going to have to get close if I want to fill the frame. Then I fill the frame with images that make me happy for some reason. It is really strange that if you want better photos, sometimes you just have to get closer… Photography is strange, people have all sorts of different ideas about what it is. You know what? They are all correct. Every single one of them. What is that all about? LOL

35mm APS-C photo on the Leica CL

When I put on the 35mm (50mm equivalent) The mindset shifts to scenes with people in them or portraits on the street when I use longer lenses for some reason. It just happens too, I don’t even think about it, I just do it. I start looking for interesting things across the street when running the 35mm or longer lens. I also noticed that I like to compose from different view points too. I will end up shooting from a lower angle with the wide lens and from my eye level with the longer lenses. I think this is because of the viewing angle when I look at the photos in post, but it is a very strong phenomenon.

The Leica CL has become my de-facto street camera with either the 35mm or the 17mm as of late. I really like the form factor of the Leica CL and I also use a grip frame on it. This grip frame is made by LIMS that is currently out of production from everything I have seen. This grip frame is awesome because it has a ARCA SWISS tripod adapter on it and there is an opening for the battery door in the bottom plus it has the grip extension on the right side that makes this basically the perfect street camera for me. I like the form factor of this machine the most, it being very unassuming yet has exceptional image quality, makes this a wonderful little street camera. My only thing I would like better would be to have the Leica Q2 Monochrome as I love monochrome AND the low light power of that camera is phenomenal! But for now, I really want to use the CL all the time.

I say that with a bit of sarcasm, you see as as of late I have really started to embrace color photography more and more and have not shot in monochrome on my digital machines in ages. So the monochrome might not be the best solution for me, but I really like the idea of the low light powerhouse that it is. That is the real appeal for me to be honest about it.

The Leica CL adorned with the TTArtisan 17mm f1.4 APS-C manual lens.


So there you have it, a small treatise on my thoughts about the focal length and what I instinctively shoot with each one. I am odd and I know it, so this is by no means a definitive explanation about anything, but rather just an observation into what I do when I use certain lenses and what kind of gear I tend to lean towards when I go shoot.

Now get your camera out and go take a photo with it!

TTArtisan 35mm f0.95 APSC Manual Lens Review

Ok, yall. This has been in the works for a few weeks now and I am finally ready to publish it.

The short answer… it is totally worth the money if you like manual glass.

The long answer… read on.

Handheld at f0.95 at night shutter speed is 1/80 second. The image is nice and sharp.

Shot at f8 with the focus trap method.

This little lens is a wonder of modern engineering with how they kept the size so small and also kept the optics so clear at the same time. I unboxed this lens and noticed immediately the packaging is top tier, reminiscent of the iPhone styling but in a nice grey/cloth texture for the cover with the lens nomenclature clearly on the top of the box. If the box is a clue to the lens quality then this is going to be a real winner! (Spoiler: It is)

It is no secret that I like to shoot 50mm on my full frame cameras like my Leica SL2 and the 35mm is about as close as it gets on APSC, so I shoot a lot with 35mm on my Leica CL when I am out just shooting street for me. So when TTArtisan reached out to me and asked if I would like to take a look at this beast, I quickly agreed and they sent me a lens.

Now for the whole disclosure part: They(TTArtisan) did give me the lens for free. They also told me that they had no “rules” they wanted me to follow or anything at all to be honest. They just said that if they liked my review that they would like to have permission to share it on their social media. Which I also though was a great idea. So I am free to say what ever I want as I come to this review. With all that said, let’s get started.

I deliberately wanted to shoot with it for a few weeks before rendering judgement as this will allow the “honeymoon” phase of getting something new to wear off a little and I can be more objective in the review for you guys. I have shot a variety of subject matter with it and have come away loving this lens immensely. It only has a couple of things that I dont like all that much and they really are not deal breakers.

Shot at f0.95 in the dark… hand held and manually focused on the bottles.

What do I like about this lens?

Well for starters… THE APERTURE GOES TO f0.95!!! You just have to love some fast glass and this little guy has it, and then some! At one point I stopped down to f4 for a photo that needed some depth of field and realized I had stopped down 4 1/3 stops to do this! That is lunacy! I am just blown away that they can pack that much aperture into such a small package. Speaking of aperture, the aperture blades are nice and round but when stopped down it still produces some glorious sun stars!

The light stars are pretty epic in my book. (I love light stars though)

Stopped down to f16 & 12 second exposure, for this extreme example.

The double bladed one on the left is because there are two bulbs in the street light.

The physical appearance of the lens is really nice. It has a 52mm filter thread. The text is Leica styled with deep, clean engraved characters throughout (yes, the text, all of it, is engraved into the lens pretty deep, it will not wear off…ever) and painted really well for ease of reading. The external controls are easy to find and use. The focus throw is just right, there is a good amount of dampening in the focus barrel and it is smooth. The aperture detents are not like the other two lenses I have from them. My other two lenses are smaller than this one (the 35mm f1.4 and the 17mm f1.4) so there might not be room for a very strong aperture detent system in them, but on this little guy, the detents are perfect. They even have a nice little click as they slip from one detent to the next. I was so happy to see this issue I have with the other lenses, to be resolved in the new lens. This lens contains zero electronics of any kind so the semi-conductor shortage shouldn’t affect your ability to get your hands on one of these little guys. This is also part of the reason it is so small, there isn’t need to make room for a focus motor or any other electronics.

The lens cap is one of their signature solid metal threaded lens cap that screws on to the filter threads, this is good as it protects the lens glass AND the filter threads at the same time. Even so, I do not prefer them and the only real reason is the time to deploy the camera is much longer as it takes some time to remove the lens cap. On top of that, I can never seem to get them to go back on easily, it takes me a couple of tries every time to get the cap back on. Is there a trick to this I am not aware of? Leave me a comment if you have a trick on the lens cap, I need it!

Now, if I was worth two pennies, I would just remove the lens cap before I start shooting and then reinstall it when done…and this is exactly what I do most of the time. We have gotten spoiled to the quick deploy “pinch” style caps, so can I really call this a detractor? The level of protection these caps brings is unmatched by anything made of plastic so there is that to consider…

Shot at f0.95 in the daytime. This car was moving… Shutter speed is 1/400 sec.

The next thing that I noticed is how nice the images are coming out of this lens. The guys over at TTArtisan have really done their homework here as most super fast glass is in one of two categories…crazy expensive or not great image quality wide open. These guys seem to have broken through that glass ceiling (see what I did there? LOL) and have brought us a super fast lens, with really nice image quality, for really, really reasonable money. I dare say that these little lenses they sell are under priced and once they figure it out, the price will go up, so you better get your copy now.

So is there anything I DONT like about this lens?

The grip area on the aperture ring and the focus ring are not knurled (which is what I would have preferred) but instead is a mill cut series of notches. Now, I come from a machine shop background and understand the reasoning for this past the aesthetic look of the lens. These are easier to make, faster to make, more consistent when run at speed, and are less abusive on the machine to make as well. Knurling is one of the highest strain operations on an engine lathe/turning center and if not flooded with copious amounts of coolant or oil, the little tools that make the diamonds will clog up and destroy the part quite easily. By milling the shallow notches it was a simple mill op repeated a number of times, as the part is indexed a few degrees between cuts. This makes manufacturing VERY fast and produces beautiful results…that just don’t feel as good to me. Because I am accustomed to the rough texture of the knurled rings and these are not like that. That is not to say that they don’t work, quite the opposite, they work really well actually, but may post a problem with gloves into the winter. But now I am splitting hairs, so let’s look at some photos!

f0.95 basically in the dark with the shutter speed at 1/400sec.

Some notes about shooting with this lens. It is easy to use for street photos and the such when stopped down. It is not as easy when wide open… The reason is because all large aperture lenses have super shallow depth of field when shot wide open, well f0.95 is so wide open that you have to take a few shots as the subject will move in and out of focus pretty easily. Don’t just shoot one and call it done, it is probably out of focus… lol. I laughed here, but it probably is out of focus… It is the nature of fast glass with manual focus. I am not bothered by this, but some people are, so if you need tack sharp on the first try, then maybe you should buy the native autofocus glass for your brand of camera.

With the previous said, it seems that the more you practice doing it, the easier it gets to get sharp photos. I guess practice does matter… lol. Another thing to remember is that since the lens has no electronics, there is no meta data nor is there anything to help meter, other than the newer mirrorless machines can meter off the sensor, and the only mode of operation on the camera is manual mode. I can get away with automatic ISO as the camera meters off of the sensor in my Leica CL so it doesn’t need the lens to know the metering, but you might need to keep this in mind on your camera. The lens also comes in a plethora of mounting solutions so it should be able to be installed on pretty much any APSC camera out there, just check their website HERE for more info about it.

So there you have it, another wonderful little lens from the fine folks over at TTArtisan and I am not surprised to be honest, they have come on the scene and are taking over the 3rd party lens market by storm. Hope you have a wonderful day and get your camera out and go take some photos with it!