Have fun with a pocket lens.

This morning it was quite cold by the standards of Cagliari, at least compared to what we are used to here. At 8 in the morning in San Sperate, a museum village 10 minutes from Cagliari, the thermometer showed -2 ​​° c.


I went out to go, like every three months for eighteen years, to donate blood to AVIS, but since last night I received a new toy, I took the opportunity to take some shots in San Sperate.

In fact, I was able to try the 7Artisans 35mm f1.2, a completely manual and rather complicated lens for those like me, glasses and digital photographers (I started seriously about 15 years ago), are used to AF and non-MF focusing, for those who are still I didn't know it for almost a year I went from Full Frame (I had two 5d mark IV) to aps-c (now I have two Fujifilm x-pro 2) and the 35mm in question is equivalent to a 53mm in Fullframe 24x36mm format.



When I opened the box, the 35mm 7artisan immediately seemed very solid and well built, thanks to its metal structure but even more so of its 6 lenses in 5 groups.



The dimensions are really small, it is practically a 45 x 32 mm pancake of only 150 g but to hold it in your hand from a great sense of robustness, the fire as already mentioned and reiterated is exclusively manual and focusing at f1.2 is not very simple, at least for a slap of MF as I can be.


The aperture ring and focus ring are fluid at the right point, in fact there is no risk that they turn accidentally and give the feeling of having good control, even if it is true that for the very small size, but above all for the lack of experience of use, I touched the aperture ring a couple of times.


The focus peaking helps a lot and in the tests I did I always shot at f 1.2.


The expectations were not very high and the sharpness at RT is good but it is a personal opinion, we must always consider the use and purpose of this lens. The photo has a nice three-dimensionality and the bokeh is nice (9 round blades), the focus point at F 1.2 will never be as crispy, detailed and punchy as an xf 56 at f 1.6 or an xf 90f2 can be. We are talking about a lens that costs just over € 100 (you can buy it here), which is worth all the money it costs, which will not give more than what it is worth. I'm becoming a lot to use it, that's what I'm looking for now from photography, to have fun and discover and this can also happen through new and unusual tools. I don't think I will ever use it for a professional job (but I'm not so sure), it is certainly excellent and very fun for personal and creative projects or for photojournalism that requires bright and silent optics and that also admits AF errors.


Victims of my tests, as often happens, my dog ​​Nucky, some very helpful fellow countrymen like Silvana and Bruno, cheerful and very nice owners of a Minimarket, who jokingly lent themselves to pose with bananas like Mr & Mrs Smith, or part of the staff of the 'AVIS in via Talete in Cagliari or the legendary Venanzio Pilloni, 91 years old last October, posing in his Agip distributor after filling up a Fiat Punto.