Funny Little Lens, The TT Artisans 35mm f1.4.
Reading up on a hair brained idea (buying a 30mm f1.4 IRIX Dragonfly I found cheap in EF mount and adapting it to M43 and L-Mount), I rediscovered a couple of bits I had forgotten about.
The TTArtisans 35 f1.4 (L-Mount), that I bought last year to add to my full frame kit was a quickly forgotten curiosity, mostly because I did not use the S5 much and when I did, I kept it simple with the 20-60 zoom.
All metal including the screw in cap, the lens feels premium.
Being a crop frame lens, we are dealing with an APS-C or Super 35, 50mm or a 70mm in MFT format (where it may be less “characterful”).
The rings are befuddling. The aperture ring (front) is tiny and feels like it runs the wrong way (f1.4 is on the left end). The focus ring at the back is hard to locate, defies follow focus alignment and feels like it should be the aperture ring.
For a budding retro cinematographer or “old school” stills shooters it is probably a dream lens.
The brass tacks of it though is it is a very mixed, dare I say optically confronting bit of kit.
Full frame is not a serious option, looking more like the results from a Holga or Diana plastic film camera. The vignetting is cool/crap also with some “magnifying glass” edge artefacts at smaller apertures. Wide open at longer distances it is just cleanly “peep-hole” darkened.
Bought with character in mind, it seems I succeeded.
A rough APS-C crop. Nice, snappy separation wide open, massive edge distortion and muted colour. Maybe a perfect start for a fake anamorphic?
Bokeh like it’s 1979!
In focus we get snappy sharpness and pleasing blur. Distortion is a very real thing though.
The Bokeh in this shot is very reminiscent of the old 1960’s Pen F series half frame 25mm I have, as is the colour. When taking these, focus was a little hard to get. Peaking was a little fickle thanks to low contrast and a very thin plane of sharpness, but I hit more than I missed overall. It helps when you are not going for perfection from the get-go.
For stills, it shoots square well, giving you all the height of the frame almost the perfect cut off point to avoid the corner vignetting.
Dizzy yet? This image had a boost in contrast to combat the often flat look. Flat = cinematic = good?
Maybe a candidate for a faux anamorphic look, shot full frame with a 2:1 crop, a streak filter if I can step it down to the odd 39mm thread and then see what happens.
The focussing thing is problematic as 3ft to infinity is a thin hair of range, but maybe I have my itch for an anamorphic look answered?
At about 2:1 the far corners are lost to weirdness, the rest though is interesting. This is at f4 up close, so the vignetting takes on a whole other thing (top right).