7Artisans sent me their latest 18mm F5.6 full frame lens, so I had some wide-angle shooting adventures with it on my own Nikon Z5 around the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Normally I'd say no to manual focusing lens, but I do make exceptions, especially when the lens is so cheap, at about USD89 only! Yet it covers the full image circle of a full frame sensor, has full metal build, includes 2 aspherical and 1 ED lenses in the lens construction and is so, so compact and slim in a pancake design! How can I not be curious about this lens? I have also made a video to share my thoughts on the 7Artisans 18mm F5.6, you can check it out here (click).
DISCLAIMERS
I am not connected or associated with 7Artisans in any way. They have contacted me and sent me their 7Artisans 18mm F5.6 lens for testing purposes, and I do get to keep this lens after my review. However, I made it very clear to them that they have no control on what I want to say here in this blog, or on my YouTube video. This is also a user experience-based review, so you won't see much technical analysis or charts, but you will see plenty of sample images.
DESIGN & BUILD
The lens design is in all black, minimal, looking elegant and sleek, and it matches the design of my Nikon Z5 very well. The lens is so compact in size, I am amazed at how they could make it so tiny, in a pancake slim design, yet it is a full frame lens. The lens weighs only 146g, mounting it in front of the Nikon Z5 feels like there is no lens on the camera at all. Furthermore, the build quality of the lens is excellent. The lens barrel is made of full metal construction, the lens feels very solid and reassuring in hand, there are no creaky or rattling parts as you move the lens around. There is only one control on the lens, which is the manual focusing ring, and I find the ring to be smooth to operate, and I can get to my zone in focus quickly and effectively. Do bear in mind that this is a fixed F5.6 aperture lens, you cannot go wider or narrower, you cannot stop down the aperture to F8 or F11, it is stuck at F5.6 at all times. I can see how this will be limiting in some shooting cases, but this is a budget lens, and based on the extra low-price tag, the fixed F5.6 should not be a big issue.
IMAGE QUALITY
7Artisans claims the use of 7 elements in 5 groups lens construction, which includes the use of some special glasses, namely 2 aspherical lenses and 1 extra low dispersion lens. I am generally quite pleased with the image output from this lens. The center sharpness is actually very good. The lens can resolve plenty of fine details, very decent contrast, overall images come out looking punchy and realistic. I honestly did not expect this level of quality coming from a cheap budget lens!
I am also very impressed with how the lens handles chromatic aberration. I did not see any traces of purple fringing (except at extreme corners, we will talk about this later). Considering this is an F5.6 lens, and it does feature an extra low dispersion element, the chromatic aberration was effectively mitigated. On the other hand, the lens fares well in handling ghosting and flare. I did not see much issue when shooting against strong sources of light, we do get a bit of flaring and haze but nothing too severe, and non-dealbreaker. I have seen worse flare problems in more expensive lenses.
The lens exhibits peculiar distortion profile. Typically for ultra-wide angle I'd expect barrel distortion, but we get pincushion distortion with the 7Artisans 18mm F5.6 instead. This can be quite difficult to correct in post-processing.
The corner performance of the lens is very poor. As you move further away from the center, image quality drops significantly. The extreme corners are totally unusable, with visible softness and heavy vignetting even without pixel-peeping the image. The vignetting is so bad that it not only darkens the corners, but it also shifts the contrast and colors so much, it is almost impossible to compensate in post-editing. If edge to edge sharpness and no vignetting are important to you, maybe this is not the lens for you.
CONCLUSIONS
While I do admit the 7Artisans 18mm F5.6 comes with some flaws - namely distortion and poor corner performance, it is hard to not like the lens. Those issues mentioned are not dealbreakers to me, especially at the price tag of USD89. The lens can deliver sharp results with very pleasing rendering. If you need an ultra-wide angle but you don't want to spend a fortune on higher grade lenses, and you don't mind doing a bit of manual focusing work, the 7Artisans 18mm F5.6 is a winner!
While I do admit the 7Artisans 18mm F5.6 comes with some flaws - namely distortion and poor corner performance, it is hard to not like the lens. Those issues mentioned are not dealbreakers to me, especially at the price tag of USD89. The lens can deliver sharp results with very pleasing rendering. If you need an ultra-wide angle but you don't want to spend a fortune on higher grade lenses, and you don't mind doing a bit of manual focusing work, the 7Artisans 18mm F5.6 is a winner!
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