Earlier this year I saw a used copy of the 7artisans 35mm f1.2 mark 2 for Fujifilm X mount. It only cost £70 and so curiosity won the battle over my wallet that day.
I have previously tried their f1.4 35mm lens that retails at roughly half the price of this one and while I was happy enough with its performance for the price I am not a fan of de-clicked aperture rings and so sold it on.
As you can see above it is a small thing, it is smaller than the fujifilm 35mm f1.4 and any other 35mm that ive tried for X mount so far. I find it very unobtrusive when mounted to the camera and hung around the neck, it doesnt seem to attract much attention in public either.
The build quality seems sturdy enough but time will tell how it will hold up over extended use. There is some wiggle room in the lens mount leading to a very small amount of rotational movement back and forth if you focus rapidly, it is small thing but noticeable and clearly shows that the tolerances in manufacturing are not as tight as first party lenses.
The aperture ring is clicked and is fairly light to adjust, I would prefer it to have more resistance but it does still click and hold in place, thankfully the focus ring at the front has more resitance to it. The focus scale also seems to be reasonably accurate with infinity focus stopping at infinity.
Image quality is surprisingly high, at f1.2/f1.4 the lens remains usably sharp in the middle with some heavy softening around the edge of the frame. Then stopping down to f5.6 it is acceptably sharp across the frame edge to edge. These characteristics are nice to see with the lens working well for subjects requiring a shallow depth of field or landscapes requiring sharpness across the frame.
Colours seem well presented and contrast is fairly high, while it does drop wide open it holds up well enough with only minor tweaking needed in post.
There are only a few real downsides that I see considering the price point, while it is possible to get “usable” results with off centre subjects when wide open this lens is realistically limited to framing subjects centrally which is not a limitation a more expensive lens may have, additionally its bokeh can be a bit busy sometimes depending on the background/foreground which again more expensive lenses would smooth out more.
After using this lens for a while and taking it on trips away as my only lens I have developed an affinity for it and a reluctance to move it on. While I love the XF 35mm I have come to realise that I tend to baby it a bit much for fear of hurting it. Is it cloudy outside? Then nope I best not take it incase it rains. Am i going to a sandy beach? Then nope best not take it incase I get sand in it. With the 7artisans lens I have no such hesitations slapping it on the camera and taking it anywhere.
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