7Artisans 75mm f:1,25 - Return of the Biotar?

[@jlwilliams]

FYI, the 7Artisans video on how to adjust the focus calibration is here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fYTQpaCHqJKirsU It's in Chinese with English text overlay.

[@fellowcitizen]

Loving your context and analysis! Subscribed :) The spherical formats clearly account for some of the "film look"

[@v.richard9993]

i love the little history lessons in the reviews, i could watch an entire serie about the history of photography

[@jlwilliams]

I was lucky that way... when I was a teenager the local library had microfilms of old photo magazines going all the way back to the '30s. I could just get out a spool and read a whole year's worth. Was fascinating to read what photographers had to put up with when "vintage" equipment was new...

[@homecareful]

I loved it. You explained so that even I could understand it. I love the "backstories" of old and modern lenses. Somehow you combined them both in one great video. Bravo.

[@ikke391]

Wow! This is such a great video. I almost never keep interested in a video that takes 17 minutes (mostly I skip parts) , but in your video time flew by. This was video really interesting! Thank you for the great review (and history lesson)!

[@mr_cramberry]

Thankyou for your review. Especially for your wonderful historical lens insights!

[@thecaveofthedead]

Really informative, thanks. I didn't know anything about spherical aberration, but your explanation makes perfect sense.

[@ayouthwellspent]

This was a stunning video to watch. Can't remember the last time I got so much value from 17 minutes on KZbin. Thank you for taking the time to produce such a splendid piece.

[@jlwilliams]

Christian Obe thanks!!

[@AndresRuiz-gs8vm]

I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS!!! we need more people like you in photography! I like your taste & approach

[@AlloyDiesel]

The speed up vocals are hilarious. I give presentations a lot, and I wish I could do this to myself live on the spot. I have to settle for a grande triple shot breve latte, which achieves about the same effect. :) Great video. I love your lens reviews, some of the best on youtube.

[@andreasvillen6990]

I didn’t want the video to end. Keep on sharing your knowledge and thoughts. You’re doing a great job!

[@philmtx3fr]

Interesting review with a good explanation of the issues for building a good 85 or 75mm. Thx a lot for that. I like your work and the way you share it

[@christopherkowalewski]

This is an excellent video that both assesses the 7Artistans’ 75mm f/1.25 and provides some great history for better understanding the focal length - thank you! Still not decided though to buy the lens...

[@myleicam8546]

Congratulations for this extraordinary informative video!

[@bradmiller9993]

Thanks for the comparison and the history lesson and the physics lesson and the economics lesson! Loved it.

[@AdamCzarnowski]

A remarkably sensible, well-informed and lucid review. Thank you!

[@benisboy2697]

Awesome. Being a huge vintage lens fan this video really hit the spot. Was expecting just a review of the 75mm, but got a sweet pack of info that's hard to come by. Thanks!

[@gubunken]

This is so good. Love this empirical comparasion! Youre totally right. Sharpness isnt everything at all..

[@photomonkey2893]

An terrific review. Thank you for the exhaustive comparisons and excellent insights!

[@RaymondLay]

Great video. Really informative and detailed. Keep up the great work.

[@phoenixdaradia5897]

What a helpful, sensible video. Great information. I love the 'classic' look, and pretty much all my lenses are vintage or of classic configuration. Sharpness definitely isn't everything, especially for forgiving portraiture, and this 7 Artisans looks right up my street. I remember tales of the Carl Zeiss T* 85mm f1.4 being unpopular among portrait sitters at the time because it was 'too sharp' or 'too revealing', and photographers who'd just spent their hard-earned money being gobsmacked at the very idea.

[@龍龍草]

A fair and objective review indeed, it's great! Particularly like historical development portion and the comparison with the lens that is of similar designs. Obviously a 'simple' non-ASPH and non APO design is difficult to compete against the more sophisticated designs, in term of sharpness and abb. controls. But from photographic point of view, it offers an extra option for 'vintage' performances. Best if can improve the center sharpness while the mid session and corners can stay the way it is now. That will be a great performer in the 'vintage' type lens product.

[@龍龍草]

Like the way the lens is reviewed and compared, particular against the vintage lens (Canon). Lens can be "as sharp as possible" or it can also be "having its own character". Love to have the choice of sharpness or dreamy feel.

[@DonFather]

wow, great review. very detailed

[@marcm.bamberger3537]

highly educational - thank you very much! Keep them coming!

[@Sco_street]

I finding 75mm-90mm lens for portrait, thanks for your infromation! great video!

[@placidus_v]

Awesome review! Thanks for your work.

[@andyz_w3584]

Fantastic! J. as far as I know, seldom do people really talk about the construction designs of the lenses, but you are the first one as I know talking about the Biotar alternative. That's what I'm looking for. I just bought an Helio 13blades 58mm. are all 7artian and tt artisan's lense biotar? I want to buy more new biotar lenses, it's hard to find some really good condition lense right now, such as Helio, Meyer optika...

[@jlwilliams]

Hello… no, not all the 7Artisans lenses use the Biotar formula. They make other lenses that use other formulas, and so does TTArtisan. They usually put a lens diagram on the box, and that's often the only way to know what you're getting! Good luck with your lens hunt… it can really be a challenge…

[@kristoffergo6294]

That was awesome! Very informative!

[@LukeTaylorPhotography]

Hi JL! Thanks for this review. Have you tried the TTartisan 90mm 1.25? If so, how does it compare to the 7Artisans 75mm? I've heard mixed reviews on the 75mm, but the 90mm seems almost universally loved.

[@jlwilliams]

It sounds like it has potential, but I've never tried it. As you know, my channel doesn't accept compensation (not even review units) and I can't afford to buy everything interesting for my own use. One potential downside is that it seems kind of enormous (which is problematic on a rangefinder camera because of viewfinder intrusion) while the 75mm is fairly compact. Anyone out here in comment-land have any experience with this lens?

[@aimeecute4216]

Very informative, thanks. U might also consider the Kamlan 55 1.2 ( not apsc version 50 1.1). Kerlee 35 1.2, Samyang 85 1.4. Those are the best budget fast prime I used. All are sharp in the centre even wide open

[@mlo4881]

Wanna know more about coating and color. Great review!

[@KingGameReview]

I've always wanted to try the Biotar 75. When I first learned about it around a decade ago, it was selling for around $1500. I should have picked one up back then, but I didn't have the money. Now they're double that. I just bought a used 7Artisans for around $300. I'm looking forward to using it when it comes in. I love weird, old lenses (and that's basically all I shoot). Modern lenses are too perfect. Old lenses have more character and are more similar to an impressionistic painting than a clinical reproduction of the scene.

[@jlwilliams]

Yes, it has shot up like a lot of other vintage lenses, and I suspect the reason is the same for all: You can adapt almost any lens to a mirrorless camera. Before that happened, the Exakta- and Praktica-mount Biotars were at least sort of semi-reasonable in price, because the only way to use them was on an Exakta (or Topcon) or Praktica (or Pentax) and not very many people wanted to go to the bother of doing that. The Leica and Contax versions were always pricey, both because they were rare and because Leica and Contax users were willing to shoot with them despite the inconvenience. I always found mine a little frustrating -- the results it gave were either beautiful or useless, never anything in between -- but now that so many people are interested in lens "character," that's apparently a plus!

[@KingGameReview]

@@jlwilliams I've been adapting old lenses to Canon EF mount for over a decade. You can adapt Exakta to EF, but I guess people didn't do that very often. I got a mirrorless Olympus EP1 early on so I could try out even more weird lenses. I've been shooting Fuji for years, now (I recently got a GFX 50R - and I'm having fun re-testing my collection of lenses on that big sensor)

[@KingGameReview]

@@jlwilliams I've also always wanted to try the Primoplan 75 1.9, but that's even more rare/expensive than the Biotar 75 😩

[@tomcruz3774]

My jaw dropped when you said you bought a biotar for 20 bucks. Also I like the shot at the costume shop at a ballet performance, reminds me of Edgar Degas.

[@jlwilliams]

Yeah, I like being in one of those stories! Factors: it was super banged up (barrels on East German lenses were soft aluminum and very wear-prone, sticking RF coupler etc.); also, this was before the Internet, so it wasn't so easy to research rarity and prices. Still, it makes me think there may be more LTM 75 Biotars in drawers and on dusty back shelves than the usual figures quoted (3?)

[@RemySneek]

Great video! Thank you.

[@jlwilliams]

I accidentally deleted a comment (sorry!) from someone who thought I shouldn't have compared the 7Artisans lens to the 75mm Olympus because of some kind of equivalency-factor thing, so I thought I'd better try to explain this more clearly: One of the reasons I like M-mount lenses is that you can use them on a LOT of different cameras... M-mount rangefinder cameras such as those from Leica, Zeiss, Cosina/Voigtlander, Epson, or the forthcoming PIXII... or with simple adapters on almost any kind of mirrorless still or video camera. I like to show how they work on different cameras because that's how people like to use them! For example, the comparison with the Olympus lens was 100% legitimate because it shows side-by-side how the two lenses look when used on a Micro Four Thirds camera, which is something people might want to do: If you like the 75mm focal length and want a very sharp lens with autofocus, you might buy the Olympus lens, but if you like 75mm but want something with more "interesting" image characteristics, you might buy the 7Artisans 75. I actually really enjoyed using the 7Artisans lens on my Pen F and plan to do more of it.

[@xulab]

great review! got one used for a great price, but it didn't come with the calibrating screw driver. do you by chance, know what exact size screwdriver it is? thank you!

[@jlwilliams]

I couldn't find a published spec anywhere, but I measured across the flats of the supplied tool with a digital caliper and got 1.55-1.6 mm, so I'm guessing the nominal size would be 1.5 mm. Going by a quick look on Amazon, it seems this must be a fairly common size for RC helicopters and racing drones, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. Good luck and let us know if you find a driver that fits!

[@xulab]

@@jlwilliams ok thank you so much! And if my eyes aren’t failing me, it appears to be a hex head?

[@jlwilliams]

@@xulab I had to use a 10x loupe to be sure, but yes, it's a hex. Thank goodness it's not some crazy pentalobe thing...

[@virtuososino4844]

7-artisans is going to publish its M35/1.4 in June 2020. Hope you love it~~~~

[@jlwilliams]

Thank you for the info! I hope I get a chance to use it. If you have one, could you put up any sample photos? Thanks again...

[@virtuososino4844]

@@jlwilliams M50/0.95 and about two or three other M-mount tens will be published as well in late 2020 ,says one of 7-artisans ' member in an official chat group. 7-artisans plans to publish each new lens every month or maybe every 2 months starting from June. Thank you for your video too. You taught us real optical 'knowledge' instead of metaphysics. Love you, cheer for you.

[@hendo4593]

Thank you. This content is so good!

[@jlwilliams]

Thank you!

[@powerlurker]

very educational video

[@lunaguma3403]

Brilliant lecture, thanks You very much :)

[@zeissiez]

Found this great channel, thanks 🙏

[@Epson5000]

I'm looking into getting this lens for my Bessa R2m. Are you still using this one two years later?

[@jlwilliams]

No, I sold it because I got a Pixii A1571 and it wouldn't work on that (diameter too large.) I'd still recommend it if you like the "dreamy" full-aperture look. I used it on my Bessa R3m and it worked well on that, so it should work on your R2m also. If you like the 75mm focal length and want something that's more conventionally sharp at full aperture, the Voigtlander 75/1.5 is probably worth a look, although I'm going by friends' experiences because I haven't tried it myself. If you get one, be sure to post up and let us know what you think!

[@Epson5000]

@@jlwilliams thanks for the reply! I'm also looking at the Voigtlander 75, and I'm leaning towards that one since it seems more consistent. The 7A is definitely much cheaper though so I'm conflicted!

[@p_adam19]

I have the Canon 85/1.5 and I love it, it is like a Summarex but much more accessible.

[@artromano7554]

great job.

[@ditto1958]

Theory on the different lettering style: most stuff in China is batch manufactured. You come up with a product and hire a factory to make it. You order a certain number of units and they tool up and make the batch to your specifications. I’m thinking 7Artisans does this and that the 3 different lenses you show were made at 3 different factories.

[@jlwilliams]

ditto1958 I expect you're right. What puzzles me is that when a company is trying to establish itself as a brand name, as 7Artisans seems to want to do, one of the first things it does is to appoint a brand manager who makes sure the products, packaging, and documentation are consistent in style. To pick an extreme example, Apple products are made by contract manufacturers all over the world, but Apple exercises very tight control over their consistency so everything is always recognizable as an Apple product. It just surprised me that 7Artisans isn't doing this.

[@karimnasser9226]

Sharp from f/2.8 on my M240, but not on my M10 Monochrom, which has a 40MP sensor, it only gets somewhat sharp at f/5.6.

[@jlwilliams]

@@karimnasser9226 Yeah, if you care about *ultimate* sharpness, this is NOT the lens to buy…

[@thomashilmersen711]

I love that gutsy Chinese company. I am super happy with both my 35mm and 50mm TTa.

[@llewynoconnell1600]

Interesting book at 5:14 wonder where it is available!

[@jlwilliams]

It IS interesting - the title is "Ballet in Action," published in 1938, by the English photographer Merlyn Severn (later a well-known photographer for the British magazine Picture Post.) She was one of the first people to succeed in taking action pictures of stage performances, which was REALLY difficult with the films available in the 1930s... also, too dim for the primitive light meters of the era, so she had to keep meticulous records of every exposure. The 1938 edition is a bit rare and hard to find, but there was a second edition of 1947 that's available from various Amazon sellers.

[@mrvizavizit]

This is AWESOME!!! Thanks.

[@KristofferTrolle]

Great review!

[@dominick3579]

I love videos like this.

[@fangshi4637]

great review

[@stephenedmunds207]

So is this a sonnar design,i mean is the biotar a sonnar variant?

[@jlwilliams]

The short answer would be no. Mind you, any time you get into the taxonomy of lens family names, you're asking for trouble, because people still get VERY worked up over which lens belongs in what family, even though Leica and Zeiss no longer use these names to distinguish specific optical designs, and any discussion of them in online forums tends to attract the same kind of antler-clashing that that male deer get into during rutting season, and you wind up attracting a lot of smug commentary along the lines of, "No, that's a Planar design, you idiot." Let's hope this doesn't go there! Anyway... [drawing on the categories used in Rudolf Kingslake's book "Lenses in Photography", just so you'll know I'm not pulling all this stuff out of my hat] the Biotar and Sonnar are NOT relatives, because the Sonnar is an asymmetrical design, while the Biotar is basically a symmetrical design -- if you look at the block diagrams, you'll see that the two halves of the Biotar (on either side of the diaphragm) are pretty much mirror images of each other, while the Sonnar is "heavier" on one side. Kingslake classifies the Biotar as a member of the Cooke Opic family of symmetrical Gauss-type objectives; the original Opic lens was released in 1920 by Taylor, Taylor and Hobson, and its symmetrical six-element arrangement (a single element, then a cemented pair, then the diaphragm, then another cemented pair mirroring the first, then a single rear element mirroring the front element) is still seen today in the diagrams of many moderately-wide-aperture lenses of slightly wide to slightly long focal lengths. On the other hand, Kingslake classifies the Sonnar as basically a triplet lens (an asymmetrical arrangement of three lens elements) with additional elements added to compensate for various optical problems. All the lenses of this type (Kingslake calls them "high-aperture triplets," even though many of them have as many as seven elements) can be distinguished by the fact that their block diagrams are not at all symmetrical: usually there are more elements on one side of the diaphragm than the other, they're larger and thicker, and the two sides aren't even close to being mirror images of each other. What difference does this make to you as a photographer? Nowadays, not much. Back when the Opic first appeared, people realized that the Gauss-type symmetrical lenses were theoretically better because this construction allowed finer correction of optical flaws. But the high-aperture triplets (e.g. Sonnar) often performed better in real life: they had fewer air-to-glass surfaces (which cause lens flare, a real problem until lens coating was invented in the late 1930s) and it's easier to assemble them accurately because many of the elements are cemented together instead of having to be mounted separately in the lens barrel. Today, with lens coating and better precision manufacturing technology, managing all those separate elements isn't as big a problem, so the symmetrical Opic type (such as the Biotar) is more widely used, although a few Sonnar types are still floating around (such as the 7Artisans 35mm f/2 and 50mm f/1.1 I've reviewed elsewhere) because some of us like the interesting sharp-yet-hazy look they provide. Does that help at all? Thanks for your interest!

[@stephenedmunds207]

@@jlwilliams thanks for the detailed reply,very helpful,i think the zeiss 50mm f1.5 zm is a sonnar........anyway will be trying out my 7 artisans 75mm on my m262 over the xmas now its arrived.

[@EwaldDieser]

Great review and history lesson. Unfortunately I rally like sharpness and don’t have de cash for the Leica lens. 😂

[@stephenedmunds207]

how did you come to your conclusion that the lens was based on an old biotar? sorry if i missed that part of the video,good video anyway.

[@jlwilliams]

I wouldn't say “based,” in the sense of copying it. But as I noted in the video, everybody during the 1940s was trying to solve the same problem of making a medium-telephoto lens with a maximum aperture greater than f/2, and they were all driven to Gauss designs because the Sonnar design couldn't be stretched that far. It seems evident that Carl Zeiss Jena would realize that since everybody was playing out of the same playbook, one obvious way to get the benefits of smaller size, lighter weight, and simpler optical construction would be to drop down from 85mm to 75mm. All these years later 7Artisans was facing the same problem - designing a wide-aperture medium tele of acceptable performance without resorting to costly aspherical elements, as Leica did - and the same benefits of making it a 75mm instead of 85 or 90 must have occurred to them. So, speculation, yes, but I think it's defensible speculation if you look at the history of what various makers were doing in the '40s and '50s.

[@stephenedmunds207]

@@jlwilliams Thanks that makes sense,,i have ordered one partly based on your video but also a chinese language video full of beautiful portraits of a young women ,very much looking forward to trying out the lens on my m262 camera.

[@mlo4881]

great!

[@zimin8]

U got your self a subscription Keep it up

[@barselino9877]

i love 7artisans

[@janmaaso]

Subscribed!

[@Catapumblamblam]

10:45 it's glowing not for spherical issues, it's glowing because the focus it's on the hat. On it, there is not glowing.

[@jlwilliams]

I don't disagree with you, but I don't completely agree with you either. The hat is in a little better focus than the front plane of the face, but not much (it's easier to see this on the original slide than on KZbin) but the face glows more because it's lighter. I have a lot of other slides from this set and my take based on all of them is that at full aperture, the highlights are going to glow a bit even if you nail focus on the highlight areas, although better focus would keep them more compact as you suggest. Thanks for your interest!

[@Catapumblamblam]

@@jlwilliams Obviously I can't talk about other photos, but of this, I can. The seams of the hat are quite contrasted and do not seem to me to have any kind of glowing. If there is the possibility to see the file better somewhere, I will gladly evaluate it. Very often what is considered to be a simple out of focus and the field of fire of many lenses with old optical patterns is not a straight line at all, it is an arc. This leads to the edges being out of focus when the cent is in focus (which is why the edges are often less defined).

[@บุญสิงห์สิริ]

you test 7Artisans Fullframe on 4/3 Oh.. No............

[@jlwilliams]

Oh, yes! One thing people like about M-mount lenses is that it's so easy to adapt them to various kinds of mirrorless cameras. Naturally I wanted to see how its results would look on several cameras at my disposal... why not?