Leica news, before it happens

TTArtisans (different from 7artisans) currently has three lenses for Leica M-mount and a new 50mm f/0.95 lens coming soon (check their website at www.ttartisan.com). TTArtisans lenses are sold at Amazon, eBay and AliExpress. Here is a quick hands-on review of the TTArtisans 11mm f/2.8 fisheye lens for Leica M (price: $369) - as far as I know, the first fisheye lens designed for Leica M-mount:

• Soft when wide open (as most Chinese M lenses)
• Not rangefinder coupled
• Manual focusing is not a problem since at f/4 everything between 1 meter and infinity is in focus
• Nice box and presentation
• All-metal body, solid-built lens, nice built, fit and finish
• De-clicked aperture
• Focusing scale in feet and meters
• Not evenly spread aperture values on the aperture ring
• No focusing tab, but the lens has a small metal notch on the focusing ring for easy focusing - very useful
• Focusing and aperture rings are smooth but a little bit too tight for my taste (some like it that way), I have the feeling they will loosen in the future
• No six-bit coding
• Built-in lens hood
• Excellent price/performance ratio ($369)
• Closest focusing distance: 0.17m
• Easy to touch the front element and leave greasy fingerprints 
• Watch your horizon when composing - this is a fisheye lens
• Barrel distortion is obviously very noticeable and that's the whole idea behind this lens - the closer is the object is to the lens, the bigger the distortion is
• My biggest challenge when shooting this lens was keeping the perspective straight
• Vignetting is minimal, almost non-existing
• There is really no other similar lens on the market today
• The lens comes with an external 11mm metal viewfinder (very helpful if you don't have live view, no frame lines in the viewfinder):

Read More »