TTArtisans (different from 7artisans) currently has three lenses for Leica M-mount and a new 50mm f/0.95 lens coming soon.
TTartisan lenses can be purchased directly from the PhotoRumors online store with free international shipping. They are available also 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):
