TTArtisan 7.5mm F2 fisheye lens Full Review

By Richard Wong

This is the new TTArtisan 7.5mm fisheye lens but with so many 7.5mm fisheye lens that is already in the market. Why does TTArtisan release another 7.5mm fisheye lens. It's because this lens actually has quite a few things that is different from the other fisheye lenses in the market.

We are going to have a look at this brand new 7.5mm fisheye lens from TTArtisan. Let's talk about the design and build quality of this fisheye lens. Firstly, this TTArtisan fisheye lens is a fully manual  fully mechanical lens with no electronic support at all. The lens is completely made of metal and it feels very solid the size is pretty compact and the weight is around 350 gram, so it depends on which amount you choose.

The weight will be slightly over or under that  this lens is designed for mirrors cameras only and it is available for pretty much every camera month  in the market. Sony e, Fuji x, canon eos-m, canon rf, Nikon Z, Leica and also micro four thirds.

The optical formula for all the different versions is the same so while i'm using the Fuji version in this review. The results should be virtually the same no matter what camera you are shooting with if you use this lens on a aps-c camera the fuel wheel is 180 degree if you use it. On the micro four thirds camera, the fuel view is 150 degree because of the smaller sensor area. One very interesting thing about these lenses while it is a diagonal fisheye lens when you use it on an aps-c or micro four-foot camera.

You can transform it into a circular fisheye lens when used on a full-frame camera, so what you need to do is just to take the lens cap and remove the center piece from the lens cap by the way. This metal lens cap that comes with the lens is very nice quality one and it fits onto the lens perfectly so now you remove the center piece from the lens cap you just need to attach it onto the lens hood. Now if you use this lens on a full frame camera and you shoot in the full frame mode.

You can get a perfect circle circular fisheye image. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of this design until I received the lens otherwise i would have asked TTArtisan to send me an L-mount or Z-mount version instead. So i can test out this feature on a full frame camera as I can't really do that with the fuji version but to show you the effect this is a sample photo that I got from TTArtisan just to show you what the image will look like if you shoot with this lens on a full frame camera, so this is something that the other similar aps-c fisheye lens can do so if you have a full-frame mirrors camera.

This surely is the reason that may make you want to choose this lens instead of the other 7.5mm fisheye lens in the market. Another interesting thing I want to point out is this TTArtisan 7.5mm lens is a f/2 lens while all the other 7.5mm fisheye lens in the market are f/2.8 or slower than that now while it doesn't really make any real difference in terms of depth of field because it's a fisheye lens so it has a very deep depth of view no matter you're shooting at f/2 or f/2.8.

But it should give you one stop advantage in light gathering power which means it's great for shooting under low light or when you want to shoot some astral photography. I’ll do some tests about the light getting power when i do the fisheye comparison reveal soon and another interesting thing is the minimum aperture of this lens is only f/11 which is not really that small  most other official lenses the minimum aperture is f16.

Have a look at the front of the lens the front element is large and it has a built-in lens hood that is not removable. behind that we have the manual focus ring the truffle is just a little bit over 90 degree, the main focus ring itself feels very nice very smooth and then behind that we have the aperture ring and just like  most other TTartisans lenses .

It is the one that I tried the aperture ring has clicks which is something I really like there's a click at every half stop from f2 to f 5.6 and after that it is one click per stop. The lens has a metal lens mount as you would have expected from a td artisan lens it is not a weather sealed lens so there's no rubber gasket on the lens mount.

One thing about fisheye lenses is because they usually have a large extruded front element and a very wide field of view so it is virtually impossible to add any filter to it not to the front anyway so with this TTArtisan feature lens. One interesting design is the lens you can install a filter to the rear of the lens and there is a ND1000 filter that is included in the box so to install it very easy you just need to place it on the rear lens man and then you just screw until it is tightly mounted onto the rear of the lens so make sure you completely tighten it onto the lens.

Otherwise, when you're shooting there's a chance that you may fall off from the rear of the lens while this is not the first ever fisheye lens that has a rare filter design but the one that I’m aware of they're all full frame fisheye lenses so this is as far as I know the only aps-c mirrorless fisheye lens that has this rear filter design.

One thing you need to notice is after you install the rear filter onto the lens the focus will change quite a bit so you need to re-adjust the focus after you install the rear filter but what about the quality of this rear filter would it affect the image quality to me. It looks pretty good have a look at these two photos one shot with and one shot without the ND 1000 filter overall. There really isn't any big difference i shot these two photos with the same white balance settings but the color the contrast the amount of lens flare sharpness. The amount of chromatic aviation is very similar between these two photos.

TTArtisan did mention there could be some ghosting introduced by this ND filter. I look at all the test photos all those comparison photos I shot with the ND1000 filter  and i don't really see any noticeable ghosting that could be introduced by this ND filter. The biggest benefit of using this ND1000 filter is you can now do some long exposure photo with this fisheye lens even on a bright sunny day. 

I do have one complaint about this rear filter, it is I would really love if TTArtisan actually supplied a little carry case some kind of pouch or  something for me to carry this ND filter because right now i don't have any easy way to carry it around in my camera bag.

The minimum focus distance of this TTArtisan lens is 12.5 centimeter which is the distance measured from the sensor to the subject. This would allow you to take some very nice but not macro level close-up photo and pretty much the only time that you can brew the background a little bit is when you take some close-up photo at the minimum focus distance but just like taking closer photo using any fisheye or any ultra-wide-angle lens when you are doing that.

The front element will get close to your subject so you must be very careful not to cast any shadow on your subject okay now let's talk about the image sharpness the center sharpness of this lens is already very good at the maximum aperture f2 stop down the lens would only improve the center sharpness marginally.

 Now let's have a look at the edge of the photo at the maximum aperture f2 the edge is quite soft you really must stop down to around f 5.6 or so then the edge become reasonably sharp overall while the edge sharpness isn’t really the greatest but to be fair it is common for most fisheye lenses.

I will have to wait until I do the comparison with the other fisheye lenses then I can tell you how this ttartisan perform in terms of the edge sharpness whether it is better or worse than the  other fisheye lenses in the market with the large extruded front element fisheye lenses are usually quite easily affected by lens flare with this TTArtisan lens flare control  is reasonably good i can see some ghosting when I shooting directly into the sun but the amount of ghosting lens flare is at a quite acceptable level for a fisheye lens.

Starting from around f/5.6 you can start seeing some sun stars but the sun starts from this titan lens isn't really very sharp or very clean even when i stop down to the minimum aperture f/11 the sun stars are sharper but it still looks a little bit messy to me so overall I’m not  a really big fan of the sun stars from this ttartisan fisheye lens.

Testing vintage of a fisheye lens is always a bit of challenge because it is almost impossible to find a wall or some places that has a huge and uniform color or brightness surface for me to check the vignetting but anyway with this 7.5mm TTArtisan fisheye lens, at the maximum aperture f2 there is  visible vignetting.

Not serious but it is visible at the maximum aperture stop down to f/2.8 it would improve quite a bit and at f4 then Vietnamese is virtually not visible chromatic aberration seems to be well controlled by this td artisan fisheye lens look at this photo that I shot at the maximum aperture f2 even at the high contrast area.

There is only very minimal amount of color fringing yeah there is some color fingering but it is not serious at all i remember when TTArtisan contacted me a few weeks ago and they told me that they are going to release a 7.5mm fisheye lens and ask me if I’m interested in doing a review or not my first reaction was oh why another 7.5mm fisheye lens. There already quite a few in the market so i was not too sure if i really want to review it or not but I’m glad that I said yes this lens is quite a bit different to the other 7.5mm fisheye lenses in the market. 

The f2 maximum aperture is at least one stop faster than the other 7.5mm fisheye lenses in the market and it would benefit nighttime photography especially people who want to do astrophotography on the other hand, the rear ND filter is great for people who like to do some long exposure photo during the day so having these two features already make this lens a lot more flexible than the other 7.5mm feature lenses in the market the ability to use it on a full frame camera and turn it into a circular fisheye lens is also a very cool idea. 

I have to say I’m not too sure how many people would really benefit from it but I love it when companies bring new ideas to their product in terms of image quality this TTArtisan fisheye lens the image quality seems to be decent as well it is not perfect but there is also no major weakness especially for lens. At this price but as I’ve already mentioned I’m going to do a 7.5mm fisheye lenses comparison review very soon so remember to subscribe if you are interested in that so that you can see how is the image quality of this TTArtisan lens is like when compared to the other fisheye lenses in the market. 

 Price: $149