All Tests Canon EOS (APS-C) Canon EOS (full F.) Nikon DX (APS-C) Nikon FX (full F.) Nikon 1 (CX) Sony Alpha (APS-C) Sony Alpha (full F.) Micro-Four-Thirds Four-Thirds Pentax K Pentax Q Samsung NX Fujifilm X Leica M DSLR Reviews PZ Rating System Lens Test FAQ Show 7Artisans 12mm f/2.8 (Sony E-mount) - Review / Test Report Lens Reviews - Sony Alpha/NEX (APS-C) Article Index Introduction Analysis Sample Images & Verdict Page 1 of 3 Review by Klaus Schroiff, published September 2019 IntroductionThese days we usually lack the time for looking into very exotic lenses but a reader connected us with the folks over at 7Artisans and we thought to give it a try. 7Artisans is one of the many rising Chinese players - just to name a few: Meike, Kamlan, SLRMagic, Laowa, Kipon, Viltrox, Mitakon. Unless you are deeper into the market, you've probably never heard of most of them. They are all aiming to fill the little gaps that the genuine manufacturers have in their lineup. Sony & the likes have also departed from the value segment making it difficult to get your hands on interesting lenses if you are on a budget - and this is where these players can help if you can live with some compromises. With the exception of some Viltrox lenses, these are all fully manual but it's probably just a matter of time till we see more AF lenses. Coming back to 7Artisans, we had a look at their lineup and thought that the 7Artisans 12mm f/2.8, an ultra-wide lens, may be an interesting candidate for a first look.  In terms of (outer) construction quality, the 7Artisans lens is actually pretty good - it's a tightly assembled, full-metal construction. Both the focus as well as the dedicated aperture ring operate smoothly and they are both dampened. Yes, you read correctly - it has a clickless aperture ring. While this may not be ideal for photographers, moviemakers are preferring this. The lens has a small, built-in lens hood. Due to the bulb-like front element, you can't use filters straight away but you can purchase an optional filter holder that accepts 77mm filters. It is interesting to note that the 7Artisans lens is inspired by the Zeiss Distagon design with inner (rear) focusing - thus the size of the lens remains constant during focusing. As already hinted above, the lens has no electronic coupling thus you will have to live without AF, EXIF data, automatic aperture, and image auto-correction. That being said - just from a shooting perspective, this is not a big deal. Using magnified focus view, it's trivial to focus accurately. Most of the time you can do even do without - the depth-of-field is obviously pretty big in a 12mm f/2.8 so if you just set it to 1.5-2m, it'll be fine if you just want to have everything in focus. Specifications Equivalent in full format"18.6mm /4.5" Optical construction10 elements in 8 groups Number of aperture blades7 min. focus distance0.2m (max. magnification ratio 1:?) Dimensions63x62mm Weight292g Filter size55mm Hoodbuild-in, petal-shaped Other features- MountSony FE This lens cost me about £150, so they are REALLY, darn cheap. They have a decent lens line up and if you don’t mind a manual focus lens they can offer a decent quality lens in a very cheap package. I tend not to fill my reviews with charts, photos of walls and waffle about physics of glass and the like, rather I’ll just say what I think and show some photos. All of these photos have been edited but it should give you an idea of how the lens performs. The 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 is a modern manual ultra wide angle lens for cropped mirrorless cameras. One of the most compact of its kind for cameras with an APS-C sensor. It is interesting for its fairly low price and good image quality. On cameras with an APS-C sensor, the viewing angle is / should be 102 degrees diagonally. The lens comes with different mounts for cameras with an APS-C sensor, such as a Canon mount , Fujifilm X-mount, Sony E-mount and Micro 4/3 cameras such as Olympus / Panasonic / JVC / Blackmagic / Kodak / Xiaomi. This review shows the 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 variant for Sony cropped mirrorless cameras with Sony E-Mount mount. 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS All 7Artisans lenses:For mirrorless cameras with APS-C or Micro 4/3 sensor:
For mirrorless full frame cameras (Full Frame):
For SLR cameras with APS-C sensor:
Cinema lenses [E, L, Z, RF, X, M4/3]:
Drone Lenses:
These lenses are the easiest to find on Aliexpress from the official dealer 7Artisans. 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS Main technical specifications of 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENSReview Instance Name On the body: 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS. 'E-Mount' side. Basic properties
According to my measurements:
Optical design clickable Lens hood Metal, fixed, flap type Manufacturer country Made in China Period Announced December 11, 2017 Instructions View my scan (only English) Price
The instructions indicate that if the user first uses a manual lens, then he must read it :) 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS AssemblyThe lens came to the review completely new. The lens comes in a stylish black box. The box contains a very small instruction booklet in Chinese and English, a pass for passing quality control, a soft foam insert under the lens and the lens itself with a front and rear cover. The front cover is metal, without latches. The lid is just tightly attached on the lens body. On the inside, the lid has fabric seal. The lid does not spontaneously slide, pleasant to handle. It's important: The first batches of lenses had a plastic front cover of a different shape and on latches. And also the first batches of lenses had a red dot-mark for the focusing distance. There are different combinations in these minor differences. In general, the lens is well assembled. 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 has bayonet mount metal and the lens case itself is completely made of metal, anodized aluminum is used. The weight of the 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 lens is almost 300 grams. In the hands of the lens feels like a good thing. The design is nice, and the lens itself is very compact, ideal for small Sony cameras with an APS-C sensor, for example, Sony Alpha NEX-3N, with which I used this lens. Diaphragm consists of 7 petals and form a hole in the shape of an almost regular heptagon, while in the photographs in the blur zone rather round discs of blur appear in the range F / 2.8-F / 4. The diaphragm can only be controlled manually using a special ring. The aperture ring rotates smoothly, no clicks and fixed values, you can set any intermediate value in the range of F / 2.8-F / 16, which is very useful during movie shooting. If you look closely at the lens, you can see that the aperture blades are slightly covered already at f / 2.8 (at full aperture). If you take apart the lens, you can expand the aperture to about f / 2.0. Most likely, a deliberate decrease in the relative aperture was made to increase the optical performance at the 'maximum open aperture'. 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 uses built-in metal petal hood. Important: the lens does not support classic filters, which are screwed into the thread near the front lens. Important: stated that the lens supports a special adapter for use conventional threaded filters with a diameter of 77 mm... But what it looks like, how much it costs and where it can be bought is not yet known. 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS FocusingThe focus ring is not very wide, metal, ribbed. The ring rotates on 135 degrees (3/8 of a full turn). Focusing is smooth and pleasant. You can focus with just one finger. Lens has internal focus, the front lens remains stationary during focusing. During focusing, only the rear group of lenses moves (the so-called 'rear-focusing' principle, focusing using the rear elements). On the ring there is a scale with a focusing distance in meters and feet and a depth of field scale. The distance scale is not very detailed, it has labels for only six values (0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.6, 1, 2 meters) and an infinity label. The minimum focusing distance is only 20 centimeters. 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 has a very pronounced 'Focus Breathing' effect (changing the viewing angle during focusing). During focusing towards the MDF, the viewing angle decreases significantly.
7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS Image quality7Artisans 12 / 2.8 shows the expected image quality for such a lens. The quality was greatly influenced by a rather old optical design, most likely a modernized / optimized Zeiss Distagon type design, which, without aspherical elements, could not provide high-quality images at open apertures at the edges and corners of the frame. Sharpness
Distortion
Vignetting
Aberration
Rest
Important: at the time of the creation of this review, there was no 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 profile for popular RAW converters. You can create a profile yourself or wait for its release. 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS Sample PhotosAll photos in the review are shown without processing. Camera used Sony Alpha NEX-3N... Most of the photos are converted from the original RAW files using the original Sony Imaging Edge Viewer utility, the smaller part is on-camera JPEG or JPEG + RAW. RAW source images can be downloaded at this link (67 files, 1 GB), JPEG at this link (102 files, 1.4 GB). Several photos in processing: 1, 2, 3. 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS My experience7Artisans 12 / 2.8 is a very cheap replacement for the original similar autofocus ZEISS Distagon Touit 2.8 / 12 T * и SONY E 4 / 10-18 OSS. Aperture super wide is interesting, but you need to get used to it. I liked the very compact set that came out of 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 and Sony Alpha NEX-3N... Shooting with this lens is quite easy, it is difficult only to select the scenes to be filmed, since when working with an ultra wide-angle lens, you need to 'think broadly' about the future shot. For a long time I could not understand what is wrong with this lens? Everything turned out to be very simple - I expected a real 12 mm, but during the shooting, the angle of view still did not correspond to the declared focal length. After several months of working with this lens, I can safely recommend 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 as an inexpensive width. 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS AlternativesThere are very few such inexpensive manual focus lenses for mirrorless cropped cameras with an APS-C sensor. As alternatives, I only know:
Other similar lenses with a focal length less than or equal to 12 mm are either of the FISH-EYE class, or are designed only for Micro 4/3 and less. 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS Video reviewYou can watch the video review on my Youtube channel by this link, or below: Price7Artisans 12 / 2.8 costs around $ 180. The easiest way buy 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 at Aliexpress.comfor example, from an authorized seller 7artisans Official Store here at this link. Also, 7Artisans 12 / 2.8 can be found at representatives in this group VK. 7Artisans 12mm F2.8 WIDE-LENS Results7Artisans 12/2.8 is a good option as a budget wide for mirrorless crop cameras with Kf=1.5-1.6. On a micro 4/3 system, the lens will just be a nice wide-angle (EGF 24 mm). 10 main advantages
10 main disadvantages
Material prepared Arkady Shapoval. Training/Consultations | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Telegram |
