Hello my name is Aaron. I’ve been a freelance photographer for nearly 16 years. I shoot images used in print/digital distribution for local, national, and international publication. I love low light, fast-aperture photography for its challenges, and when Josh asked me if I’d like to borrow Hawaii Camera’s Sony A7s and the new(ish) Mitakon 50mm f/.95 lens and write a review about it, I couldn’t say “Yes” quickly enough. I don’t think I even let Josh finish pitching his idea to me before cut him off & asked him when I could do it. Sorry Josh.

I’ve never written a camera review before, so please bear with me if my format isn’t up to standard. Personally, I’ve never felt that exhaustive reviews a la DPReview were very useful. Sure I do appreciate some of their testing, like seeing how many shots they got out of a camera before its battery died. That’s cool. But as far as seeing the same test scene at every aperture, or pixel-peeping the corners of a landscape at F/4 vs F/8, well I always thought that those silly details were boring, and most of all useless. Seriously, if you’re actually that concerned about what the corners of your pictures look like then you probably need to spend your time online learning more about composition and less about what the corners of that lens you’re checking out looks like at f/4. Anyway, I’ll get off my photo nerd soapbox and simply say that I’m not exhaustively reviewing this setup. You could call it more of an experiential review, with photos to back up my views.

When Sony released their A7R, I was seriously considering the purchase of a Leica M. I’ve used an M8 and film rangefinders professionally for some time and with much success, and the features the M brought to the table were as tempting as it’s price is batshit insane. I bought the A7R instead. I use my A7R exclusively to adapt my Leica M-Mount, Nikon F-mount, and Leica R-Mount glass to, and don’t ever plan on buying native Sony E-Mount autofocus lenses. The images the A7R produces when paired with Leica glass are amazing, and so I’ve logged a lot of time with the A7 platform because it’s just so good. When Josh asked me about reviewing the A7S and the Mitakon, it was partially because he knew I had a good familiarity in using the Sony A7 line with manually-focused lenses.

The Sony A7s

The A7S has been reviewed by people a lot smarter/more thorough than I am, so if you want to know all the details about every menu feature and button, dial, and switch, you can google it. I know my video shooting friends seem to like the A7S, but while photographers seem to “oooh” and “aaah” at it’s low-light capabilities, we all seem like we avoided it because of it’s comparatively low megapixel count. I know the A7s was something I considered nice to have but totally impractical, and I immediately wrote off ever purchasing one.

Overall, the A7S is just a little faster than the A7R. The A7S seemed to have a slightly more responsive shutter lock time vs the A7R, and the shutter noise itself is a little quieter than the A7R’s. The A7S also seems to power up a little faster, and it’s buffer goes a lot further than the A7R’s does, no big surprises there since the A7R has to move literally 300% more pixels to it’s SD card. It also seems to have slightly better battery life than the A7R, likely due to A7S images requiring shorter read/write times and less processing. Otherwise, the menus, form factor, and physical control buttons are pretty much the same across the entire A7 family, which is to say they’re quite easy to use, and never get in the way. The A7 family is compact, relatively discreet, and capable of accepting just about every lens I own via adapters I can find on eBay. It’s actually a great value by virtue of its versatility alone; if I had to buy a Leica M for my Leica lenses, a 5D mk III for my Canon EF glass, and a Nikon that can take my vintage Ai-S lenses I’d be spending considerably more than the ~$2k I spent on my A7R. And amazingly, unless one of the cameras I mentioned above was a Nikon D800E (which shares it’s sensor with the A7R), even if I did buy a dedicated camera for each lens system I own, the A7R would still be the better camera as far as image quality is concerned.

If you haven’t yet used any member of the A7 family, the EVF is simply amazing. It’s so good I gave it a whole paragraph. I’ve been shooting professionally with EVF-based mirrorless systems for a few years now, and own another camera that’s well-known for it’s EVF, the Fuji X-T1. I keep the X-T1 around for reportage use as it’s a faster and more durable camera than the Sony, but when it comes to shooting the best quality images I can produce, I’ll always reach for the A7R and a lens like the Zeiss 50mm Planar *T ZM, or a Leica Summicron. The Sony’s EVF is a little less contrasty and a little smaller than the X-T1’s but you’d be hard-pressed to call one or the other better. Lag time, or “jittering” in the EVF was an issue which kept many from adopting early EVF-equipped mirrorless cameras, and I’m happy to say that the A7S shows no noticeable lag in it’s viewfinder, ever. Which means the A7S has one of the best electronic viewfinders out there, period. And this totally matters, it’s the reason most pros stick to DSLRs with optical viewfinders…although EVFs are beginning to work so well that it wouldn’t surprise me to see many pros begin “changing teams” as EVF technology improves. It’s the future yo.

The Mitakon 50mm f/.95

For hardcore fast-lens freaks, an f/.95 lens is the closest us mere mortals can get to legendary fast primes like the Zeiss 50mm f/.70 that Stan Kubrick used in his films. Without rehashing what aperture values mean, a lens with a maximum f-value of “1.0” is a lens that lets in 100% of the light it “sees.” Most lenses “lose” some amount of brightness in the image they project on a camera’s sensor, due to the lenses design. A lens with an f-value below 1.0 denotes a lens capable of drawing in more light than is actually present in the scene. Any lens with a maximum aperture of <1.0 is extremely exotic, and they all come with a certain amount of compromise.

Rumor has it that Zhongyi, manufacturer of the Mitakon 50mm f/.95, reverse-engineered Leica’s Noctilux to create the Mitakon 50mm f/.95. The Mitakon retails for $899, not exactly cheap but considering what it is, the bargain of the century. From what I’ve seen in example images online, and from my limited-to-an-hour’s time with a demo Noctilux, the Mitakon and the Noctilux certainly appear quite close in terms of performance with the Noctilux being the obvious “best” lens in the fast 50mm category. That’s quite a feat in and of itself considering that in comparison the Noctilux costs upwards of ten grand and has a 1+ year waiting list! Zhongyi’s built up a reputation for building relatively cheap, relatively good, manual focus fast prime lenses, like the 35mm f/.95 for APS-C format mirrorless cameras. The Mitakon is their most expensive lens to date, and according to some, the best lens they’ve made so far.

As for the lens itself, well, there isn’t much to say about it. It’s all-metal, feels reassuringly solid, and it certainly feels quite durable (how about a drop test, Josh?). It’s about the same diameter as a soda can, and maybe a centimeter or two shorter. Of course it’s a relatively big, heavy lens. The laws of physics demands it. I will say that the A7S with the Mitakon attached is extremely front-heavy, and given the diminutive size of the A7S itself, it made holding the camera securely a two-hand job. Unless I needed the F.95 aperture that day, I wouldn’t ever use the Mitakon as a walkaround lens; that task would fall upon a lens like the Zeiss Planar *T ZM, which weighs less than a third of the Mitakon’s beefy 1.58lbs and puts the Mitakon’s image quality to shame.

The focus ring started out feeling a tiny bit “gritty” instead of smooth in its movement, but after a day or so it seemed to get a little smoother. To be fair, Leica’s Noctilux weighs close to the same, and has a similar slightly “gritty” focusing feel…as with any fast prime, moving the heavy glass elements these lenses contain will always be less smooth than with smaller lenses. Remember what I said about exotic fast primes and compromise above? The first time I turned the focus ring, it felt a little on the heavy side, but when I started using the Mitakon wide open, I appreciated the heavier damping because it made it easier to make the kind of fine adjustments necessary when using an aperture that large, and it prevented accidental focus creep. The aperture ring is clickless (I’m not a fan of this; I wish a “clicky” aperture were available as an option). The finish on the lens was quite nice, especially if you’re used to modern plasticky/rubber construction on your lenses. This was just a pet peeve of mine but I noticed that the “.95” stamped on the aperture ring didn’t align properly with the little white dot on the lens. Seriously, Zhongyi!? You guys figured out how to make a Noctilux clone for less than 10% of the cost of the real deal but you couldn’t get painting your aperture ring right!? Finally, and this is the most serious issue I had with the Mitakon in operation: It focuses past infinity, meaning that shooting landscapes requires manually focusing, rather than simply turning the focus ring to the infinity stop and snapping a photo. I get that most people who use the Mitakon will be shooting at close-medium distances to get crazy bokeh, but still I just don’t understand why Zhongyi didn’t bother calibrating the Mitakon lens for “true” infinity.

In use

OK, so now it’s time for me to talk about what happens when you attach the Mitakon to the A7S and start shooting pictures of your favorite test scene, your cat, or an MTF chart. Or not. On my first day with the A7S and the Mitakon, I had a friend from Hilo who happened to be in town to paint a mural at Pow Wow Hawaii. It was Thursday, and he was due on Maui to do a talk Friday, so he was in for a long night of painting. Perfect. I got to Kakaako before sunset, and immediately began snapping pictures. With a max shutter speed of 1/8000, the A7S will take shots with the Mitakon wide-open even during the day at ISO 100. I didn’t bother stopping the Mitakon down below f/2 the whole time I had it: I figured what was the point? Nobody lugs this lens around to shoot it at f/4. The A7S’s focus peaking helps immensely and compliments the Mitakon well. On a side note, my experience with the A7R has been that focus peaking is of limited (if any) use, because the A7R’s crazy high resolution meant that if I weren’t zooming the EVF’s view in on every shot to confirm critical focus, it would inevitably be focused on the wrong part of the image. With the A7S having far fewer pixels, this was not as much of an issue. However, since f/.95 is an insanely shallow depth of field, I found myself zooming in from time to time just to be sure I nailed it.

The A7S was a lot faster in use than my A7R, and with less lag between shots I found myself getting a lot more keepers in my “follow up” shots. The Mitakon…well it was quite impressive. I went into this review assuming that there had been a lot of corners cut in the process of making such a fast lens for so little money, and I was surprised to find that the corners cut were not as major as I expected. The Mitakon easily keeps up with my Nikon 50mm f/1.2 optically when wide open. This is impressive because the Nikon is about a stop and a half slower than the Mitakon and well, the Nikon 50mm is made by one of the most successful camera companies around. Impressive.

In use, the Mitakon’s slightly stiff focus ring really helps you to control that super shallow depth of field. With an f/.95 lens, a few millimeter’s movement closer to or further from the focus point is enough to throw whatever you’re shooting out of critical focus, so I found myself having to be a lot more aware of how close or how far I was from my subject. It turns out just breathing is enough for me to throw my focus off if I’m not careful. Your mileage may vary. I was glad for the heavy focus ring almost immediately because of this, I had enough to worry about when it came to staying in focus, and not worrying about my clumsy fingers inadvertently nudging the lens out of focus meant one less thing to worry about. Ditto for the aperture ring being a little stiff, it was weird at first but makes perfect sense in actual use.

Image quality-wise, I found the Mitakon to be quite sharp. Like, surprisingly so. It easily keeps up with the A7S’s 12 megapixels, and provides more than enough detail to be quite useful wide open. I also liked the color/contrast…the Mitakon is a little low contrast and has subdued colors; personally I prefer this look coming from my camera because contrast and color is something easily boosted in post production, and generally doesn’t do so well when it’s “turned down” in post because the lens was overly contrasty and saturated. I also like my images to have a unique signature, or “look.” Modern, aspherical, perfectly-corrected lenses often look “boring” in my opinion, because they completely lack any personality. This definitely is not the case with the Mitakon, and I loved this lens for that. As for vignetting: Yes, this lens vignettes pretty heavily when it’s wide open. But I’m not even bothering to evaluate this issue because, as you can see from all the mostly vignette-free images here, it’s so easy to fix in Lightroom that I don’t see how vignetting is even a “drawback” in this case.

But the Mitakon isn’t all amazingness and perfection; wide open during the day, the Mitakon is prone to halation, which is what happens when light from a bright part of an image “bleeds” into less-bright parts of the image thanks to light bouncing around in the lens between glass elements. In most modern lenses, optical coatings prevent halation. Halation is a typical trait of vintage lenses, which don’t benefit from modern optical coatings/technologies. You could also expect halation to show up in an exotic lens design like the Mitakon. The halation isn’t rampant, but it seems to show up in high-contrast areas that are in critical focus. I imagine this probably happens at night too, but in lower light it just isn’t as noticeable. Some people like it and call it a “glow”, others hate it. Your own mileage will vary.

The bokeh also tends to get a little busy with foliage/high-contrast detail in the background…it’s prone to spherical aberration with bright points of light, and with details like foliage in the background the bokeh can start to create these weird upside-down “U” shapes. Both the aberration and weird bokeh are more prominent off-center.

The Mitakon is probably one of the most distortion-prone 50mm lenses I’ve ever used. It will visibly barrel, and this becomes even more prominent if you’re focusing on a subject that’s a few meters away. The image below is the worst-case scenario I could find in all 500 of the pictures I took with this combination. Even Canon’s $100 “nifty 50” 50mm f/1.8 will give you straighter lines than the Mitakon. The $10k current model Noctilux doesn’t distort, although to be fair the vintage Noctiluxes (which are still 5-6 times as expensive as the Mitakon) are very prone to the same kind of distortion. To belabor the point, these kinds of exotic lenses have always been about compromise. Then again, with bokeh this dreamy, does anybody really care about the distortion?

One of the biggest issues I encountered with the Mitakon was flare. It would flare whenever given the chance. Off-axis light sources, as well as light sources in the dead middle of the frame would almost always generate an odd “ring” of flare, with a bright point of light on the opposite side of the frame from the light source. The first few times I saw the flare rear it’s head I thought it was kind of cool looking, but I could see how it would be annoying after a while in the long term (I wouldn’t want to see it in every other shot I took with the Mitakon if i used it often). I suspect some of this was attributable to the UV filter on the front of the lens (during Pow Wow, I didn’t dare remove the UV filter because there was a constant cloud of spray paint in the air everywhere I went). I did take the Mitakon out for a walk in my neighborhood one night without the filter on, and I can confirm that no filter reduced the frequency/harshness of “circle flare,” although it did still happen if, say, I pointed the lens directly at a street light. Take a look at the shot of the car on the highway below, it was taken with no UV filter. You can still see the circle flare but it’s a lot more subtle. Unlike other lenses I’ve used, the Mitakon seems more prone to flare when pointed directly at a strong light source that is on-axis rather than off. I could be wrong but it’s just what I think after using the Mitakon for a few days.

OK, so the Mitakon distorts, exhibits halation, crazy flares, and can have weird bokeh. And do you know what? None of that matters when you get it right with this lens. When its behaving, the bokeh is epic, and the crazy shallow depth of field makes everything but the subject melt away, leaving you with a sharp, in focus subject that has a nice 3D “pop” from its background. For a fast lens like this, the detail in the shot is impressively high if you can nail the focus. Even the flare and halation can actually add to the dreamy feel that this lens will give you if you work within its parameters. And getting those killer shots feels all the more rewarding because of it. Take the image below for example. I took it a few seconds after the image above with the crazy flare. All I did was take a step to my right to put the offending street light behind the subject. By working within the lenses’ parameters, I got my favorite shot of the night.

The crazy fast aperture and the A7S’s insanely high ISO abilities meant I was taking shots at night using crazyballs shutter speeds. I don’t think I spent any time with a shutter speed below 1/200 on my first night with the combo. And did I mention the A7S is an absolute beast at high ISO? Believe the hype, I was using ISO 128,000 the same way I’d use 3200 on my A7R. And when needed, the ISO dial on the A7S can be turned up to 409,600. That’s a half million ISO. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mitakon and the A7S could be used for portraiture on a clear, full moon night without any artificial light or a tripod. The A7S and the Mitakon are a tool unlike any other. It means you can shoot a Chinese Lion dance by street light and use 1/500 shutter speeds to freeze the action, where I’d be plugging along at 1/60 or so on my other cameras and waiting for a moment when the lion isn’t actually dancing if I wanted to get useable results. It means that this camera and lens allows you to shoot things that you hadn’t even ever imagined that you could shoot. It’s amazing.

I took a set of shots of cars driving by at freeway speeds at 8 PM from an overpass. The only light came from the cars and the street lights. Even with a car driving towards me at 60 MPH, the camera and lens were able to give me a high enough shutter speed to freeze the car as though it were day. The sky actually looked dark but it was overexposed in the photo. Amazing. It’s a shame that manually focusing limits your ability to capture action, because this combination is a low light action shooter’s dream.

The fast aperture also does really interesting things at medium focus distances. Sure, I imagine most people would use this camera and lens for crazy portraits at the 1-3 meter range. But if you play with medium distances in the 3-10 meter range, the extreme shallow depth of field lets you highlight detail in part of the frame and makes it “pop” against objects in the foreground and background. I could highlight a detail or group of people and bring emphasis to them in a way you just can’t with slower lenses. It’s a crazy look, one that reminds me of how a fast telephoto like a 135mm f/2 wide open would separate a subject or subjects from the background thanks to compression. It’s a creative option that’s unique to lenses like the Mitakon, and I like it. A lot.

Even subjects a little further away (say 10-20 meters) will actually show depth of field against objects in the background. It’s not as “slap you in the face” obvious as the bokeh in a closer shot, but it’s there and I think it’s pretty damn cool.

Of course, I coudn’t not include an image taken at ISO 409,600. The trouble was, ISO 409,600 kept overexposing with the superfast Mitakon, even in street light! 1/8000 sec is too slow a shutter speed for the A7S and the Mitakon at f/.95 in street light. Think about that for a minute. It’s crazy. I had to find a dark garage to get the shot I wanted. The A7s isn’t very good at 409,600, but it wasn’t bad either:

Landscape images taken wide open are possible, but results aren’t very good. It’s pretty obvious this lens was optimized to perform best in the 1-3 meter range, as are most 50mms.

So what?

The Sony A7S and Mitakon 50mm f/.95 are a unique, amazing combination. It let me do things in low light that I’ve never done with any still camera, ever. While the Mitakon has flaws, like any other camera or lens, it rewards with some really impressive, unique images you if you work within its limitations.

Even when you pushed the A7S a little bit, and asked the lens to do things it wasn’t good at, it performed admirably under the right circumstances. Take the shot below for example, it was taken at ISO 12,800 and at near-infinity. And it made nearly-dark conditions at 8PM look a lot brighter than it really was. This shot would be possible with any number of cameras on tripods. But this was taken at 1/60 and handheld!

The A7S and Mitakon are a great combination, and opens up entirely new areas of night photography that can be explored creatively. While I’m still not sure whether or not I really need an f/.95 lens or a 12-megapixel magical night camera, I do know that I really want one now. Try this camera and lens out sometime, because I think you’ll agree.

Mahalo Hawaii Camera for having do this review. If you’d like to check out more of my work, you can find me at:

honozooloo.com

honozooloo.tumblr.com

@honozooloo (IG & Twitter)

-Aaron

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