Dear reader, I have a question for you: Have you heard of 7Artisans?

If  the  answer is “no”, especially if you take pictures with one of  the Leica M cameras, you are here for a big surprise. Any photographer who has ever shot with a Leica knows that in the 24x36mm world there are two kinds of optics: Leica and everything else. Yes, we have known of some excellent lenses from different brands whether European, or Japanese, but overall only Leica consistently manages to come up with unique designs that provide the high speed, top image quality and the compactness in a single package. Moreover, Leica lenses, especially of older pre-aspheric designs have “signatures” that can be easily recognized even by someone who does not do optical engineering for living.

This status quo has existed for some hundred years, until recently. Last year a completely unknown company from People’s Republic of China took the photographic world by storm. It has a rather unusual name, which immediately sticks in one’s brain: 7Artisans. Like a cowboy who loudly kicks the door entering a saloon, 7Artisans’s appeared with a loud statement: 50mm f/1.1 in a rangefinder-coupled Leica M mount. To be fair, we have seen super-fast 50mm lenses infringing on the rein of Leica Noctilux before. Voightlander 1.1/50 and even Mitacon 0.95/50 came out a few years ago, but… As an owner of 1/50 Noctilux,  I have a humble, yet firm opinion that none of them came close to it. 7Artisans 1.1/50, on the other hand, got my attention as soon as I saw its first wide open photo on Internet. It had something that I have seen only from Leica Noctilux before: character. Beautiful three-dimensional rendition, gentle glow-like flare, which turned out to be 100% predictable, smooth bokeh… Also, what really amazed me, it had something that 1/50 Noctilux did not: a total lack of both lateral and longitudinal chromatic aberrations, even wide open (Fig. 1), unless the image had specular highlights or pint light sources overexposed for more than three stops. Having said that, I have to warn you that this lens is not without limitations. Fast maximum aperture is always a trade-off. Wide-open it is not nearly as sharp as any of the Leica lenses, especially in the corners. Spherical aberrations and coma are present, yet for art portraiture and other types of creative work it something that can be taken advantage of.

Considering the fact that 7Artisans 1.1/50 lens costs $359, which is approximately 1/20 of what the latest model of used Noctilux 1/50 is offered, it did not take much thinking to get it and take it to the test. My first surprise was the lens itself: it is beautifully designed, reminiscent of the Pre-ASPH Leica M designs of the turn of the century. The lens is very well made, its focusing is smooth and aperture ring is clickless, which I really liked. It is about 2/3 size of the Noctilux and 1/2 the weight. The barrel is slimmer and shorter than of the Noctilux, which results in no obstruction of the 50mm frame lines.

The lens came in a high-quality sturdy box accompanied by a suede pouch, a tape measure and tiny screwdriver. As the lens happens to be of the Sonnar design, it is prone to the focus shift (an annoying phenomenon of the focal plane shifting when stopping down). To minimize this effect, the lens can be calibrated for a certain distance and aperture (much line Carl Zeiss Sonnar 1.5/50 ZM) So, like no other lens manufacturer in Nature, 7Artisans thoughtfully included a tool that lets me decide whether do I want to use it for close-ups, or predominantly for distances of three meters and more. Nice touch. The adjustment took me some five minutes, or so. I am guessing, however, that most users will probably opt for the wide open calibration to be able to capitalize on the lens’ super-fast aperture and.  Wide open, it is a beautiful portrait lens (Fig. 2).

I should mention, however, that focus shift only plagues systems relying on the coincidental optical rangefinder for focusing. Leica M240 and M10 bodies equipped with an optional electronic viewfinder are devoid of the problem.  So, for owners of these cameras, 7Artisans 1.1/50 can be precisely focused at any f/stop and distance. When stopped down to f/5.6 and more, focus shift disappears, as it is fully compensated by the increasing depth of field. The lens has wonderful microcontrast, which is evident at any aperture (Fig. 3). Its color rendition is also worth mentioning. All pictures presented in this article have not been color corrected.

Compactness and super fast aperture made it my lens of choice for ballet photography, which I do regularly. Moreover, its optical qualities seem to ideally fit the subject matter (Fig. 4,5).

At full aperture color gradations become so delicate that, even when saturation is high, an image has a gentle pastel look (Fig. 5). However, at f/1.1 there are some “onion rings” in the bokeh, which is not to everyone’s liking. Stopping down to f/1.4 makes the blobs uniform, contrast increases greatly, and the image attains more apparent depth. So, basically, just one-stop difference completely changes the character: it is like having two different lenses for the price of one.

Certainly, 7Artisans 1.1/50, just like Leica Noctilux, is a special purpose lens, not something for every occasion. Its compact size, weight and price, however, makes it possible to carry it around and use when necessary.  There are only two things that I would want this lens to have: a dedicated tubular lens hood and a smaller flange of the rear optical element. The latter needs an explanation: This lens would be an ideal companion for Leica SL, but somehow it is not fully compatible. It mounts via the Leica L-adapter-M when set to infinity, but does not focus closer than approximately three meters, because its rear flange catches on the sensor mount. It does not damage the camera, just refuses to focus. This is a real bummer, as I would love to use the lens for video*.

At the time of writing, 7Artisans struck again. They just came up with two M-mount lenses featuring outstanding optical performance and impressive build quality: 2/35 and 1.4/28 ASPH. We will post reviews when field testing will be over.

Irakly Shanidze © 2019

* Update: since the article was published, 7 Artisans has modified the lens to enable the full focal range on Leica SL and other L-mount cameras.