TTArtisans ( different from 7artisans) currently has three lenses for Leica M-mount and a new 50mm f/0.95 lens coming soon. So yeah, a potentially optically imperfect fisheye lens designed to mount to a camera system that’s arguably almost entirely unsuitable for fisheye photography. Sound pointless? Well, maybe, but if I’ve not made it clear already, I have had a lot of fun with this lens so far. I’ve written here before. I’m a still life advertising and event photographer based in Japan. I do weddings, embassy powwows, corporate events, audiophile meet-ups, and shoot everything from jewellery to headphones. If you want to see, read, or listen to my opinions on lenses, cameras, and audio doo-dads, by all means hit me up at my blog: ohm image, and my YouTube channel: Fauxtaku Lounge.

This is only the second fisheye lens being reviewed here, so it might make sense to have a short look what differentiates a fisheye lens from a normal ultra wide angle lens. Most of this section is taken from my TTArtisan 11mm 2.8 Fisheye review.I haven’t used this one. In terms of weight and size it sits inbetween the aforementioned AstrHori and this TTArtisan lens.

Proper rangefinder focusing would make all of this simpler, at least on an M, whose EVF and live view are stuttery messes. Other mirrorless cameras fare better, but not better enough to ensure reliable focus speed and accuracy. Yes, zone focusing works fine. Yes, stopping down yields deep focus. But none of that is as accurate or fast as focusing through a discrete rangefinder. The TTArtisan 11mm F2.8 Fisheye (300 euros) is a Compact stereographic fisheye with very good sharpness on the entire frame when used outdoor at F5.6 , and even excellent at F2.8 in the centre for close subject The sun stars created by this lens stopped down past f/8 almost look too good at times; you get 14 very distinct rays that are well disciplined. However, at lower aperture values, the stars can be a smear mess, and if you're diffracting the light source too much on an edge, things also get messy. Fisheye design renders an immensely wide angle of view to produce distinct visual appeal characterized by dramatic distortion and a creative depiction of space.Astrophotographers make use of every focal length lens available, with the widest being fish-eye lenses that take in a full sweep of up to 180 degrees (°) of sky. While they are specialized lenses, fish-eyes allow unique images not possible with any other lens, even using techniques such as shooting panoramas. 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 Note: I have seen some samples from others on the Web that show that there may be some sample variation. My sample seems well-centered and doesn't tend to smear corners but just blur them. I've seen examples from others where there must have been some de-centering or element variation. Performance wise, I'm pretty impressed. TL/DR - it's almost as good as the Olympus 8mm f1.8 - and I hold that lens in very high regard (it's certainly the best FE on the m43 format and there are a number of other credible options there, including a Panasonic/Leica version and one from Samyang that is well respected). Things of particular note about the TTArtisan: Already in the sharpness section we saw solid but not outstanding corner sharpness and most of the time the performance there is closely related to the coma correction. Generally the correction is decent at f/2.8 and I think slightly better than the TTArtisan’s. Even stopped down to f/5.6 the corners don’t look perfectly clean though.

The TTArtisan 11mm 2.8 Fisheye was kindly provided free of charge by TTArtisan for reviewing purpose for a few weeks. What is a fisheye lens? Sharpness: I'm going to say the center of the frame is very good. It's nearly impossible to get really good measurements from lenses this wide, as you'd either need to be at closest focus distance or have really huge charts to get accurate numbers. My observations are mostly based upon examining real images, not testing. But this is not the whole story, without going too much into detail of different fisheye projections (you can do that here or here) the shape of objects closer to the corners stays closer to what they actually are. You can see that in the comparison above, the reflection of the lamp is round in the fisheye image while it is streched in the image of the rectilinear lens. So, depending on what part of the image you look at, the distortion of a fisheye lens may actually be less, not more. Fisheye-Hemi provides a more normal view of people by not distorting their faces and bodies, and straightens vertical lines. No focusing tab, but the lens has a small metal notch on the focusing ring for easy focusing – very usefulThe focus ring has a hard yet nice resistance and turns about 100° from the minimum focus distance of 0.2 m to infinity. The lens seems to be mostly made from metal and a metal slip on lens cap is included as well. My lens also shipped with an 11mm optical viewfinder, which will be useful for Leica M users, but I am not sure whether it is an optional accessory, so if you need it be sure to get it with the lens. Vignetting and colorcast Also similar to the Voigtlander UWA primes and some of the wide Laowa primes ( 12mm 2.8 and 15mm 2.0) this lens shows some slight green color cast in the corners which can become visible with bright skies. Sharpness infinity