When I first made the jump to Fujifilm from Sony, I didn't have any lenses and couldn't decide which ones to get. I decided to purchase this inexpensive gem because I love both manual focus shooting and trying something new. This also gave me time to get used to my new X-T3 camera body. This lens was only $73.00 so I wasn't expecting stellar performance. To my surprise, the image quality is fantastic. The build quality is suspiciously high too! Reminiscent of my old Pentax Super Takumar lenses. The aperture has a rather satisfying click and the focus ring is buttery smooth. Dampened perfectly! Seriously, this lens is built like a sexy silver tank. One thing strange about this lens is the position of both the aperture & focus ring. The aperture ring is at the front nose of the lens while the focus ring is near the rear. It really takes some getting used to. This lens has a unique tapered shape as well. Though it looks awesome, it's another thing to get used to. This lens is prone to lens flare and ships without a hood. In the right conditions, the flare actually looks very nice. However, expect plenty of purple flaring on backlit subjects. It's not much of a problem if your editing your photos in post, but will be a problem for Jpeg shooters. My best advice is to buy a lens hood. The bokeh on this lens is smooth too. Almost like perfectly blended mashed potatoes smooth. However, there are a few lumps in those potatoes. Lights aren't perfectly round. Instead they tend to be oval shaped. Lastly, lets talk about sun stars. My God, you will be extremely hard pressed to find a manual focus lens with this caliber of sun stars. It's absolutely glorious in the way is makes perfectly straight 10 point stars. The sun stars can been seen as early as F/5.6. By F/8, those stars are razor sharp. By F/11 the stars are surgically sharp. Almost to the point of looking like Photoshop perfect. Again, for $73.00 you can not go wrong. The pros greatly outweigh the cons.
Above are sample photos taken yesterday evening. Both tractor pictures are in perfect focus. I slightly missed focus on my Audi, but it's still acceptably sharp enough to use.
Tech Specs:
Camera: Fujifilm X-T3
Lens: TTartisan 35mm F/1.4
Location: Trenton, NC