Another Nifty Fifty..............Really?
Plenty of choice in this range now with the Sirui 24mm Nightwalker arriving.
Maybe an over serviced focal length?
Blue ring. The IRIX and this one stand out as different in a lot of ways.
Cosmetically, more of a middle ground look. Not overly cine, not stills.
To my surprise they are all similar in size. The surprise came from a massive difference in heft.
My oddly shaped cine kit seems to have balance still, in a literal sense anyway. The Sirui feels nicely weighted, but more like a solid stills lens.
The Spectrums are only a little heavier apparently, but the heft, their feeling of solidness is clearly greater, like the difference between aluminium and steel.
Very different up front. The 67mm filter thread gives me access to the bulk of my filters on a cine lens.
The lighter weight is a boon on the better stabilised M43 camera, the extra weight of the Spectrum lenses makes the S5 with its larger sensor and less efficient stabilising, more stable.
The mount is tight and clean, unlike the 12mm Vision lens.
The focus and aperture rings are a surprise. The Vision and Spectrum lenses are generally slightly damped, often the focus ring a little less than the aperture ring although they are seldom the same as each other, but the Sirui seems to have no dampening on either ring.
I am not at all bothered by the focus ring as it is fine and will usually have a follow focus used with it, but the aperture ring is something I will have to watch, possibly even tape it into place.
Wide open, focus is seemingly easy to acquire thanks to good contrast and sharpness (all images are with base Capture 1 in-out settings on an OM1.2), but depth of field is full frame-like.
Most of this series were in focus more or less, which considering it is my fastest lens (T1.2 or about F1.1), accuracy was tricky. The Bokeh is nice and clean, depth of field pleasantly transitioned and colour and contrast nice. There may be a little more brilliance to this lens than the Spectrums, but the Bokeh seems less gentle.
I remember being very content with the organic Bokeh of the Spectrum lenses. The Sirui sits about half way between the Spectrum and most of my stills lenses. It is capable of very nice blur, but it is also sometimes a little nervous, especially with defined edges.
Minimum focus is 0.3m, which is closer than this. Is it super stills lens sharp? No, but it is not meant to be and again, this is wide open at f-nothing.
The lens is a 48mm equivalent, but looks a little wider possibly because of some barrel distortion in close.
All 50’s in one form or another.
Lots of 50mm options (ten or more over the three formats), so an obvious base line to work from.
According to a test I have seen, the 35 Vision and 24mm Sirui are apparently similar in warmth (although I am not seeing that above), the 50mm cooler, the 35 and 50 match in “rendering” but not colour, the Sirui is a little different, but I think they and the IRIX can all be used in the same projects without too much issue.
My ideal cine lens would be the 30mm IRIX full frame which would also be a 45mm in APS-C, but the bill for that one is more than everything above. In an ideal world it would be the 21/32, 45/67, 65/98 and 150/225 IRIX, but in an ideal world there would be no wars, no famine, no disasters.
This is the cheap and solid option for my M43 kit and it fits well. The anamorphic 24mm was also tempting and a good point of difference, but I would like to put that to bed. I will try this lens with streak filters and some 2:1 anamorphic width and see what I get.
Next on the list is the Zoom M3 mic, which looks interesting.