Three prime lenses every portrait photographer needs to consider (opens in new tab) Portrait photography tips (opens in new tab) and more
The best Fujifilm lenses (opens in new tab) The best Micro Four Thirds lenses (opens in new tab) for your Olympus or Panasonic camera If you want the kind of depth of field that's usually reserved for full-frame sensors, the Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 II is a fantastic creative tool – and that, at just $229 / £180, you can easily forgive any optical shortcomings. Its equivalent focal length makes it perfect for portraits, though it's versatile enough to work as a light telephoto street photography lens, and it can even turn its hand to macro if you're feeling brave. While the Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 II isn't optically perfect, its enviable aperture renders the kind of dreamy depth of field that other lenses can only dream of – and that is what people buy this lens for.
SOAP BUBBLE BOKEH LENS FULL SIZE
Is the Kamlan sharp enough at f/1.1? Click top-right to view full size and judge for yourself (Image credit: Future) Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 II: Verdict Trying to manually focus on moving insects at f/1.1 can be quite the challenge, but the Kamlan is capable of some beautiful plant and insect shots – shooting that wide means you can keep your shutter speed at 1/8000, which definitely helps get subjects sharp! It takes a mean macro shot, too, with a shorter 0.4 meter / 1.3 feet working distance. It's a fabulous portrait lens, and you can feel confident shooting wide open and getting that beautiful background blur. You can see from the image of the vintage car that fringing is an issue in high contrast situations, and bloom can also present itself.Īgain, this is when shooting at f/1.1 – the lens is optically much better behaved when you stop it down to f/2 and beyond, but you're probably not reading this review because you plan on shooting at anything other than f/1.1.Īnd you don't really need to. However, chromatic aberration – an issue on the original lens – is still very pronounced. Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 II 1/8000 sec, f/1.1, ISO200 (Click top-right to view full size) (Image credit: Future) While the original lens exhibited noisier "onion ring" bokeh (where the 'bokeh balls' look like halved onions with concentric ring patterns), the new lens is much better controlled and renders balls with more pleasing "soap bubble" bokeh, with pleasingly soft falloff in the out of focus areas.ĭistortion and vignetting are incredibly well controlled vignetting is almost a non-issue and the bokeh only exhibits "cats eye" characteristics at the very extremes of the frame (see the top-left of the image of the children in the stream). The improved lens formulation (eight elements in seven groups, as opposed to five and five in the original) and larger diameter element have also improved the quality of the bokeh. It's not pin-sharp, but you can see from the full-size sample portraits that it's more than sharp enough at f/1.1 for pleasing images. Where the original lens was definitely soft wide open (and indeed, soft until about f/2), the New Beast is a definite improvement. Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 II 1/1600 sec, f/1.1, ISO200 (Click top-right to view full size) (Image credit: Future)
Focus peaking and magnification are definitely your friends when using this lens. Which isn't to say that it's easy! Manually focusing at anything below f/2 can be very tricky, as anything from camera shake to minute movement from your subject is enough to throw your focus off.
SOAP BUBBLE BOKEH LENS MANUAL
So, far from a nifty fifty, the Kamlan becomes a portrait lens – and with the behavior of a slightly narrower aperture in terms of depth of field, this manual focus-only optic is significantly easier to handle than a true f/1.1 lens. On Canon EOS M its focal length is 80mm with a depth of field of f/1.75, while on Micro Four Thirds it's 100mm and f/2.2 (in all instances, light transmission remains f/1.1, so no performance is lost in low light). On Sony and Fuji APS-C bodies it has a focal length of 75mm, with equivalent depth of field of f/1.65. Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 II 1/6400 sec, f/1.1, ISO200 (Click top-right to view full size) (Image credit: Future) Kamlan 50mm f/1.1 II: Performanceįirst things first: while it's billed as a 50mm f/1.1, remember that this is affected by the crop of your sensor.
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