fbpx
Features

You’ll Really Love These Manual Focus Lenses!

Chris Gampat
No Comments
04/07/2022
4 Mins read
brittany smith mitakon 65mm 0331jpg

Very few things excite this staff like manual focus lenses. They help us feel connected to the fact that we’re taking a photo. But they also force us to work harder to get a better image. Some folks think manual focus lenses are a waste of time. But, they force you to take the time to compose an image in a different way. Check out these fantastic manual focus lenses.

View this article with minimal banner ads in our app for iOS, iPad, and Android. Get no banner ads for $24.99/year.

Pro Tips on Using Manual Focus Lenses

New to manual focus lenses? Here are some essential tips for you:

  • Know that we’ve tested all of these Manual Focus Lenses. The product images and sample photos were all shot by our staff. Further, there are links to our full reviews of each product.
  • Manual focus lenses are designed to be used in a completely different way than autofocus lenses. They can sometimes even focus faster.
  • The manual focus lenses in this roundup are pretty unique. The Laowa lens has bokeh that’s out of this world. So too does the Meyer Optik. And finally, the Mitakon lens is capable of something no native GF mount lens can do as of publishing.
  • Use focus magnification and focus peaking together for the best accuracy.
  • Tripods are seriously recommended when using longer manual focus lenses.

Laowa 105mm f2 Smooth Trans Focus

Pros

  • Incredible colors
  • Fantastic sharpness when in focus and using a flash
  • Great for skin tones
  • Excellent build quality overall
  • Feels great in the hand

Cons

  • Considering this isn’t an electronically connected lens, I’ve got no major issues overall.

Is There Nice Bokeh?

In our review, we state:

“Quite obviously, the closer you are to a subject, the better the bokeh will be. A lens like this is designed for portraiture, so you’re going to get fantastic bokeh no matter what. Wide open at f2 it’s very nice and, even when stopped down a bit to somewhere along the lines of f5.6, you’re still getting great output from this lens.”

Is It Worth the Price?

This lens is only a few hundred bucks. It’s tougher to use, but it’s incredibly rewarding. Those rewarding photos are very much worth this price.

Meyer Optik 58mm f1.9 II

Pros

  • Beautiful bokeh
  • The sharpest Meyer Optik lens I’ve used
  • Just a bit too sharp for portraits, but that’s fine in many cases
  • Smooth focusing
  • Large focusing range
  • I love manual focus lenses because they slow you down.
  • Beautiful colors on the Sony a7r III

Cons

  • Lacks weather sealing
  • Lacks contacts for AF/AE communication
  • Really only sharp around the four points of the rule of thirds intersection

Is There Nice Bokeh?

In our review, we state:

“The Meyer Optik 58mm f1.9 II doesn’t have the soap bubble look, but its swirly bokeh is pretty beautiful. This is pretty fascinating, actually. I found that the in-focus areas aren’t swirly, but the out-of-focus areas have swirly bokeh. With many other lenses, they’ll just make the outer area go swirly and only keep the center sharp. That’s not the case here.”

Is It Worth the Price?

This lens has a classic render that’s almost impossible to find in modern manual focus lenses. The Japanese lenses largely try to engineer out the traditional flaws and leave optics feeling soulless. That makes this lens very worth the price.

Mitakon Speedmaster 65mm f1.4

Pros

  • Build Quality
  • Metal Housing
  • Lens character
  • Spectacular sharpness from f5.6 on
  • A great cost-effective lens for the Fujifilm GFX series, coming at much less than $1,000

Cons

  • Quite large and heavy for a prime 65mm medium format lens
  • Not for beginners
  • Thin depth of field
  • Clickless aperture ring
  • No lens contacts

Is There Nice Bokeh?

In our review, we state:

“The bokeh produced by the Mitakon 65mm f1.4 is stunning when you nail focus at f1.4. It becomes more painterly, and some elements of the image look more like brush strokes when stopped down. At times, the bokeh looks like it could have been created in post-production when there is a lot of separation from the background.”

Is It Worth the Price?

This lens was said to be relatively inexpensive for the Fujifilm GF mount in our review. Considering it’s also one of the fastest aperture lenses for the mount, this is very worth the price.

The Phoblographer’s various product round-up features are done in-house. Our philosophy is simple: you wouldn’t get a Wagyu beef steak review from a lifelong vegetarian. And you wouldn’t get photography advice from someone who doesn’t touch the product. We only recommend gear we’ve fully reviewed. If you’re wondering why your favorite product didn’t make the cut, there’s a chance it’s on another list. If we haven’t reviewed it, we won’t recommend it. This method keeps our lists packed with industry-leading knowledge. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Bokeh Laowa laowa 105mm laowa 105mm f2 Manual Focus manual focus lenses Meyer Optik Meyer Optik 58mm Meyer Optik 58mm f1.9 II mitakon Mitakon Speedmaster 65mm f1.4 review
Shares
Written by

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
You might also like
Screen Shot 2017-08-28 at 12.07.13 PM
Features

Opinion: Please Stop Wearing a Photo Vest if You Don’t Need to Be Wearing a Photo Vest

4 Mins read
07/09/2018

When I got into this industry years ago, one thing really confused me almost as much as how much certain older photographers tend to treat the younger generation of us: photo vests. I’m completely positive that you’ve all seen them: a photographer of a certain distinguishment (or trying to show off without having said distinguishment) wearing their vests that look a lot like safari vests. You know, almost as if they’re going to go out on an African safari at all times without being anywhere near something like a safari. Walking down the streets doing street photography? You’ll see a photo vest. In the studio? Photo vest! Hiking? Yup, A Photo vest!

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Canon RF 24-105mm f4 L IS USM review product images Canon EOS R
Features

Did Canon Miss the Memo That Says Mirrorless Lenses Are Meant to Be Smaller?

3 Mins read
12/26/2018

When Canon introduced their new Mirrorless cameras earlier on this year (The EOS R) one of the stand out features was that the lens mount was so huge. While other manufacturers like Sony have made all things Mirrorless smaller, the late comer to the Mirrorless party seems to have decided that bigger is better. In a recently released interview, Canon engineers seem to be having a sly dig at Sony by saying that lenses with smaller mounts are far less capable than those with larger mounts. Read on after the break to find out more about what the Canon engineers are wafting on about.