“Yo, the Nikon Zf is a beast at sports photography,” is what I texted the Phoblographer’s staff after getting home from a soccer game and using the camera along with the 7Artisans 135mm f1.8 lens. We published our review a while ago, and now we’re announcing our update to it along with the new firmware that has been released for the lens. That opening statement alone is something that will set the tone for the rest of the review.
The following text is an update to our full 7Artisans 135mm f1.8 review. You can view the full text here.
Conclusions
The 7Artisans 135mm f1.8 is quite an exceptional lens. Not only is it amazingly affordable, but after firmware updates to fix issues, it performs just as well as a Japanese lens in many regards. All the autofocus issues I had previously have been fixed. And when it comes to both sharpness and bokeh, I can’t really complain about it. The lens does what I expect it to: which is to help me make great portraits. Nikon Picture Control Profiles can surely help here too.
Something else worth mentioning, updating the firmware of this lens is simple. You download the firmware to your computer, connect the lens to your computer, drag the firmware file to the lens in finder, and then when the lens reconnects to the computer, the firmware update is done. It’s by far the simplest I’ve seen.
Truly, my only issue is that I wish it had fuller weather resistance. If it had that, then this lens would wil an Editor’s Choice award in an instant.
The 7Artisans 135mm f1.8 lens is getting four out of five stars. At well under $800, it’s very worth considering owning.
- Super affordable at around $700.
- Fast autofocus after firmware
- Weather sealing at the mount, but not throughout the body
- Nice image quality
- Close autofocus capabilities
- Good bokeh
- Very sharp output
- Lightweight enough that you’d want to use it all day
- Fast autofocus for sports performance
Experience
Since we originally got the lens in for review, there have been firmware updates to fix issues with the autofocus. Indeed, there were times when the face detection wasn’t working for headshots and it would cause embarrassing issues that even my Nikon D850 doesn’t have. After two firmware updates, I’m very, very, very elated to say that those are gone.
In fact, I used the 7Artisans 135mm f1.8 for headshots, portraits, and even for sports. How did it do? Well, the autofocus for people majorly improved. It’s able to use Nikon’s face and eye detection really well and accurately within reason.
But what really amazed me is just how good the autofocus is. Even when it comes to focusing on people of color in low light, the 7Artisans 135mm f1.8 did an exception job at sports photography in a situation where the light is getting really really low. For most of the time, I shot with the lens at around f4.5. But then I opened it up to f2.8 and was pleasantly surprised at how well it was able to keep up with moving subjects using scene detection, AF-C, and 3D tracking.
When it got really dark, I opened the lens up to f1.8. And even though it didn’t nail every single image perfectly, it still did an incredible job to where my keeper rate was around 9/10.
Let me clarify this statement even more, my Nikon Zf has a mist filter on the sensor from Kolari Vision. Even with the mist filter, the Zf autofocused well with the 7Artisans 135mm f1.8. And if the mist filter were removed, it probably would’ve had a 10/10 hit rate. That’s comparable to Nikon and Tamron.
Had it started raining, I probably would’ve been more wary. 7Artisans includes sealing only at the mount. And I really wish that this lens were sealed throughout the entire body.
Image Quality
The 7Artisans 135mm f1.8 is a very sharp lens. And if you’re shooting portraits, you’ll be happy to know that features like skin softening will mean that you’ve got a whole lot less editing to do. Honestly, after years of being locked in my office to edit image after image like a teacher bound to a classroom. of young children, I can’t say that I envy the experience of retouching and smoothing skin out. So the Zf does a good job here.
If I were using a higher megapixel camera, it would be even more valuable and the images would be even sharper. As it is, I’ve got nothing to complain about here.
These images were edited in Capture One using the Phoblographer presets.
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