Whenever I’m on a mission, I usually carry a film camera with me. For breaking news work, they’re not particularly helpful; Not a single editor in mind will be waiting for me to come home, develop, process, edit and upload my frames, no matter how good the final product may be. However, this lens made me rethink my process a bit.
Over the past few years I’ve been focusing a lot on my panorama camera, usually one of my XPans or Widelux, sometimes my Horizon, when it’s something I know is going to be messy or high impact. Recently, however, I started carrying around my old Leica M3. So far, I’ve been limited to lenses: a few different 35mms, a 50mm f/1.5 Summarit, a 40mm Summicron. They are both interesting pieces of glass, but they also take up very similar space in terms of field of view. I would have liked to go a little wider, but most wide glasses are a bit out of my price range.
Over the past few months, I’ve been keeping an eye on TTArtisan 28mm f/5.6. I’ve looked at other lenses: the TTArtisan 21mm f/1.5 and similar Voigtlander lenses, but the TTArtisan 28mm f/5.6 called me for some reason.
First, it’s small and unobtrusive, which means it’ll fit in my camera bag without taking up significant real estate. When it arrived, I found it filled the same amount of space as a compact Elmar 50mm f/3.5. It’s not exactly a pancake lens, but it’s pretty close.
Second, the build quality is reported to be very impressive, and after the first few shots I found that to be true. I picked up a silver replica, matching my M3. I’m not too keen on aesthetics, but I’ll be the first to admit that it looks good. Brass is also very tall – surprisingly so. I’m used to more modern lenses, made of lighter metal or plastic. This lens is entirely made of glass and plastic, with a smooth focal length with moderate resistance. The supplied lens hood is equally well built, although the black paint has begun to peel off on the outer edges. There’s an infinity focus lock similar to older Leica lenses, although on my lens it felt relatively loose. I’m concerned it might come loose, but so far, it shows no signs of working loose.
In terms of image quality, I found the lens to be surprisingly sharp, with a bit of smearing and loss of detail at the edges. At f/5.6, this is a decent street shooter lens; it’s great for area focus and snapshots. Other shooters I’ve talked to have asked why I chose something with a wider aperture, which can be more useful in uncontrolled or low-light environments. The truth is, I want to focus less on the bokeh and more on the sharpness. There are sharper lenses out there, for sure – these won’t compete with the more expensive M-glasses – but for the price ($298), it’s hard to complain. I’ve used it on two recent missions: first, when taking pictures aboard the USS Bataan as it docks, and again during a press conference with Mayor Adams in New York City. On Bataan it shined, but I was working under great outdoor light and there was plenty of latitude in the exposure. The press conference was held inside City Hall, and although there were TV lights, there wasn’t enough light for a good display.
Another downside is that there’s no dedicated viewfinder included with the lens. Right now, I have a viewfinder from my Yashica Electro 35 mounted on a cold shoe, which allows for proper framing of lines to be estimated. For the most part, I find myself approximating, though often with decent results.
So, who is this lens designed for? It’s a solid news-gathering lens, but only if you realize its limitations: it won’t do you any good in low-light environments, and you won’t get much out of it. “creamy bokeh” that everyone seems to be after. What you will get is a sharp image (mostly) from corner to corner. It’s a solid, wide lens that’s more useful for storytelling than art, and it’s priced competitively. price point. I’d love to see an updated and improved infinity key, but other than that, it’s incredibly well built.
