for me, there's almost no better experience than buying a cheap lens, spending a day shooting with it, and then coming home and being shocked by the quality of the photos and videos that you're capturing. And that's the experience that's happened to me with this lens. It's something that's happened to me a handful of times in my sort of photo and video journey, but this one was a real shocker, particularly because of the price point. The images coming out of this cheap lens were honestly amazing, and in some situations, in some ways, I think the images were on par with lenses that I've got that cost $1,500 or $2,000. It's that good. Now, it's not a perfect lens, and I don't want to mislead you and set your expectations too high because it is a budget lens. It does have some flaws, and the flaws it has are reasonably significant, but absolutely not deal breakers. All right, to start with, what are we talking about here? This is a 255mm F2 lens and probably one of the

most important thing when you're looking at any lens out there is the focal length. What you need to understand is 25 mm on an APS-C size sensor camera is a super versatile focal length. Just as a reference point, the Fuji makes a camera called the X100V. It is one of the most popular and high-demand cameras out there right now. It is super popular with street photographers. It's an APS-C camera with a fixed 23mm lens. That means that you cannot change the lens. This is the lens that comes on the camera, and that's it. They've made it a 23mm lens because on APS-C sensor cameras, that 23 to 25 mm focal length is crazy versatile. So, if you could only have one focal length on an APS-C sensor camera, it would be somewhere around that 23 to 25 mm. At 25 mm, you're going to be able to get that sort of super versatile focal length in an extremely cheap.

package. The other thing that's cool about this lens, as you'll probably have noticed already, is how darn small it is. You can put this on any of your sort of small APS-C sensor cameras, and now you've got a complete package which is nearly portable, which is really cool. And it just made it a real joy to walk around the city and capture photos and videos. And it just makes you a lot more inconspicuous. And this doesn't have to be just doing street photography; even if you're out at a party, to be able to have a small lens that can capture incredible image quality just allows you to blend in a little bit more, and people don't feel like you're shooting or pointing this big zoom lens at them, and you're capturing some professional photographers' work or professional photo or video, which just makes people act in a different way. So that's the lens, but what is it good for? Well, to start with, 23 to 25 mm is considered the traditional field of view or focal

length on a crop sensor camera for street photography. This is equivalent to 35 mm on full frame, and there are some more traditional street photographers who think that this is the only focal length that you should use, and you shouldn't use any other focal length. So, if you're shooting street photography, this is the field of view or focal length. I'm not quite locked on to that, and I tend to lean towards a 35 mm focal length for street photography. It just lets me get a little bit further back. But I've spent the day shooting with this 25mm F2, and it was great. The reason this is so popular is because at 25 mm, you're going to be able to capture a photo of a person, and you're going to be able to see that person, and they're filling enough of the frame that the viewer's eye is drawn or their focus is on the person. But it gives you enough context of the background that it shows the scene that they are in. This is really the art of street photography. The

The idea of street photography is to capture an image of a person but also demonstrate the scene that they're in so that you know, Here's the person, here's what they're doing, here's the context. It's not a type of photography where you're trying to, like portrait photography, where you're just trying to draw the viewer's eye to the person, have a big blurry background, and you've got no idea. They could be sort of anywhere in the world. It really is all about the context when it comes to street photography, and this is a focal link that allows you to capture that great image of the person but also show the context. When you are shooting street photography, you will generally shoot this lens at somewhere between 5.6 and f8, and what that does for you is it brings the background into focus enough that you can see the person, but you can also recognize the background and the scene that they're in. If you're shooting it at f2 and you get reasonably close to the person, you'll end up in a situation

where you blur that background out, which in street photography is not the goal, and then you kind of lose that context. So, uh, I shot pretty much all the street shots and street videos you'll see in this video. The samples that I've got were shot at generally f5.6, maybe f8 if I had enough light, but I think most of the time I was shooting this lens for street at f5.6. The other thing it's going to be great for is just general-purpose walk-around photography. Now, this can be traveling with family and friends, it can just be, you know, sort of mom and dad photos of your kids, it can be going to sort of a birthday party, and once again, this is a focal length that is super versatile because you can get close enough to someone, you can open that aperture up to F2, and you can get a reasonable portrait shot without too much distortion of the person. It also, once again, if you're in tight spaces at a party, kids' birthday party, something like that, it's going to allow you to get

back and get enough of the scene in that you can still set the whole SC and so of get everything in. That's something that if you're shooting, for example, a 35mm focal length. Uh, I've got a 35 1.4 TT Artisans that I really like, but I do find that particular lens. There are times where I can't get farther, far enough back to get the whole scene in if I'm in a bit of a tight space where this is going to allow you to get the whole scene in. And along those lines, that also makes this an excellent video lens. 'Cause what you'll find is when you are capturing a video, it is the movement of the people and the objects and the thing in the video that make the video interesting and make it different than the photograph. Because you have things moving in your scene, and you need to give them the ability to move in your scene so that you can capture that interest. You do need to be a little bit further back or get a little bit wider.

field of view, which is what a 25mm focal length does compared to, for example, a 35 or 50mm focal length. So, for me, my number one focal length for all-purpose general-purpose video is this sort of 23 to 25mm focal length. And I'm sure I've got a lot of examples I've thrown up in this video just traveling through the city, sort of people at counters, you know, historic buildings. And the other thing this is going to be great for is nighttime photo or video because you've got a maximum aperture of F2. This is going to allow probably three or four times the light, three or 400% more light than a standard kit lens. And you're going to get on your Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fuji camera, what have you. So, this is going to make this a much, much better low-light lens. Now, I should point out that F2 only allows half the light in of F1.4, but the important thing that I found about this lens compared to some

of the cheap f1.4 lenses that I've tested, this lens is perfectly usable and has great image quality straight from F2. So, that entire aperture range is usable from F2 to F16. Some of these budget lenses that go to f1.4, even though you get f1.4, even f1.2 on some of them, those early maximum apertures might not necessarily be usable because the image quality isn't good enough, and you'll find yourself needing to stop down to F2 to get clean, usable image quality anyways. So, in this case, you've got the entire aperture range is usable from F2, and honestly, I was shocked by how sharp this lens is at f2, particularly in the center of the frame. Just having a look at the build and the handling on this lens, from the time you take it out of the box, you are going to be very, very surprised at how good it is for the price point. It's an all-metal lens, it's got a metal lens mount, it even comes with a screw-on metal lens cap.

comes with a plastic rear cap, and it just feels really, really nice. Now, it is a manual focus, manual aperture lens, which you would expect for a lens of this quality at this price point. But I find that both the manual aperture and manual focus are super nice to use, super smooth. Interestingly, this one does have a hard stop at Infinity, which is unusual. A lot of the manual focus lenses I test actually go beyond Infinity, but this one stops it at Infinity, which was an interesting choice. The other thing is the aperture ring is clicked, so you've got a clicked aperture ring, which I prefer over a de-clicked aperture ring. That means that you can set it to F2, F2.8, F5.6, whatever you're doing, and if you are adjusting the focus, you won't accidentally bump the aperture and change the aperture, which can be a problem on lenses that don't have a clicked aperture ring. This is an APS-C lens. It's available on all the popular APS-C mounts. I will put a link in

the description down below that has the current pricing and availability on the lens and the place that I purchased it. I have just purchased every mirrorless lens under $100. I've spent thousands of dollars on these lenses. I'm going to be reviewing them all on the channel as well as doing some big comparisons, but this was the first one that I started playing with, and honestly, I think we're in for a real treat if any more of them are anywhere near as good as this, because I haven't even heard anybody talk about this lens. I cannot believe that this is not really people aren't shouting from the rooftops how good this lens is. Just having a look at the Distortion performance on the lens, it does give you a moderate amount of barrel Distortion. Nothing worse than any more expensive lenses that I've tested in the past, and all the samples you've seen, all the photo samples, all the video samples you've seen in this video are uncorrected, so this is exactly what it

looks like right at the camera it is an even distortion pattern. So, if you do want to correct it in Lightroom, you absolutely can. But for most things, unless you've got really straight lines and you're kind of straight lines at the edge of the frame, you're not even going to notice the distortion. It's there, but once again, it's very moderate and consistent. Looking at vignette, there is reasonably heavy vignette at f2. This gets significantly better at f2.8 and is just about gone at f4. Once again, when I am shooting at f2, I am trying to generally speaking get a blurry background, and the vignette is not a problem because it helps me draw the viewer's eye to the thing in the middle of the frame or the middle third of the frame, which is sharp and detailed in focus, and the background is blurry. So, with photos like that, I often intentionally add vignette in editing anyway, so I don't think the vignette performance is anything to be afraid of. And in night scenes, it really also

kind of helps set the mood. So, if you got that at f2.0, you're trying to let all that light in. You'll get that sort of bright object in the middle of the frame and the dark outline or the dark circle in the darker corners really gives you this kind of a cool night vibe. So, once again, I have not corrected the vignette in this video at all. So, everything you've seen is right out of camera. So, even though it is pretty heavy at f2, you can get rid of it at f2.8 or F4. And it's not something that I've corrected or even worried about. Looking at chromatic aberration, this is where we've got a little bit of a mixed bag result. Once again, no worse than some lenses that I own that cost a lot more money than this lens. If you look at the things that you have in focus in the frame in high contrast scenes, I get little to no purple outlining or color outlining in those images. So, I would say for the

In focus areas, there really is no chromatic aberration to speak of in the out-of-focus areas in the background. Particularly if you have a backlit scene, you will get purple fringing. Once again, I've got zoom lenses that cost $500, $2,000 that have quite a similar effect, but this lens definitely has this effect. It's not desirable, but I only find it in very specific situations, particularly when you're shooting a subject and you've got trees in the background and you've got the sun coming through behind. But other than those very specific situations, I didn't notice it in any of the normal background blur. I didn't notice any color tint or any color fringing, but if you do have heavily backlit scenes, you will get some purple fringing. Looking at flare performance, this is probably the worst element of this lens. The flare performance is absolutely terrible, and it looks like some sort of psychedelic drug trip. Now, I only found this performance once I was shooting at night, pointing at street lights and kind of looking for it, and if

I used my hand to shake shade the lens. I could actually eliminate it in real-world shooting when I was out shooting the city street photography traveling around. It rarely came into play, but when it is an issue, it is kind of a big issue. Once again, not a deal breaker at this price point. If I'm going to pick one thing that I'm going to give away as the an optical imperfection, it's definitely flare. But this L's definitely flares like crazy. The other kind of thing that was cool about this is the sun stars on the L, something that I didn't expect and wasn't even shooting for. I was shooting a night scene with some cars going by, and I was just trying to get those blurring of the lights with a shutter drag. So, I was shooting these shots at, I don't know, it might have been 6c shutter speed or something like that. But what I noticed is the street lights in the background gave these really cool multi-pointed Sun Stars where all the

length of the Spurs of the stars were like weren't the same length. It was a really cool effect, something that I liked, and I will intentionally shoot for that. That was a bit of a accent. I will intentionally shoot like that in the past. That was shot at F16, so if you want to get that kind of look at night, shoot at F-16. The super sort of bonus mode of this lens, of which I was really surprised by, because this is something that cheap lenses are almost always bad at, particularly ones that have large maximum apertures or maximum openings like this lens is, that the close-up image quality was fantastic and super, super sharp, and you could get pretty close to your subject. So, that definitely exceeded my expectations. That's like a total bonus mode. I expected that to be a terrible performance, but it was absolutely excellent. Now, the one place that most people expect budget lenses to fall short is sharpness and detail, and this is probably the single biggest surprise package of this entire lens at

f2, it's absolutely acceptably sharp, totally usable, even with those close-up IM images. If you want a little bit more sharpness, you can go f2.8, f4, f5.6, and it just gets sharper and sharper and sharper. And this way exceeded my expectations. It's way sharper than any of the kit lenses that I've got. So for people looking to upgrade, they want more detail in their images, this is going to get you a much Sharper Image than you get out of the kit lens. And I think even the most demanding pixel peepers are going to be happy with the image detail, the sharpness, and detail you're going to get out of this lens, particularly when you take into account the price point. The only thing I will say in regards to sharpness is the extreme corners are not sharp at f2, and even stopped down, they don't get particularly sharp. It probably means that this lens, because of its size, is struggling to fully cover the APS-C size image sensor. So once you get to the

side you're kind of at a bit of a throwaway image quality. Now, I have a number of lenses, once again, even much more expensive lenses that have a very similar problem, and it's absolutely not a deal-breaker for me, particularly at this price point, and particularly when you can get a lens of this size. But you should just be aware of it. Your sharpness is in the center. It goes to probably well, it goes to all the way to the edge of the frame. It's just those extreme corners where you get a little bit of blurriness, and they never really, no matter how much you stop it down, get very sharp. Once again, if people are looking at the corner of your images and saying, Hey, I noticed the image corners aren't sharp, it means that you're not capturing a very good photo or video. So, I would not use that as a reason to not be interested in this lens. Finally, having a look at bokeh and background blur, I think the bokeh and background blur was good without being great in

most situations, it was very smooth, very creamy, and exactly what I want out of the lens. The only time I found it got a little bit busy was when we had a very complicated background, uh, trees, foliage, stuff like that, which is not unusual for any lenses, even more expensive lenses. Once again, again, I keep thinking about some of my lenses that cost $1,500, $2,000 zoom lenses, which actually have background blur, which is way more nervous and sort of way less creamy than what this one is. So, I would say in 80% of situations, maybe even 90% of situations, you're going to get this super creamy, dreamy background blur, but sometimes when you have busy backgrounds like foliage and trees, you will get a little business, but certainly once again at the price point, not a deal breaker by any means. And finally, I have to ask, who is this lens for? And I think when I got this lens, it was obvious I was going to say this is a lens for budget photographers and filmmakers, but I

actually don't think that's the case. I actually think this is a lens for anyone really because I have the money to have much more expensive lenses, and I do have much more expensive lenses. But there is some level of pleasure and enjoyment that anyone with any budget can get out of grabbing a small inexpensive manual focus lens, go out there and capture images that far exceed the price point, and just engage in this style of manual focus, manual aperture photography and video, which is so much more connected and so much more immersive than using an autofocus lens where your camera is making so many decisions for you. This lens really gave me such a rewarding experience to use over the past week, and there's almost no one that I really couldn't recommend it to. It is a fantastic cheap little lens. Now if you're interested in budget photo and video, you have absolutely come to the right place, and I've just thrown a video on screen now. This is a video where I cover 10 ultra cheap photo and video lenses, and some of those lenses are as

APS-C Special: The Cheap Lens that's Impossibly Good.

On this channel I focus on getting the best possible results, in both photo and video, with gear that you can afford.  So if you want to get professional quality results, on a budget, you have come to the right place.  I post new videos weekly, including tutorials, gear reviews, travel videos, and more, all to support you on your creative journey. 

