I’ve always wanted an affordable, small, fast 35-40mm FF equivalent lens for my Sony NEX-6, but unfortunately, there are not that many options available. There’s the excellent Zeiss 24mm 1.8, but it is too expensive. And that’s pretty much it. So when I heard there is a Chinese pancake lens that fits the bill, I went ahead, and bought it from Amazon for around $130 (sold by a third-party seller from China).

 

In case you didn’t know, it’s a manual focus lens with no electronic connections. The lens is metallic, and relatively well-made. It’s definitely a surprise to see this quality at this bargain price. And it comes with a nice metallic lens hood too. Nevertheless, I have a few mechanical gripes with this lens:

  1. When you mount it on the body, unlike other lenses, it doesn’t click. I had to twist it firmly to make sure it doesn’t come off.

  2. The focus ring is too close to the body.

  3. Unlike most other lenses, the focus ring is before the aperture ring, and it’s confusing. I found myself turning the aperture ring to focus.

  4. Talking about aperture ring, it doesn’t click. So it feels exactly the same as the focus ring (hence mistaking it).

  5. The focus ring is damped, but it has a short range. I found myself using the magnifier on my NEX-6 most of the times, instead of relying on the focus peeking. It’s definitely not an action lens.

Despite all the points above, mechanically, the lens is a bang for bucks. However, when it comes to optics, you get what you pay for. I’ve uploaded several photos at different apertures to my Flickr account. Make sure to check them out. But here’s my impression so far:

  1. The lens is never very sharp at any aperture anywhere in the frame. Period.

  2. At F1.8, it’s not terrible in the middle - and exactly in the middle - but if you step a little bit to the sides, it gets soft, and very unusable in the corners.

  3. In fact, it never gets usable in the corners at any aperture.

  4. As you stop down, the middle of the frame gets a bit sharper, and the sides get more usable.

  5. The bokeh is nothing to write home about.

Bottomline, I like it for what it is. In the absence of any comparable alternative, I guess I’ll use for portraits. It fills a gap between my two other Sony lenses, the 10-18mm and 50mm F1.8.

Here is the link to the Flickr album.