An lens with an impressively wide f1.1 aperture for just 250 USD? Is the new generation of this “Bokeh Beast” worth your time and money, or is this just another lens where specs and a low price tag are the only positives?
The Kamlan 50mm f1.1 caused a bit of a stir when it was first released back in 2017. It was an APS-C only lens made in China, that due to its combination of an extremely wide max aperture of f1.1 and a price tag of just 169 USD, managed to get a lot of attention on photography blogs and the YouTube community.
The lens was manufactured by Shenzen-based Machang Optical CO., Ltd (Machang Optics), (and primarily sold via the Taiwan-based distributor Sainsonic). While it indeed was a fun toy to play with, the lens was pretty bad in every regard, at least when used at that maximum aperture. The entire frame was soft and the subject got a special and rather unattractive glow around the edges in most photographic situations. Both chromatic aberrations and flare were also extremely high. But it seems that despite its flaws, the first version of the lens managed to get popular enough to warrant a sequel. In 2019, this new mkII version of the Kamlan 50mm f1.1 was released after a successful Kickstarter campaign. After testing both, I can confidently say that things are much better this time.
Shot at the maximum aperture of the Kamlan 50mm f1.1. There’s a bit of purple fringing (that I could have removed easily in Lightroom) but other than that the image quality is impressive considering the price of this lens.
Just like last time, the lens is available in four different mounts: Sony E, Fuji X, Micro Four Thirds, or EOS-M. This time around, however, everything from build quality to the feel of the focus ring has been improved significantly, and the optical formula is certainly a big step up as well. With the increased quality of the optical elements comes a significant increase in heft though, and the new lens weighs more than 600g with its (metal)lens hood attached. Compare that to the 248g of the original lens. The Kamlan 50mm mkII has a somewhat unusual 62mm filter thread.
Personally, I think the increased heft is a good thing. This lens feels great when mounted on a large-ish mirrorless APS-C camera like the Fujifilm X-T3. It feels like a serious tool and is capable of some great results, as long as your expectations are reasonable. The focus and aperture rings are soft and smooth to turn, and while I personally wish they would have gone for a clicky aperture ring, to make it easy to set the aperture without having to remove the eye from the viewfinder. But since this lens will also appeal for video shooters, I understand the reasoning behind this choice.
Sure, don’t get me wrong, this new version of the lens still has many shortcomings -- The corners are still quite soft on its max aperture, and flare and chromatic aberrations are still a bit higher than what one would expect from a high-end lens. The Kamlan 50mm f1.1 mkII is by no means competing with enthusiast-grade first-party lenses like the Fujinon 56mm f1.2, or even the budget Fujinon 50mm f2.0, in terms of sheer image quality. But then again, those are significantly more expensive lenses too, the Fuji 56mm costs more than three times as much as the Kamlan.
Compared to other China lenses that I’ve tried out, this one is my favourite so far, and the only one I could actually see myself use for professional purposes as well. It has character, yet enough sharpness where it needs to, to stay relevant in my bag even on professional assignments.
Since the Kamlan 50mm f1.1 mkII is an entirely manual lens, there’s no transfer of information between the lens and the camera body at all. This means that you will not get accurate information in the EXIF-data of the files and that you will have to apply and lens correction settings in Lightroom manually. While this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as it’s the case for all cheap China lenses, I thought it is still worth pointing out.
Manually focusing a lens with such a narrow depth of field as this one can be a bit of a challenge. Granted, with some practice it should be possible for most photographers to nail focus under most circumstances, at least on static subjects. Throughout the handful of weeks I’ve spent with this lens, I went from a low hit-rate of roughly 10% to one of over 50%. I still find myself taking multiple shots of most subjects if I can though, making small focus adjustments between each click of the shutter. While using focus peaking in combination with the enlarged viewfinder view, I still find it difficult to exactly nail focus in many circumstances. On close-ish distances at maximum aperture, the field of focus is just a few millimetres wide, so any movement of either you or the subject also means that the photo will end up out of focus.
So what about Image Quality? As previously mentioned, things are generally quite good. Granted that you’ve managed to nail focus, the subject comes out with great detail. Rendering is full of contrast and the sharpness generally holds up well even at the larger aperture openings, at least as long as you keep your subject close to the centre of the frame. The corners need stopping down to get to acceptable levels, but they do get there already at around f2.8 or so, making this lens useful for more than just photos with an isolated subject surrounded by bokeh.
Shot at f1.1
Speaking of Bokeh, the quality of the out of focus area is generally very pleasing. There’s not much in terms of onion rings or odd shapes to speak of. Thanks to the 11 rounded aperture blades, the out of focus areas look good at stopped down apertures as well. Personally I found somewhere around f2.0 to be the sweet spot, still giving enough subject isolation, but at the same time giving the in-focus areas a nice boost in sharpness and contrast and removing most annoying LoCA as well (colour shifts in the transition area between in- and out- of focus portions of the image), leading to very pleasing results overall.
But the f1.1 aperture is also very useable, and since that’s pretty much the main selling point of this lens, I have tried to stick to using the lens at that setting throughout most of my testing, and the vast majority of photos that accompanies this reviews are shot at this aperture.
One relatively major issue with this lens, however, is very strong coma, whenever you have strong point light sources in the frame. On wider openings, these point light sources become almost triangular in shape. Take a look at the headlights of the cars in the bottom right corner of this photo (shot at f1.1) to get a better understanding of what I’m talking about. Not everyone will be affected by this, but if you are someone who was planning to use this lens primarily for night photography, it could potentially become an issue. Granted, shooting distant subjects at the maximum aperture is not generally a good idea…
Both distortion and vignetting are surprisingly well controlled, despite neither being automatically corrected via software like most first-party lenses. This is truly impressive, and another strong point of this lens. According to lens reviewer Dustin Abbott (https://dustinabbott.net/2019/06/kamlan-50mm-f1-1-mk-ii-review/) this is due to the fact that this lens is essentially over-engineered for APS-C, covering a much bigger image circle than it “needs to” in order to fill an APS-C frame. This means that what we end up getting in the frame is the centre part of the image circle, which generally has the highest image quality. I highly recommend checking out his review if you want a more technical analysis of this lens, as it’s full of detailed crops and comparisons of the lens at various aperture settings. It’s worth noting that he also ended up as impressed with this lens as I am.
Making the image circle larger than it has to be, in order to improve image quality is nothing new. In fact, It’s similar to what Zeiss does in their top-of-the-line Otus range, which is sold as full-frame lenses but has an image circle so big that it even covers some digital medium format sensors. This approach is part of an explanation as to why the Kamlan 50mm mkII is so much bigger and heavier than the first version.
So to conclude, this is indeed an impressive lens capable of great results, and in some respect you’ll get much more lens that what you pay for. For bokeh lovers on a tight budget, I would say it’s as good as it gets right now. It’s also a very good lens for portrait photographers using the APS-C system, or for anyone looking for a lens that will open new possibilities when it comes to low-light photography. I will certainly keep a close eye at what this company will produce in the future. They recently released a 15mm f2.0 (22mm equiv) lens that I will try to get my hands on as soon as possible.
All the photos in this review was shot with the Kamlan 50mm f1.1 mounted on a Fujifilm X-T3. Shot in Raw and edited in Adobe Lightroom.
If this review was helpful to you, please consider supporting me by purchasing the Kamlan 50mm lens, or any other equipment, on Amazon by using this link. The price will be the same to you, but I will get a small commision from your purchase. Thank you!
