Gorgeous Imagery, unreliable T-stops
By David
Rated 3 out of 5
Date: 2021-03-06
I own 3 SLR Magic Lenses, the 25mm, 35mm, and the 75mm. The 75mm is gorgeous! It's built like a tank, solid, and heavy, with vivid colors, beautiful skin tones, silky smooth bokeh, and wonderful flares.
For the not so great characteristics this lens is soft, not in a way that is unusable. Wide open is still usable! But my 75mm Kipon Ibelux, at f2.4 is sharper than the 75mm SLR Magic at T4. But I think this helps with how it renders people, skin will feel smoother. And while the lens has nice artistic flares, this lens flares easier than the other 2. SO that is something to be aware of.
The reason why I gave this lens for all of its wonderful characteristics and optics a 3 out of 5 has to do with how unreliable the T-stops are. When I was testing the 3 lenses I was noticing that I was getting exposure fluctuations after swapping out lenses, even though the T-stops were the same. After some exposure, and metering testing, I found that my 25mm SLR Magic lens' T-stops were off from T2-T8 Wide open was fine, but T2, was as dark as T2.8 on the other lenses. T4 was the same, and the issue started fixing itself atT5.6 and T8 being only a little more dark than it's siblings. I ultimately had to exchange the 25mm for another copy, that one was closer, being only 1/3rd of a stop off from T2-T8.
While the 75mm's T-stops were far more accurate, it still had problems, it's T2 mark was 1/3rd of a stop darker than than the 35mm's. And while T1.5 was 2/3rds of a stop brighter than T2, the fact that T2 was 1/3 of a stop darker than the SLR Magic 35mm, and my control lens the Fuji XC 35mm at F2. In practice this means that at T1.5 the 75mm actually performs more line T1.7.
For this reason, I cannot stress enough, if you buy one of these SLR Magic Lenses test their T-stops! Just point the camera at a plainly lit wall, and go through the T-stops and see if your camera's meter shows whole stop changes from one setting to the next, If you own a stills/hybrid camera, noting the shutter speed is very useful to see how far off one lens is from the other.
Make no mistake the Optics from SLR Magic is gorgeous! But their quality control process is not up to par. If you by one of these lenses make sure there is a robust return policy in place as you may need to return them. If these lenses were marked as F-stops I would have been more forgiving in the rating. But these are T-stops and they should match.
