SLR Magic MicroPrime Cine 75mm T1.5 Reviews
Great lens !
By Mo
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2022-04-25
I picked this up in a set of four SLR Magic MicroPrimes, and have not used it more than a week but so far I love its unique character. It is light-weight and easy to use on my A7SII hand-held, the focus ring is quick and works great even without follow-focus. The only thing is that when I first got this, I picked up in-person and tried it out with a Sony A7SIII in the store - and found the E-mount to be very resistant, hard to attach the lens all the way to click in. I returned it for a new one which attaches smoother but still there is more resistance than other SLR Magic MicroPrime lenses I got... I don't think this will affect the lens performance but just mentioning it.
Great cine lens for Fuji
By Jason
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2020-11-04
Great build quality, smooth focus, lots of character.
Great cine lens for filmmakers
By Jason
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2020-10-21
I shot a film with this 75mm cine lens and it looked awesome. It created a interesting cinematic look that none of my more expensive lenses could produce. I received a lot of compliments on the shots that I did using this lens. These lenses are also built like a tank unlike other still and cine lenses.
chromatic aberration
By Timothy
Rated 2 out of 5
Date: 2020-07-27
Have 2 of these 75mm's, they have objectionable chromatic aberration at wide open aperture (whole reason I wanted a T1.5 lens). It gets better when you stop down..
BEAUTIFUL LENS
By Nicholas
Rated 5 out of 5
Date: 2020-06-17
this is a great lens to use with the Sony FS5. Very clean and lightweight.
A Lens with Character in a great Housing.
By Ian
Rated 4 out of 5
Date: 2020-03-17
I have not used this lens much yet, so keep this in mind for the review. I have used the 35mm more. This lens has character over sharpness. The lens has an almost vintage look, but I knew this before buying and I'm happy with the look of it. I really enjoy the focus and iris rings, and I also like how the lens has the same dimensions as the 35mm.
Great lens with known e-mount issues
By Christopher
Rated 4 out of 5
Date: 2021-08-12
I've been shooting with the SLR Magic microprimes and genuinely appreciate the consistent color and image quality across the line. However, the 75mm currently shipping has a known problem with the e-mount on a6000 series cameras and required a replacement e-mount ring from the manufacturer.
The replacement was super simple - it took 3 minutes once I remembered the orientation matters - and there are no problems with the lense after the fix.
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.
