Review: 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 Lens for Leica M

By Anthony Gyzen and Sara Long

For the last two months, I’ve been testing the 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens for Leica M-mount, which 7Artisans sent me to review. I’ve shot one one roll of Portra 400 on the Leica M6 and one photoshoot on the Sony A7III, but most of the time, I used this lens with the Leica M 240.

This lens is the second 35mm M-mount lens that 7Artisans has produced. It isn’t made in the DJ-Optical factory, but is still manufactured in China. This lens retails at $429. In comparison, Leica’s current 35mm f/1.4 costs $5,895.

If you have experienced 7Artisans M-mount lenses, you’ll know that you may need to calibrate your lens for your rangefinder. Calibrating on a digital Leica is much easier than calibrating on an analog Leica, which may take several attempts to get correct. On digital, simply follow the calibration instructions included in the lens box. On an analog Leica, open the film back, put a piece of scotch tape across the film plane, and then follow the calibration instructions.

You’ll also notice that this lens has a distinctive new design language, unlike the previous M-mount lenses, which were heavily inspired by Leica’s design. The body has a different black paint than previously released lenses, as well as red accents on the distance markers and the Chinese character Wen, meaning “Street Photography” or “Social Documentary Photography,” in red on the hood. The markings around the front element aren’t painted like the markings on the barrel of the lens, and it doesn’t look quite as nice.

It’s a very solid feeling lens, made of all metal and glass, weighing 377g or about 13.3oz without caps. This is not the smallest 35mm f/1.4 M-mount lens on the market, for example, Leica, Voigtlander and TT Artisans all have more compact offerings.

This lens takes 49mm filters and has a built-in retractable lens hood, which, in my experience, gets snagged on the front of the lens while opening and closing. Besides that, it’s very convenient to have a hood built in.

Viewfinder blockage is just the bottom right corner. The focusing is done all internally, so whether you’re at minimum or infinity, this lens isn’t going to get larger and block more of your viewfinder. This lens has a native minimum focus distance of .7 meters, or about 2.3 feet. If you are planning on adapting this lens to another camera system, like E-mount, you can get a close focusing adapter to greatly increase that minimum focus distance. The focusing ring is smooth, but also has a nice resistance to help achieve precise focus. You can always add a focus tab if that is your preference. This lens has a short focus throw at 100 degrees.

This lens has a very large aperture range, from  f/1.4 to f/22. Equipped with a 10 bladed aperture diaphragm, the aperture ring is smooth to adjust and has a nice tactile click for each stop.

When I went out, I was excited to get back into shooting 35mm focal length—I’d been using a lot of portraits and telephoto lenses for the previous few months. I did worry that it would be tough to get focus at f/1.4, but upon reviewing my images, I don’t think I missed focus even once. This makes me confident that I’ll get accurate focus in low light.

As with most lenses in this price range, the lens is sharpest at f/4-f/8. Shooting faster than f/4 still provides images that are very sharp in the center, but the corners do become softer. I noticed slight vignetting when shooting with wide apertures; however, it was never overwhelming, and could be corrected in Lightroom.

I absolutely love the colors and contrast that this lens produced while shooting on the M 240. I didn’t notice any focus shift during my use, always a plus for us Leica users. When shooting at f/1.4-f/2.8, I noticed some chromatic aberration and color fringing. I also noticed some distortion when shooting towards buildings or straight lines. This can easily be corrected in Lightroom. I also noticed flare when I was shooting towards the sun.

Leica M 240 Sample Images:

I really like the images I got from this lens. The transition from in focus to out of focus is so lovely. The bokeh is very pleasing! This really is the kind of lens that I can leave on my M6 and work with in almost all shooting scenarios and lighting conditions.

Kodak Portra 400 Sample Images:

I think that 7Artisans makes fantastic lenses. They’re great for Leica shooters who want to try out different focal lengths and not spend thousands in the process. Considering the price, it is impossible to find a better 35mm f/1.4 M-mount lens.

Journey Into Film

by Anthony Gyzen and Sara Long

Most of my life I’ve used digital cameras, including some early Kodak and Nikon point & shoots. My first DSLR was the Canon T3i, and I loved it. I used the Canon system for a while, upgrading to the 7D and then later, the 70D. About three years ago, I started using Sony mirrorless cameras—first the a6000, and then a7S. When the Sony a7 III was announced, I sold my 70D and a7S to purchase that camera. In late 2018, I noticed I was going out to shoot less and less, and really only using the a7 III only as a tool for recording video. Bored of digital but missing the fun part of using a camera, I started looking into film photography for the first time in my adult life.

Other than using disposable cameras on vacations or school field trips, my only real experience with shooting film was during the holidays. My mom inadvertently started an annual tradition where we would spend an entire December evening in front of the Christmas tree with her Pentax ME Super, attempting to get an acceptable family photo. She would go through at least four rolls of film every year because my brother liked to make faces right before the flash popped. All that effort to just get one photo turned me off of film photography.

After my grandfathers passed away, I inherited their film cameras. My paternal grandfather left me the Kodak Retina IIIc, and my maternal grandfather left me his Pentax Spotomatic. I never got around to putting film in either of these cameras, and they sat on shelves.

Two and a half years ago, I bought a gigantic lot of film cameras, lenses, and accessories off of Craigslist on a whim. I thought I might resell them individually to help fund the a7 III, but I figured I’d keep a few, at least the lenses I could adapt to my Sony alpha cameras.

I ended up hanging onto a Hasselblad 500cm, an Olympus OM-1 with some lenses, and a couple Minolta MD lenses which I’ve featured in episodes one and two of the Adapting Vintage Lenses series. I also kept this Leica IIIa with a Summar 5cm (50mm) f/2 lens. I had been interested in the Leica M series in particular, but since this was older thread mount, I didn’t get around to trying it out until early 2019. I found the manual online and shot my first roll of Fuji S200 on the Leica IIIa with a Russian Zeiss copy, the Jupiter-8 5cm f/2. I picked this lens because the glass was much cleaner than the Summar, which was scratched up when I acquired it.

I did some research into basic film developing, but we were about to move, so I held off on buying equipment and chemicals. But I had a stoke of luck in May 2019, when I found an incredible deal on a silver Leica M6 that I couldn’t pass up. The seller included a few accessories and extra rolls of film, but I still needed to get a proper M mount lens.

I had an LTM/L39 to M mount adapter handy, so I shot my first 30 rolls using my Jupiter-8 on the M6 in the two months before we moved from Bellingham to Kansas City. Because I wasn’t developing any rolls yet, I was worried about a number of issues, like missing focus or whether the expired film I used was ruining shots (it was).

So began the process of developing and scanning, as soon as I was able in the summer of 2019. The process was nerve-wracking the first few times, but everything turned out acceptable, but there is still so much to improve on. I spoke with a Steve at Express Photo, a professional film developer here in Kansas City, and he advised me that other than maintaining my use of good quality chemicals, only time and practice would perfect my technique.

During my first year, I almost exclusively used the M6 with the 7Artisans 75mm f/1.25, 35mm f/2, and 28mm f/1.4, as well as the 50mm Jupiter-8 lens.

As of right now in late summer 2020, I’ve shot and developed over a hundred 35mm rolls and about twenty rolls of 120 film, experimenting with several different film stocks in color as well as black & white, from companies like Kodak, Fuji, Arista, Kenmere, Ilford, and Bergger.

My current setup still includes the a7 III for work, but my personal favorite cameras are the Leica M6, M3, M 240 and Rolleiflex 2.8D.

After a year and a half of use, my M6 light meter no longer reads a scene, so I’ve had to carry around a Sekonic L-508 Zoom Master light meter. I love this tool for accurate spot metering, especially on distant objects. Even with a working internal meter, the M6 does not have that kind of accuracy to correctly estimate the necessary amount of exposure.

I’ve learned a lot in my journey into shooting film, but I believe I could shoot and develop for years and still continue to discover new things. That’s what excites me about film. I enjoy the entire process, from capture to the ritual of developing to scanning, and I like how much control this format gives me. Film just makes me want to take pictures.