The $83 TTArtisan APS-C 35mm F1.4 lens is fully manual, all-metal (and glass), and more fun than even Fujifilm's best lenses.
Cheap lens and professional camera, or cheap camera and professional lens?
Cheap camera lenses used to be terrible. Soft images, poor construction and mediocre specs meant you only bought one if you were on a budget. But since the dawn of mirrorless cameras, cheap, capable lenses from China have been streamlined. Many models have design flaws and some brands’ quality control can leave you with a bad one, but they’re getting better all the time.
TTArtisan is one of the better lens makers, and I have the 35mm ƒ1.4 lens for my Fujifilm X-Pro3. It's far from perfect, but I love it for those imperfections.
TTArtisan started out making lenses for Leica bodies in 2019, then moved on to models for mirrorless cameras from Fujifilm, Sony, Nikon, Canon, and Micro Four Thirds. The lenses have an all-metal design, are small, and are 100% manual. There’s no autofocus, and the lens doesn’t even tell the camera what aperture it’s using. So why bother?
