UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE See new recommendation below!

Hengyijia, Zonlai, Discover, 7artisans – different brandings of what is reportedly the same basic lens made at the same China factory. There are plenty of articles on these lenses – and they’re amazingly good for the price (~$80 eBay).

With the Fuji’s 1.5 crop factor, the lens is a close mimic of a classic 35mm lens.

All these lenses are made with mountings for Fuji X, Sony E and Micro Four Thirds. Of course they are manual.

One problem: there is currently no lens profile for these lenses for Adobe products, and they have moderate barrel distortion. Indeed, a review posted on the 7-Artisans site itself suggests using Voigtlander VM 25mm f/4 Color Skopar profile as a substitute. Unfortunately that profile necessitates a rather large correction involving either vignetting, or placement of a radial filter. I did manage to come close, and created presets for both portrait and landscape but got tired of futzing and looked for a better solution.

I found this http://www.like-a-look.com/lens-correction/zonlai-discover-lens-correction/ which appears to be a well-implemented profile, compensating for vignetting and chromatic aberration. The developer knows what he’s doing and the $10 he’s asking is quite fair.  In a better world the Chinese manufacturers of the lens would cut a deal with him; marketing a lens without an Adobe profile is like getting 95% of the way to the finish line.

I did test other Adobe 25mm profiles.  The Voigtlander MFT 25mm f/0.95 Nokton profile works pretty well!  Tonality is almost identical to the OOC image, which is even to the edges and corners.  There seems a very slight undercorrection to lens’ distortion, but it seems good enough for all but  architectural photos. I’ve not yet tested much with vignetting.

UPDATE UPDATE!

Instead of the Voigtlander MFT 25mm f/0.95 Nokton profile, simply try this in Lightroom: : +12 distortion with constrain crop (entered in the manual tab of the Lens Correction panel). My preliminary eyeballing says this setting yields a truer geometry than the Voigtlander. This sets up no chromatic aberration adjustment, so you’ll have to do it manually if it’s a problem.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE See new recommendation below!

Hengyijia, Zonlai, Discover, 7artisans – different brandings of what is reportedly the same basic lens made at the same China factory. There are plenty of articles on these lenses – and they’re amazingly good for the price (~$80 eBay).

With the Fuji’s 1.5 crop factor, the lens is a close mimic of a classic 35mm lens.

All these lenses are made with mountings for Fuji X, Sony E and Micro Four Thirds. Of course they are manual.

One problem: there is currently no lens profile for these lenses for Adobe products, and they have moderate barrel distortion. Indeed, a review posted on the 7-Artisans site itself suggests using Voigtlander VM 25mm f/4 Color Skopar profile as a substitute. Unfortunately that profile necessitates a rather large correction involving either vignetting, or placement of a radial filter. I did manage to come close, and created presets for both portrait and landscape but got tired of futzing and looked for a better solution.

I found this http://www.like-a-look.com/lens-correction/zonlai-discover-lens-correction/ which appears to be a well-implemented profile, compensating for vignetting and chromatic aberration. The developer knows what he’s doing and the $10 he’s asking is quite fair.  In a better world the Chinese manufacturers of the lens would cut a deal with him; marketing a lens without an Adobe profile is like getting 95% of the way to the finish line.

I did test other Adobe 25mm profiles.  The Voigtlander MFT 25mm f/0.95 Nokton profile works pretty well!  Tonality is almost identical to the OOC image, which is even to the edges and corners.  There seems a very slight undercorrection to lens’ distortion, but it seems good enough for all but  architectural photos. I’ve not yet tested much with vignetting.

UPDATE UPDATE!

Instead of the Voigtlander MFT 25mm f/0.95 Nokton profile, simply try this in Lightroom: : +12 distortion with constrain crop (entered in the manual tab of the Lens Correction panel). My preliminary eyeballing says this setting yields a truer geometry than the Voigtlander. This sets up no chromatic aberration adjustment, so you’ll have to do it manually if it’s a problem.