PERGEAR 7.5mm F2.8 vs 7artisans 7.5mm F2.8 II vs TTArtisan 7.5mm F2.0 Fisheye Lens

All three fisheye lenses have different minimum aperture values.

TTArtisan is f/11, 7Artisans is f/16 an Pergear is f/22

The smallest aperture of the Pergear gives it two advantages, you could take photos at a slower shutter speed, 2 times slower than the 7Artisan, and 4 times slower than the TTArtisan. Of course, the TTArtisan has the option of installing a rear filter as well.

And the other thing is sun stars, with a smaller aperture, it can usually give you sharper and longer sunstars.

Sunstars

So now let’s have a look at this set of Sunstar photos. All shot at each lens’s minimum aperture setting.

I say the sunstars from the TTArtisan look ok. But because quite often you can see the tail of the Sunstar has that double tail shape, so to me it’s not the cleanest looking sunstars.

Sunstars from 7Artisans look sharper, cleaner than the sunstars from the TTartisan

I actually quite like it.   But I would say out of these three lenses, I love the sunstars from the Pergear fisheye the most.  The 10 points Sunstar from the Pergear just looks the cleanest and most distinctive to me.

CA

Chromatic aberration is very well with all these three lenses.  Only a small amount of color fringing with all these photos I shot at the maximum aperture.

I’m a bit surprised as I really was expecting to see a bit more color fringing with at least one or two of these fisheye lenses.

Lens flare

When shooting into the sun on a bright sunny day, all three lenses would have quite a bit of flare. And the lens flare from all these lenses all looks a little bit different.

Comparing these three lenses, I feel overall the TTArtisans have a bit less lens flare than the other two lenses.

Vignetting

Close Focus / Macro

All these three lenses can focus quite close

The official figure is: TTArtisan 0.125m 7Artisans 0.15m Pergear 0.12m

I couldn’t find any official numbers regarding the max magnification ratio. Since the three lenses all have slightly different fields of view, it’s also a bit hard to compare by just looking at this minimum focus distance figure. So I took some photos at the minimum closest distance with each lens

The TTArtisan and 7Artisans appear to have very similar maximum magnification while the pergear has a slightly higher maximum magnification ratio.

Another thing is that the distance between the front element and the subject is quite close if you want to get the maximum magnification ratio.

The TTArtisan lens is approximately 7cm. 7Artisans is approximately 9cm. Pergear lens is approximately 6cm.

Astro/Coma

Here are some photos I shot with the 3 lenses, all at f/2.8.

When I zoomed in and checked the photos, I found the coma is very well controlled by all these three lenses.  I can only see a very minimal amount of coma in all these three test photos.

And with the TTArtisan, even when I shot at f/2, the coma is only marginally more than when it was an f/2.8, 

Another thing I want to mention is when I shot these photos, I was shooting in manual mode with fixed shutter speed, I’ve also fixed the ISO setting so all are identical.

And all the three f/2.8 photos the exposure is pretty much the same.

If you look at the TTArtisan photo that was shot at f/2, it is indeed quite brighter than the photo shot at f/2.8

FOV

Light transmission

One major selling point of the TTArtisan fisheye is its f/2 max aperture which is 1 stop faster than the other two fisheye lenses in this review.

The 1 stop faster maximum aperture should give the lens some advantage when shooting under low light.  But does it actually allow one more light compared to the other two lenses?

First, here is a set of photos with these three fisheyes, all shot with identical camera settings and all at f/2.8.

The brightness of the chart is virtually the same, so it suggests the light transmission at f/2.8 is the same for all these lenses

Then this is a photo I shot at f/2 with the TTArtisan,   same exposure settings. The only difference is the aperture setting.

Compare this with the photo I shot at f/2.8, the photo shot at f/2 is about 0.8stop brighter. 

While not exactly 1 T-stop difference but close enough.

Sharpeness

Price:

PERGEAR 7.5mm F2.8: Amazon

7artisans 7.5mm F2.8 II: Amazon

TTArtisan 7.5mm F2.0: Amazon

Final Thoughts

After testing these three lenses, which lens is the best? It’s really hard to say.   The performances are really quite similar, each has its own pros and cons.

The TTArtisan definitely is the most attractive one with its faster max aperture, rear filter, and also full-frame circular fisheye mode.  However the two other lenses are also very solid performance and they are a bit smaller, lighter cheaper, and also have a few things that are better in terms of optical performance.

So to pick the best lens, I guess it really depends on what is the most important to you.

Is it the low light performance, corner sharpness, the widest FOV, most compact size, or maybe you really want some nice beautiful sunstars.  Think about what is most important and pick the lens that performs the best for you.