The TTArtisans 90mm f1.25 is a new manual focus, full-frame lens that’s great for street and general photography, but its long focal length and very fast aperture mean that it’s particularly attuned to portrait shooting. It brings a unique look to images that could only be made by a lens of this type – it’s very sharp, even wide open, and it makes abundant and very pleasing background blur, at much longer distances than a shorter, or slower lens could produce.
It’s a very nicely made, all-metal lens with a tough anodized finish. The large focus ring turns very smoothly and cleanly with a fluid, damped motion, and the aperture ring, with half and full stops, is damped too. This is a manual lens with no autofocus or auto exposure functions, and as such it’s ideal for use on digital mirrorless cameras and on digital and film Leica rangefinder cameras.
A lens like this has few rivals – the Samyang 85mm f1.2 is one, as is the Mitakon Zhongyi 85mm f1.2, both priced around $1086.75. ( The Canon EF 80mm f1.2 costs around $2716.88 (but is only available in Canon mount), while the Leica Summilux f1.5 costs around $13584.40 new, available only in Leica M mount. I can’t speak for the image quality of these lenses, although in my opinion, the image quality that comes from the TTArtisans lens would be difficult to better.
This then is a very nicely made, long, very fast portrait lens, that makes bitingly sharp images from wide open and – as far as I can see – is one of the cheapest, perhaps the cheapest fast portrait lens on the market today!
Pros:
Fantastic image quality, perfectly suited to portraiture
Very fast aperture enables background blur and separation across very long distances
Very sharp from wide open
Well made, with an anodized finish and engraved markings
Comparatively inexpensive
Cons:
A large and heavy lens
Corners are dark when wide open
Some chromatic aberration evident in extreme situations
The large front element is vulnerable without a protective UV filter
With a weight of one kilogram, this is a large and heavy lens, and it’s not the one I’d naturally choose for a day’s casual photography. On test, it wasn’t particularly difficult to carry around all day but there are certainly lighter options, and by the end of the day I certainly knew I was carrying it! If you want a lens for casual, walk-around type photography this probably isn’t it.
This is a specialized lens, it’s rather more of an artist’s tool than it is a simple recorder of reality. This lens enhances reality! It makes very beautiful, and unique images that can highlight and foreground a face better than any other lens I’ve used; it has the perfect requirements for portraiture and although it can be used in any situation to striking effect, portraits are its natural home. First and foremost, this is a lens for making dreamy portraits, with a very sharp subject and a very de-focussed background.
I’ve already noted the sharpness of this lens from wide open at f1.25 – in the centre, it’s very sharp indeed at that aperture setting, and although corners are softer, that doesn’t really matter too much in a lens that’s primarily designed for making portraits – in fact, it can be a positive advantage, as it directs attention onto the subject. Wide-open, the lens is bitingly sharp where it matters – in the central region of the image where, most of the time, your subject will be. One of the sharpest lenses I’ve shot wide open, this one will throw your subject into sharp relief even at its maximum aperture setting. Like any lens, of course, this one gets sharper as you stop it down but not by much, and in the centre, it’s almost as sharp at f1.25 as it is at f4, and that’s a real achievement!
Although corners are softer than the centre when fully open (which is entire to be expected), stop down to f8 and the entire image is sharp right across the frame.
However, this isn’t a lens I wanted to stop down very often – if ever! In my opinion, this is a lens that needs to be shot wide open to give of its best; this is its niche, its forte and its strength; wide open it’s more than sufficiently sharp to render very clearly defined images, and of course wide open it will give maximum blur, the ideal complement to your subject’s clarity and sharpness.
These two elements – sharpness and blur – counterpoint each other beautifully, each emphasizing the other and amplifying it. Subjects are thrown into highly detailed sharp relief with crystal clarity, surrounded by clouds of soft background blur. Subjects are very sharp indeed, while blur is extremely soft and plentiful. It’s an almost unique aesthetic, and a very pleasing one.
Because of that super-wide aperture, it produces soft and lovely blur reliably, time after time, across a far wider range of distances than most lenses of this focal length would be capable of. Of course, this is exactly what a portrait lens needs to be able to do in order to produce pleasing portraits. Blur focuses attention on the subject, it foregrounds them and makes them prominent, and gives a beautifully soft feel to an image. Images become softer, gentler, bathed in a wash of background blur, creating a look that few other lenses can make.
Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to unsettle the blur from this lens, and it remained smooth right throughout the distance range. No matter how the distances between the camera, subject and background changed blur remained smooth, and that’s an unusual feature in a lens. Most lenses, be they affordable or expensive, usually display some harshness in background blur at one or two points throughout the range, but this one is an exception. Right across the distance range, the background blur from this lens remains smooth.
Of course, most lenses can create some background blur, and if you go close enough to your subject, most will create quite a bit. Increase that distance though and blur tends to fall away quickly until pretty soon there’s not much left at all. But this lens is different. With this lens, blur becomes less as the distance from the subject increases but it never stops entirely. Even at very long distances of several metres, shot wide open, this lens will deliver plenty of blurs and with it, separation of the subject from the background.
But this lens has yet another trick up its sleeve, a trick that only a long, very fast lens like this can pull off. Images from long fast lenses create an optical effect known as compression, in which the subject and the background can appear almost ‘compressed’ together, giving yet another element to the unusual and unique aesthetic delivered by this lens.
Taken together, these three elements – wide-open sharpness, plentiful and soft background blur, and compression create an aesthetic that no other type of lens is able to make. It’s a signature look that makes this lens ideal for portraiture, creating striking images of people. The ideal portrait shot is more than a simple visual record of the subject. A really successful portrait shot is able to communicate something of the essence of the subject, a glimpse of personality, something of their nature, something about them that makes them uniquely them. Whatever that special quality is, this lens is able to capture it and there’s an intimate quality to portrait shots, almost as if the subject were actually present!
However, while this lens is most at home making portraits, that’s not the only area in which it excels. I took it out onto the street for some general shooting, and to make some street portraits (a genre I particularly enjoy) to see what it could do. It’s not something I’d do every day due largely to the weight of the lens – it’s heavy and carrying it around on the street, makes its weight felt after a while. That aside, however, images are extraordinary. Shot fully open, shallow depth of field is present across almost the entire distance range, giving an unusual and unique look to general photography, and giving separation of subject from the background in almost any street portrait you care to make. However, I’d think twice before carrying it around on the street for too long – for a long shot I’d probably choose a lighter lens, sacrificing some blur for a little more portability.
Shot wide open, the lens is not without some optical flaws. In extreme situations, such as when shooting the branches of a tree against a bright sky, there’s some chromatic aberration (purple and green fringing) although the situation has to be pretty severe to prompt this – it doesn’t show itself in most conditions. The corners show some darkening too, although In a portrait lens this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it can help to focus attention on the subject and draw the eye towards them, a factor in creating the image! Stopping the lens down progressively decreases this effect, so that by f8 it disappears entirely.
This is a very unusual lens, capable of making some extraordinary images. Its fast aperture and very shallow depth of field mean it can make very beautiful portraits in a manner that few other lenses can do. Of course, it’s possible to make a portrait with any lens, but without the special combination of features that this one offers, they won’t look the same. There’s likely to be a less shallow depth of field, the subject may be less sharp, and the compression effect, where the distance between the background and the subject appears reduced, will be minimal. If you want this unique look in your portraits, the only way to get it is with a long, very fast lens like this.
