A disappointment, the Mitakon Zhongyi Speedmaster 65mm f/1.4

The Mitakon 65mm f1.4 was the first lens I had for my GFX 50s. It was a semi-decent lens, but it had far too many shortcomings to remain in my arsenal. While I understand that sharpness isn’t all that makes an image, it does become a factor of consideration when shooting a 50MP camera (otherwise, what was the point in getting one).

The Mitakon 65mm fell short in regards to sharpness. When shot wide open at f1.4, the image was so soft you’d sometimes struggle to focus even with focus peaking. This issue got exacerbated when focusing at close distance. Any close-up shot required me to stop down the lens, or end up with a soft image. The lens fared quite well however when stopped down and focused closer to infinity.

In fairness however, at least the Mitakon 65mm does project a circle of light sufficient to cover the entire sensor, and not cause noticeable vignetting (though I mostly shot at f2 or f2.8, which certainly would decrease any vignetting in the first place).

Compared to the native GF lenses, I have also noticed pretty heavy yellow cast on the images coming from the Mitakon. While this certainly could be corrected in post, I was surprised that the camera itself did not correct the yellow cast, and saved the image looking like someone got a bit over excited with the warmth slider in LightRoom.

An interesting point to make, at first I believed that the manual focus only nature of the lens would mean that I would take less photos overall, and come home to less photos to cull and edit. After five months of shooting with the system, both with MF and AF lenses, I no longer find this theory to be true. All of my portrait shoots end up being between 100-150 images on average. My best guess is that the slow nature of the GFX 50s in general makes one slow down and once you have the shot, you move on (rather than take another 3 images just to be sure, like I would on my old FF system).

The Mitakon 65mm f1.4 was a good lens to test run the GFX 50s, but it does not hold up on a 50MP sensor. While it’s certainly not a poor lens, it does not hold up well compared to the native GF lenses.

P.S. I traded in the Mitakon for a GF80mm f1.7. More to come soon!