On a recent family trip to the Norfolk coast I was keen to take some photos, I didn’t want to take my pro kit, or at the opposite end of the scale, resort to my phone’s camera. I also wanted to explore the in-vogue lo-fi look. Having cut my teeth in film photography, I enjoy trying to recapture the analogue look. Not everything has to look perfect, with the advance of AI it is the imperfections that make us human and the reason we are seeing this movement in visual communication.
My original plan was to take a couple of old Pentax film lenses, but in honesty I couldn’t find the adaptor! So instead I dug out my 7Artisans UFO lens. This has a fixed focus, fixed aperture of f/6.3, and a focal length of 18mm on APS-C, 27mm equivalent on full frame. The lens is tiny, perhaps 2cm tall. I paid under £60 for it on Amazon.
Mine is the original version, identifiable by the Roman numerals, that don’t seem to mean anything. I understand the Mk II has a manual focus ring, I was quite happy with the fixed focus, no need to complicate things.
The lens was actually sharper than I expected, definitely not up to the standards of my pro Fuji lenses, but not bad. If anything I was a little disappointed, I wanted it to be not bad but more analogue. I’d seen reports of edge vignetting and blooming, I didn’t see these, I should probably shoot into the sun more. It also felt very inconspicuous, especially paired with the X-T2. The fixed aperture didn’t bother me, I set the shutter speed to 1/250-1/500 and adjusted the ISO to get the correct exposure.
The f/6.3 aperture didn’t bother me either but then we are in the middle of a hot, dry summer in the UK, so ISO remained low, the X-T2 doesn’t lack quality at higher ISOs and as mentioned I wasn’t looking for quality so a little digital noise wouldn’t be an issue.
For a walk-around lens for under £60, you can’t really go wrong. I processed the examples below with my own profile.
Off to find that Pentax K to Fuji X adaptor now.
