TTArtisan 50mm f/0.95 Z Lens Love-Hate Relationship

This lens has the worst technical specifications of any lens I have ever owned. It has produced some of my favorite nighttime images. The TTArtisan 50mm f/0.95 leaves me perplexed.

Photographers are supposed to purchase lenses based upon the best combination of technical specifications and price, unless you’re wealthy enough to just go by the specs. Sometimes, what a lens can produce cannot be defined by specifications.

I really, really like the look of the shots that I make at night with this TTArtisan. Nothing is needle sharp, but I find myself not caring about that. I do, as with all of my lenses, use the Topaz DeNoise AI software on the raw shots.

This lens is specified as ‘DX’, but I always shoot it as full-frame FX instead. Sometimes I crop the shot, but usually I don’t. It has the Nikon Z mount, and I shoot it with either my Nikon Z9 or Z8 camera. None of the shots in this article are cropped from the FX frame.

Since this lens has no electronics, I have to program my camera to use it as “non-CPU”. This lets my camera get proper exposure, but it also lets the IBIS system work correctly by knowing the focal length. This is probably what I hate most about this lens; I wish it had at least some 'smarts'.

I almost never use any aperture except f/0.95. It’s the reason that this lens exists, really.

50mm f/0.95 1/80s ISO 8000, Nikon Z8

50mm f/0.95 1/3s ISO 8000 EV -4.9, Nikon Z8

I depend upon my camera IBIS system for vibration removal, and I’m able to easily take sharp shots down to around 1/3 second shutter speed. In the shot above, it was so dark that I could barely see anything until I looked through my viewfinder. I should probably use my Nikon Z9 instead of the Z8, since the Z9 has extra weight and therefore more inertia for those really slow shutter speeds.

I use the ‘low sensitivity’ setting on my camera “Focus Peaking” while I manually focus, which makes it really fast and accurate. If I owned the $8000 58mm f/0.95 Nikkor Noct lens, I do exactly the same thing, since it's manual focus, too.

Lens field curvature is terrible outside of the DX area

The FX-format frame sides go kind of crazy with focus. A perfect lens would show a straight horizontal band in the shot above, instead of having sharp focus curve away from the camera. This is the main reason that TTArtisan calls this lens ‘DX’ instead of ‘FX’. I did crop the top and bottom of this shot, but the sides are full FX frame. I made this shot using the Photoshop Filter |Stylize|Find Edges feature, shooting a flat lawn.

This lens also has a fair amount of barrel distortion, but if that bothers you, it’s easy enough to fix in an editor.

The lens aperture ring produces very subtle clicks at each half-stop, but you generally need to look at the aperture scale to set it. This isn’t a problem for me, since I leave it parked at f/0.95, but many people would find it irritating.

Coma is terrible on frame edges. f/0.95 shot.

Lens coma gets really bad outside of the DX frame. This wouldn’t be your first choice for star shots.

50mm f/0.95 1/80s ISO 8000, Nikon Z8

I wrote a technical article on this lens, which is located here

50mm f/0.95 1/200s ISO 6400, Nikon Z8

50mm f/0.95 1/80s ISO 8000, Nikon Z8

50mm f/0.95 1/80s ISO 8000, Nikon Z8

50mm f/0.95 1/80s ISO 8000, Nikon Z8

50mm f/0.95 1/50s ISO 8000, Nikon Z8

50mm f/0.95 1/80s ISO 8000, Nikon Z8

This lens is small and light enough that it’s easy to take it along on photo adventures with my other gear. If I don’t see any subjects that seem suitable, it’s no big deal. But I’m rarely disappointed with how this lens renders the right kind of subject.

It’s hard to believe that a cheap lens with such terrible specifications can consistently produce pictures that have such an elegant look to them. It’s not technical, but this lens has, as the French would say, Savoir-faire.