SainSonic Kamlan 50 mm f/1.1 review - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

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SainSonic Kamlan 50 mm f/1.1

15 October 2018

Arkadiusz Olech

7. Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

Keeping in mind the appearance of the frame corners I didn’t expect good or even medium coma results. I was right – the Kamlan performs abysmally bad in this category. I don’t even mean the coma itself, because the comma-like shape of the diode is not especially big, but also other optical aberration of higher degree which create specific moustache. Bad news coming your way: even by stopping down the aperture to f/2.0 you cannot influence the shape and size of deformations of diode images almost at all. Small wonder the lens has to be stopped down to as much as f/8 in order to achieve a sensible image quality on the edge of the frame.

X-T2, f/1.1, center	X-T2, f/1.1, corner

X-T2, f/2.0, center	X-T2, f/2.0, corner

Astigmatism, understood as an average difference between horizontal and vertical MTF50 function values, reached 12.8%. It is a result still considered by us as medium but dangerously close to a high level.

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In such a cheap and fast lens aperture-wise, the appearance of out-of-focus areas is very important because it can make or break the deal for many potential buyers. A creative usage of these blurry parts of the photo, which are only too common in any frame, is one of the most important features for users of such constructions. We are pleased to say there are no reasons to complain. You can notice just a distinct influence of mechanical vignetting – an unavoidable flaw with such an aperture and physical dimensions – and brightness decrease near the edge connected to spherical aberration. Apart from that the circles look nice, with a smooth and buttery light spread, without any local extremes. It seems the bokeh, produced by this lens, will certainly find a lot of devoted fans.