7Artisans, Pergear, Hengyijia, Kaxinda, Neewer 35mm f/1.2 APS-C Lens Comparison | Round Glass Review

The 7Artisans, Pergear, Kaxinda, Hengyijia, Risespray, and Neewer 35mm f/1.2 APS-C lenses are inexpensive and all of them perform that way. Overall, I would say that if you want one of these, the Pergear is your best choice. The 7Artisans will give you that signature 7Artisans look and if you like that, it’s the lens for you. The Kaxinda and clones are readily forgettable. The Neewer should be avoided like a plague rat, unless you like the 7Artisans look and want to dial it up a notch.
Many of these lenses appear to cut engineering and quality control corners. Issues like improperly-aligned infinity focus points, inaccurate aperture markings, and inaccurate focusing scales are issues because when those don’t work properly it indicates that the photographer can expect these lenses to have other problems.
If you are comfortable with manual focus and apertures, these lenses are all laid out well and can be learned easily and quickly.
Also, they all, except the Newer, handle well and have acceptable - for the Henyijia and clones - to good - for the7Artisans and Pergear - build quality. The Neewer I bought has focus slop, feels loose, and doesn’t respond quickly. It feels like something I would have made with spare parts from other lenses and that should not be seen as a compliment.
I think this is the best bottom-line that I can give you: With camera lenses, you are more likely than not to receive the quality that you pay for. When a lens costs around $100, the quality will suffer compared to higher-end lenses. Period and end of story.
So here are the uses that I think these lenses are best for:
1- As something cheap and fun to play around with.
2- As something to put on an inexpensive camera in areas where your gear could be stolen or broken.
You can, without a question, take good photos with all these lenses. They can all deliver results that turn heads. That said, they will do that not because of anything inherent to lens but only when your creative voice and photographic vision deliver captivating results.
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Video Index:
0:00 - Intro
0:10 - Skip the Intro
3:41 - Lens Specs
5:36 - Best Tips to use These Lenses
6:31 - 7Artisans, Pergear, Hengyijia, Kaxinda, and Neewer 35mm f/1.2 Lens Comparison Shots
10:11 - Lens Strengths and Weaknesses
14:10 - Lens Use Summary
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"Suffer City blues" by Suffer city used under active license from Epidemic Sound at the time of this video's upload.
"What Might Have Been" by Francis Wells used under active license from Epidemic Sound at the time of this video's upload.

[@olafwDE]

I enjoyed this new comparison format, it seems you'll never stop re-inventing the wheel, David :-) Seriously, I don't know of any other channel than yours with such an in-depth side-by-side when it comes to actual image rendering. Thumbs up!
If there's one thing I could add it would be a visual break between the respective lenses' sample image sequences. In order to separating e.g. the 1.2-16(/22) scrolling samples a soft blackout cut in the video editing might support the eyes and give an additional hint that the next images have been taken with a different make.
Very much looking forward to the big "green bow tie things" coming up in 2022. Wish you a happy holiday season and all the best to you and your loved ones!

[@DavidHancock]

Thank you, Olaf!
I'll think about other ways to present that. My idea with this structure was that an immediate cut would provide a crisper impression of the difference with these.
This week I'm sending in some paperwork to one of the online magazines and I'm going to writer periodic articles for them this coming year (and hopefully beyond.) I think that the comparison RGR videos will be prime candidates for in-depth articles because I can upload full-res versions (I think) of all the sample photos and people can peruse them in whatever combination they'd like to compare performance.
The big green bowtie videos next year will, I hope, get a lot of participation. :D

[@olafwDE]

@@DavidHancock Ah, I see, okay. Nevertheless I found my eyes wandering through image details, and sometimes I missed that the lens make caption had already changed. A floating cut with a vertical white line like in those before/after comparisons may be the way to go then, preferably from right to left, when you keep the captions to the left. That would help guiding at least my eyes. After all, perhaps it's just me and my hyper-focusing brain... :-D
As on the other prospects: sounds great, I hope you'll be able to utilize it for further growing your channel.

[@imabigsandwich1292]

What's interesting is that in the sharpness comparison shots I think the clones are actually the sharpest around the image frame and in the Minimum focus distance compared to the Pergear, but the neewer is just atrocious. But if you like the look I think it's all cool, I love my cctv 35mm f1.7 and it's only 20 bucks, never sharp in the edges like a petzval but has huge amount of swirl. These things are fun and joyful.

[@DavidHancock]

I completely agree. I think that for center-composed portraits they all have a lot of potential, in and that all of them can take good photos. It's just important to level-set expectations.

[@boxoweasels]

I really like most of the cheap chinese lenses I've purchased. I don't have any of the 35/1.2 versions, but the Meike 35/1.4 and 28/2.8 are favorites, (though the 28 seems more like a 3.5 than a 2.8). Like you observed the markings on most of them are wildly inaccurate. My assumption is that it's down to tolerances and cost of having someone individually calibrate them during assembly. However, I do find them an interesting alternative to vintage lenses. For about the same money you can pick up something that may have a lower build quality than most vintage lenses, but often have similar image characteristics and you don't have to worry about fungus or any of the numerous problems that can plague vintage lenses when buying off ebay. And the vintage wides that most people are interested in for crop sensors are generally the worst of the vintage lens designs unless you're looking to shoot stopped down a lot. The chinese options are also native mount and much smaller than any vintage lens + adapter is going to be. On the other hand, as someone whose main complaint about pretty much every non-macro lens in existence is the terrible minimum focusing distances, the existence of helicoid adapters for a lot of vintage lens mounts is a good argument in that direction, though if you go that route you still often have the problem of inaccurate distance markings and infinity stops due to either adapter tolerances or the lenses themselves having been serviced by amateurs and not recalibrated properly for infinity. I wish there were more fast 28mm options as I consider that the perfect aps-c normal. I have the Kamlan 28/1.4 but have never been really satisfied with it in part due to terrible flare issues, and I don't think Kamlan was ever really going for the vintage look Meike and some of the others give. Why has no one made a simple 1.4 planar design 28mm now that flange distance is a non-issue?

[@DavidHancock]

Those are good points and old lenses can also have various amounts of wear. I've found that macro focusing adapters are very good for giving infinity focus and also improving minimum focus for lenses.
For a 28mm Planar, I have to assume it's not happened due solely to image circle size. The 7Artisans is a Sonnar-derived design with some significant similarities to 60s Sonnar portrait lenses, and it's image circle doesn't cover full frame. Not being an optical engineer, huge caveat here with that, I assume that a Plana would have the same issue.
On the KamLan 28mm 1.4, I'm around 25% of the way through still image capture with it for its RGR video. I'm mixed on it. I think it can be used really well but that it, like the other KamLan lenses, has some performance issues.

[@boxoweasels]

@@DavidHancock Yeah, I don't understand enough about optical design to know what the constraints are with enlarging the image circle. The abundance of 25mm cheap options in APS-C and m4/3 mounts suggests the possibility of some relatively fast and simple 28s being made. I think the 7artisan and Meike are both 7/5 designs and the Pergear 25 is 5/3 if I remember correctly. (I do wish they'd publish diagrams.) I can only assume all these designs go with 25mm since it's a m3/4 normal and therefore probably a larger market.
I'll look forward to that Kamlan review. I do like their 50/1.1 II a lot.

[@KimHojbergJensen]

I think the money is better spent on second hand brand name lenses from ebay. Thanks for the review.

[@DavidHancock]

I'd agree. I'd go so far as to suggest something like a vintage 55-58mm 1.4 instead.