7Artisans sent the 9mm f5.6 to us for review in 2023. I’ve truly never felt so incredibly challenged by a lens before. Wide-angle lenses are typically very fun, but something about this lens just seemed weird. It wasn’t until I started to look at the photos of Josef Koudelka more that it really hit me. Wide-angle lenses are all pretty much the same these days. And by all means, the 7Artisans 9mm f5.6 feels like a clinical lens that was given a haze filter inside. But when you use a super-power that L-series cameras have, it becomes something really wonderful.
This review isn’t going to follow our standard lens review format. Quite honestly, I’m a bit sick of writing in a way that Google dictates that journalists should. And more importantly, I don’t believe that one company should have so much control over journalism standards.
The 7Artisans 9mm f5.6 is an all-metal lens with a clicky aperture and full stops. It’s not that large, and the lens cap is a piece of metal that goes over the lens hood. While it’s metal, it lacks weather resistance. By all means, it’s not an innovative lens, but it’s fun to use.
Years ago, I remember running into photographers who would tell me that some wide-angle lenses didn’t even need focusing. And in some ways, the 7Artisans 9mm f5.6 is that kind of lens. You can set it to infinity or a few feet away and the entire scene will be in focus. This obviously means you’re not using bokeh to tell a story. Instead, you need to use depth of field creatively and other tactics.
Oh yeah, and it’s a manual focus lens.
Since this is such a wide-angle lens, you should embrace a format that accommodates wide-angle. That’s not to say that you can’t make nice photographs — I surely did when using the Live Composite mode on the S5 II. Truly, I don’t think that the 3:2 format of full-frame cameras does that. Instead, I embraced the more panoramic-looking formats on the Panasonic S5 II and the Leica SL2s. In fact, the S5 II has the specific aspect ratio that the X Pan has.
This really is where the 7Artisans 9mm f5.6 starts to shine. Embracing this along with either the L Monochrome settings or the Real Time LUT setting is a dream. And when using a Leica camera instead, it’s hard not to want to use the high-contrast black-and-white monochrome setting. This makes everything look like old-school film photos printed in a panoramic way.
At this point in photography gear reviews, we don’t need to discuss image quality much. Is it sharp? Yes. Is the image quality contrasty? Yes. Can I make nice prints with it? Yes, and I have.
So why would you buy this lens? Truly, it’s probably great for astrophotography — though I’d also argue that better lenses are on the market. Instead, I think you should buy the 7Artisans 9mm f5.6 and embrace another aspect ratio to make the most of it. Wide-angle lenses are fun, but for what it’s worth, this is a more clinical lens that doesn’t embrace the traditional flaws of a wide-angle lens. I’d love to see distortion, and I miss the old fisheye lenses of the early 2000s. We need lenses like that much more than another perfectly wide-angle lens.
To be frank with you, this lens is so forgettable that I originally wrote this review thinking it was a 7mm lens. Instead, it’s a 9mm. There’s a ton of lenses out there right now. And as fun as this lens is to use, I’m not sure that I’d necessarily buy it. However, you might be different. And in that case, you should check it out on Amazon.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
We’re giving the 7Artisans 9mm f5.6 4 out of 5 stars. Pick it up from Amazon. I’m not overwhelmed by it. I’m not underwhelmed by it. It exists; and so I’m just whelmed.
Image Quality
The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience since day one. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, many folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So, we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can decide for yourself.
Edited
Real Time LUT
Unedited
