One thing that will become very clear if you try to shoot a flat surface up close is that this lens has considerable field curvature, and it doesn't appear to a perfect curve, at that. Thus, consider this as you're shooting with this lens: perhaps the central third of the lens on each axis is going to be at or very near the focal plane you choose. Flat objects outside that are going to go soft. Nevertheless, I personally think the usefulness of fisheye lenses is a bit limited. They are mostly useful for creating 360° panoramas, funny animal pictures/portraits and sometimes astrophotography. You can still use them for landscape photography – as some of the sample images may show – but it is not that easy to find compositions that actually work, so I would not recommend a fisheye lenses to anyone who is just starting with photography. Handling / Build Quality TTArtisan 11mm 2.8 Fisheye TTArtisans ( different from 7artisans) currently has three lenses for Leica M-mount and a new 50mm f/0.95 lens coming soon. In conclusion, I was impressed with the new TTArtisan 11mm, especially considering its price. For mirrorless shooters, it can open up some new photo opportunities at low cost, and without taking up much space in your camera bag.

Sharpness: I'm going to say the center of the frame is very good. It's nearly impossible to get really good measurements from lenses this wide, as you'd either need to be at closest focus distance or have really huge charts to get accurate numbers. My observations are mostly based upon examining real images, not testing. In terms of the color scheme this looks very much like a Leica M lens including the famous red dot. Markings are yellow/white (seem to be slightly engraved and filled with paint) and the focus ring has a very nice resistance and turns about 90° from the minimum focus distance of 0.17 m to infinity. Also longitudinal CA (including purple fringing) are corrected so well, they are hardly noticeable. AlternativesAs far as I know only 3 different diagonal fish eye lenses designed for fulIframe sensors have been released yet (as of Dec. 2022): the 7Artisans 10mm 2.8, the TTArtisan 11mm 2.8 and this AstrHori 12mm 2.8. They are all similarly priced but their weight and dimensions differ noticeably. This AstrHori one is by far the biggest and heaviest, so I would also expect it to perform the best. But this is not the whole story, without going too much into detail of different fisheye projections (you can do that here or here) the shape of objects closer to the corners stays closer to what they actually are. You can see that in the comparison above, the reflection of the lamp is round in the fisheye image while it is streched in the image of the rectilinear lens. So, depending on what part of the image you look at, the distortion of a fisheye lens may actually be less, not more.

My final shot of the outing was shooting up into this tree. I’d been shooting with the add-on Visoflex viewfinder and whilst up until this point I had found its articulation useful, I’d not found it essential. For this particular shot, the fact that the Visoflex articulates 90 degrees upward was very useful indeed. I held the camera in front of me pointing directly upward and yet was able to shoot with my eye to the viewfinder with comfort. As you can see from the below the TTArtisan 11mm is covering less than the Samyang 12mm, so it is more a 13mm than a 11mm Proper rangefinder focusing would make all of this simpler, at least on an M, whose EVF and live view are stuttery messes. Other mirrorless cameras fare better, but not better enough to ensure reliable focus speed and accuracy. Yes, zone focusing works fine. Yes, stopping down yields deep focus. But none of that is as accurate or fast as focusing through a discrete rangefinder.Focusing and aperture rings are smooth but a little bit too tight for my taste (some like it that way), I have the feeling they will loosen in the future

Of course, at 11mm, essentially everything in front of you is in frame, so as long as you get the focus right – which again isn’t that hard at anything other than very close focus distances – you can’t really fail just pointing it vaguely in the right direction. Optical quality What confused me while I was browsing through the various discussions and articles is that while the manufacturer is stating that the lens is 11mm, which should be pretty ultra wide on a full-frame lens, that in reality it is more like 15.6mm, which suggests that it actually was meant for a DX/APS-C "crop factor" lens. If I were buying a lens that was supposed to be 11mm on full frame I would want it to be just that rather than 15.6mm. Then again I suppose when one gets into the wide angle realm it really doesn't make that much difference; I really don't know, as wide angle/ultrawide angle/fisheye has not been something I've explored much through the years. The video portion of this review along with a different selection of photos and short videos can be seen in this video: TTArtisans 11mm f2.8 fisheye on Leica M10 Fujifilm X-T3 and GFX The Fisheye-Hemi Plug-In automaticaly remaps your fisheye images to minimize distortion and maximize the preservation of all image details.

Fisheye-Hemi provides a more normal view of people by not distorting their faces and bodies, and straightens vertical lines. With the sun close to the corner or just out of the frame the situation is worse though – as is the case with most lenses by the way. Wide open we have some patterns that look like internal reflections that go away on stopping down (see comparison above). The lens cap on this lens is the usual slip on cover. The rubberized felt inside ring that provides resistance so it doesn't slip off seems to do its job, though I wonder how well it will hold up over time. At 440g the TTArtisan lens is much lighter and also smaller. It looses when it comes to flare resistance and CA correction, but performs similar in terms of sharpness and coma correction.