Day One with the Risespray 35mm f/0.95 Mark III MF Lens

A little over a year ago, before I (stupidly) sold all of my Fuji X gear to move to Sony (and then back to Fuji again), I owned a Mitakon 35mm f/0.95 Mark II manual focus lens.  At first, it was more frustrating to use than the Fuji 35mm f/1.4 that I owned, larger and heavier as well.  With further practice of the focusing, learning the sweet spot to the Fuji focus-peaking and adding a focus tab to the lens, it became a joy instead of a chore to use.  The images it produced were different than the clinical quality of Fuji glass.  It had flaws but it also had a certain character about it, besides the crazy thin depth of field (for APS-C).  Once I came crawling back to the Fuji system, I wanted the Mitakon back, but at over $500 new, I was a bit hesitant.  Surprisingly, Amazon had a very intriguing listing for a brand of 35mm f/0.95 glass I had never heard of, Yaxall.  My curiosity was piqued.

Searching all over DuckDuckGo led to almost no information on Yaxall, so I switched over to a google search, which also returned next to nothing but the Amazon listing and a few eBay listings.  No reviews, no YouTube videos, nothing.  Going through the eBay listings led me to the identical looking lens under another name, Risespray.  Besides thinking that name is laughable, I found an Amazon listing for the lens at $400 new.  With the price being that close to the Mitakon, I wasn’t going to risk it…  until I saw that Amazon had a ‘coupon’ for $100 off bringing the price down to $300.  Moments later the lens was ordered and in 2 days, I’d find out if I’d be testing Amazon’s generous return policy or not.

Short answer on that, I’ll be keeping this lens.

In the plain white box that is simply marked with an ‘XF’ sticker came the lens in bubble wrap, front and rear caps, a cheap feeling lens bag, a cleaning cloth, a UV filter with screw on front and rear protectors and 3 different filters labeled ‘Star Filter’ with numbers 4, 6 and 8 on them.  I won’t be mounting any of the filters as I don’t think those are of any quality.

I did end up attaching a 7artisans lens focus tab on the lens (pictured above).  I have found that these little tabs make manual focusing easier since you can just use a finger to rotate the focus ring.  After practice, it seems to work much better for me than using the focus ring.  At about $7 each, they are well worth it.  The lens tab uses adhesive tape to attach and so far they have held up on a few lenses I’ve added them too.  I would love a more permanent metal tab, but that would require modifying the lens somehow.  For now, as long as the adhesive holds up, this is a great addition.

The build quality of the lens feels surprisingly good.  It is all metal and glass with no electrical contacts.  Make sure you set your camera’s focal length setting.  Thankfully, the X-T4 now lets you name the lens as well as the focal length being used.  Unfortunately the lens name starts with ‘Risespray’…  which is prominently showcased on the lens front.  That will be getting covered with black paint or electrical tape soon.  The focus ring is quite smooth with just a very slight hint of play in it.  Nothing that prevents easy focusing.  The focus ring rotates roughly 120 degrees or so.  I’m glad that it’s not any more as that makes quick focusing more time consuming.  The aperture ring also turns very smoothly and is unfortunately clickless.  It does turn in the same direction of Fuji’s lenses.  From my memories of the Mitakon, this Risespray aperture turns just a bit easier.  I haven’t noticed it creeping out of position on its own, but I’ve only had the lens for about 10 hours now.  Overall, I’m quite happy with the build quality for the price and don’t foresee any issues down the road.  Another comparison to the Mitakon Mark II is that this Risespray is a bit smaller and lighter, which I’m good with.  The lens has 12 aperture blades compared to the 9 of the Mitakon 35mm f/0.95 Mark II.

Now onto some sample shots.  Most I’d say are at f/0.95, but some are from f/2 to f/8.  Since there is no EXIF data from the lens, your guess is as good as mine!

Keeping in mind that I’m very out of practice with a manual focus lens at f/0.95, I’m very satisfied with the results I’m seeing.  A note on the images though, all of them were shot in RAW and processed in darktable, an open source RAW editor.  The version used is the most current development version of the master branch as of May 24th, 2020.  This version was used since the mainline release doesn’t have X-T4 support yet.  I just sent the team White Balance and ISO noise profiles which they quickly incorporated.  I generally only shoot raw, so I’m not too concerned about JPEG quality from the camera, which wouldn’t have any corrections for this lens anyway.  I’m also not the best at processing and didn’t spend much time with these files.  I mostly just hit them with my preset styles and that’s it.

The lens seems to be performing very well.  Flare will cause issues, but no more so than the Mitakon from what I’m seeing.  Here is one example where the sunlight coming through a window just above the frame had an effect.

Overall, the performance is very good for the price.  I’m going to very happily carry and use this lens without worrying about quality.  As with most firearms these days, this lens will shoot better in most cases than the person operating it.

I did take some tripod mounted images at various apertures and the same focal point.  ISO was locked at 160, aperture changed for each image and the shutter speed was set by the camera. Apertures are in order of f/0.95, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/8 and f/16 (also labeled in picture caption).

The books were lined up even with the front of the shelf so the focal plane will be somewhat close on all of them.  There seems to be some barrel distortion and edges go away in the larger apertures, but honestly, I’m more concerned with the center when I’m shooting at f/0.95.  I’m not seeing anything bad enough to make me want to send this back.  It gets a pass for my needs.

While I’ve only had the lens for 10 or so hours, I’m happy with it.  It feels good to have a ‘speedmaster’ again, just one with an awful brand name.  This is a fun lens that delivers some pretty good and unique image quality.  I’m glad I took a chance on it.  More to come once I get some more time with it.