SHOOTING AT F0.95! | FUJI X-T3 MITAKON LENS

All that to get my focus what is up its Mitch here welcome to a new video and today in my hand in this little box here I have one of my favorite lenses of all time and definitely my favorite lens for my Fuji camera this is the mythic on 35 Millimeter F 0.95 lens. This is a special lens for a couple of reasons, but it is a fully manual lens with manual focus and manual aperture control. It doesn’t have autofocus, so I went out and challenged myself to shooting an entire portrait fashion shoot with one lens and only shooting it wide open at F zero point nine five. Later in the video, I will be touching on a few things about image quality and the usability etc. of this lens, so stick around if you do want to hear my thoughts on it. Of course, this video is not sponsored. I did buy this lens with my own money, so these are my honest opinions.

Why shoot at F0.95?

In terms of really fast aperture lenses, you’ve probably heard of f 2.8, f/2, even F 1.4 or 1.2. But this F 0.95 is really something special. So, why shoot at f 0.95 or why even make this lens in the first place? This really fast aperture, besides letting in a ton more light, you’re also going to be affecting your depth of field. So, shooting on a camera system like the Fuji X cameras, now they are an aps-c sensor which means it’s a 1.5 x crop over full-frame. You are going to be getting less depth of field on the whole, and that’s because you need to use a wider lens to get the same field of view. So, for example, to get a 50 millimeter field of view on the Fuji camera, you need to use a 35. In comes the Mitakon, and with this lens, you have the full-frame equivalent of a 50 millimeter 1.4 in terms of the depth of field. But what’s awesome is that at F zero point nine five, you have over an extra stop of light, which means now we can use an even lower ISO than you could on a full frame camera.

Model and Behind the Scenes

Before we jump into the rest of the video, I want to give a quick shout out is who was our model for the shoot. I’ll link her details in the description below and I also want to give a shout-out to Chris Dodd who did all the behind the scenes filming on this video. I will link his YouTube channel in the description as well, and you should definitely go check it out. So guys, all these images that I’m showing on the screen are not straight out of the camera. They have been edited with my Lightroom preset pack. If you guys want to check that pack out, there is a link in the description below.

Working with the Lens

“I gotta actually think that wraps a bad idea because the keeps getting like over the thing you know me I might just take it off. I’m using the focus magnification on the Fuji XT3 just to nail my focus in each and every shot. The manual focus lens does slow down the pace of shooting a lot, but I actually don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think that it’s good to slow down and really consider what you’re doing. In this shot, I was trying to use that vine wall in the background to really create some interesting looking bokeh as well as using the glass pane on the building to kind of frame Izzy’s head in the photo. I thought that was a pretty cool composition, something that I just saw on the side of the street and decided to stop and see what we could do with it. I love that little bit of wind.”

Focusing and Video

“Throughout the whole shoot, I was really keeping a close eye on the distance of the camera from Izzy, because any slight movements will actually put the photo out of focus completely. So, if I moved the camera a tiny bit towards Izzy or she simply tilted her head to the side or moved forward or leaned in a little bit, I would have to punch in and get focus again just because of the shallow nature of the F0.95 lens. I did want to shoot some video with this lens to show you guys what it can do on the XT3. So, during the shoot, I just flipped it into video mode a couple of times and I’ve created some little edits, just some clips that I put together really quickly. If you guys want to see how I graded the footage, I’ve also done a video on that which I’ll link in the description below.”

Exploring Locations

“We found this really cool little cafe location here. They had some really interesting colored walls and tiles and coincidentally, it really matched up with what Izzy was wearing on the day. So, I thought it made for some really interesting images. I should’ve met this place when you go to the end. This lens is amazingly sharp in the center even wide open. In the corners, it’s not terrible wide open, but there’s a definite fall-off in terms of sharpness. But what’s amazing is you don’t have to stop down a lot to get the quality back. Around 1.1 to 1.4, if you stop down around that area, this is like the sweet spot for the lens. It’s the perfect balance of depth of field and sharpness in my opinion. And as for shooting video, this lens is a no-brainer. The focus ring is so smooth, and the clickless aperture allows you to adjust the exposure gradually during the shot. These two features are actually perfect for shooting video.”

Lens Features and Conclusion

“This is a good example of this lens. You have to be careful, because if she even leans forward just a little bit after like punching and refocus again make sure it’s so shallow. This lens is also really compact. It definitely suits the style of the Fuji system, being really small, really compact, quite lightweight. Although this lens does have a bit of heft to it, it is pretty heavy, but actually, I like that. I find that it balances out really nicely. I also love the focus ring. It’s really, really smooth, really great for pulling focus for video. The throw’s not too long, but it’s also not too short as well. It’s definitely better than using the focus by wire system on the Fuji, which I’m not a fan of for video. And also, the iris or aperture ring is really nice and smooth, and it’s also d-clicked as I mentioned before. There is a ton of vignetting on this lens wide open, but that’s pretty much to be expected of most fast primes. In fact, they usually have a little bit of vignetting, especially wide open. Although the good thing is it’s pretty easy to remove in post. I definitely won’t be recommending this lens for anybody who needs to get every single frame in focus or anyone who’s shooting a moving subject. But for what I do, it’s pretty much perfect, and I love it.”

“I really enjoyed making this video for you guys. I hope you liked it too. If you did, make sure you leave a thumbs up, and as always, I’ve left all of the products in the description below. Not just the lens, but everything I use to make this video. So, make sure you go and check out those links. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Make sure you subscribe if you want to see more content like this, and I will catch you guys in the next one.”