Fujian (Fotasy) CCTV 25mm f1.4 Lens

Fujian (Fotasy) CCTV 25mm f1.4 Lens

I’ve had this cheap lens for some months now. I paid $20 dollars on eBay for it and it even included the m4/3 mount adapter.

I had read about how much distortion it gets around the corners, about how it’s only sharp in the centre and that there is too much vignetting. I still decided to buy it since it was cheap and it looked like it was good for getting some cool effects. Being f1.4 and manual focus sounded good for low light video too.

Yes, there is strong distortion on the edges, but is more like a weird defocus going on, you get some funky bokeh in those areas but it adds to the creative/cool-effect feeling. Also, it’s like the focus area is not even, sometimes some areas are in focus and some out of focus even if they are in the same plane. It’s like the lens has this weird ripple areas of focus-nofocus.

There’s some vignetting but is not bad, I actually like the look, I even add black vignetting in my pictures in post sometimes. On my GH2 it is way more visible because of the slightly bigger sensor, but it’s just a matter of cropping a little. On the GX1 is good.

In the centre it is very very sharp. Wide open is a little soft to my taste but I just close it a little. By the way, focusing is a pain, the focusing ring  has to be rotated a lot if changing from macro to far and viceversa. Trying to stick to the rule of thirds is of no use since it’s only sharp in the centre. 

When shooting video I don’t mind leaving it wide open, at 1080p the softness is not as visible, but sometimes the shallow depth of field can be too much, closing it down gives even more vignetting which on the GH2 when shooting video is already too much. Clickless aperture is cool for video.

I think is a fun lens if you want to achieve a different look. All of these optics issues give the pictures some style on its own. It’s especially useful when you wanna isolate your subject, or when doing some close up shots. For the price I think is a good toy.

All the pictures have been edited, so sometimes I cropped out the vignetting (or added some extra). I cropped edges to leave some distortion out or to move the subject out of the centre. This is more to see what can be achieved with the lens more than straight out of camera examples.

Lots of extra pictures in my Flickr album for this lens.

I also bought the 35mm f1.7 version of this lens which has much more positive reviews and has better optics. The adapter I have doesn’t seems to focus to infinity so I don’t have good pictures to share yet, only close ups. Once I get a proper adapter I will try to upload some.