Sirui 33mm f1.2 – The First Attempt (Part I)

Sirui made a big move by launching the trinity prime lenses with 3 different color options for photographers, black, silver, and white. And what an even smarter move is to launch them via a crowdfunding platform. They call them the Sniper series.

Intro

Sirui has been in the photography industry since 2001. That’s a long established brand for over 2 decades. I came to know about this brand when I have searching for a tripod, what about you?

Although Sirui has been here for quite a long time, when it comes to photography lenses, they are still at the “young”/”early” stage. If I remember correctly, they launched their first lens, the 50mm f1.8 1.33x anamorphic lens, in 2019. So how does the Sirui 33mm actually perform?

Design and Build Quality

The plastic-constructed lens is considerably well-built. The black carbon fiber design is pretty nice looking too. At 400 grams, I can feel the weight when I hold it in my hands but lucky it is not bulky, otherwise, it will not be a pleasant experience.

As you can tell, this 58mm filter size lens does not come with any aperture ring. However, those who love to use the focus ring will be very happy because it has a very big surface area for the focus ring.

Also, unlike a typical manual ring, this one comes with a 360° rotation angle. As this is an electronic focus ring, I believe this benefits videographer.

The 50mm (in full frame equivalent) comes with a metal rear mount.

Image Quality

Somehow, I am a little disappointed with the optic. At f1.2, the image quality is soft, lacking some contrast and sharpness. Maybe it is the characteristic softness that some photographers love, but this is not my preference. Nonetheless, this experience is similar to those I tested with the typically manual focus lenses but slightly better.

For low-light and indoor situations, it is slightly better with shots taken at wide-open. But you still can see that softness if you pixel-peeped.

In my opinion, f2 is the sweet spot. The image quality definitely gets better from f2 onwards. Sharpness and contrast are great and better photos usability.

Chromatic aberration is pretty obvious at wide open but on the bright side, the vignetting is mild.

I seldom share about background/foreground blur as the beauty of it is very subjective and personal. The same for bokeh. However, I feel that the blur rendering is somehow not as smooth as I expected from a f1.2. It seems to be forcefully rendered or at least not to my pleasing.

Focusing

This lens comes with a Stepper Motor (STM), which is silent and pretty fast when there is sufficient contrast. However, be it during the day or under low-light situations, I sometimes experience some focus-pulling, and it takes a few times to get it focused. Also, shooting at wide-open sometimes does have focus pulling. Sometimes it will eventually focus-locked successfully, sometimes it will fail. I think this can be resolved with future firmware updates.

The focusing speed between MFD and infinity is okay, and you can feel the difference when you compare it with the XF33mm f1.4.

Minimum Focus Distance (MFD)

At 40cm, this lens does not have the best MFD in my opinion. It is even worse than the Rokinon 35mm f1.2 (@38cm). For your information, XF35mm f1.4 is holding the record of 28cm. Luckily, the image quality doesn’t get any worse at wide-open at its MFD.

Price Point

It is selling at 456.50 USD on the Sirui website. But if you are getting from B&H, it is 331.55 USD. If you are looking at 3 lens kit, it will be 1304.88 USD and 949.05 USD respectively.

Others

Like most manufacturers, the lens comes with a USB-C port for future firmware upgrades. At least it is not the micro USB found in Meike 85mm f1.8.

Another good point to note is that it comes with a lens hood. The bad point is that the lens hood gives some sort of unpleasant sound that seems like it will break when I try to mount it front-facing. Keeping the lens hood is fine. Strange phenomenal.

Also, the lens cap is thin, making it probably the worst experience I have had with any lenses tested this far. The pinch-to-release area is too narrow for big fingers to pinch and remove the cap without any some level of struggling.

Lastly, this lens does not come with any weather resistance or sealing. I do encounter some drizzling during my shoot, luckily it still works fine.

Who is this for?

This 50mm (in full frame equivalent) lens is a nice focal length that generally covers a lot of genres. Street and portraits are easily some of them.

If you have not owned this focal length before or want to give this focal length a try but do not wish to spend more money, then you may consider getting this lens. If you want a good Trinity lens setup to start your photography journey, this sniper series might be a good choice to kickstart with.

Conclusion

This Sniper series is Sirui’s first attempt in the APS-C world and this series really gets a lot of attention and successfully gets the lenses funded in the crowdfunding platform.

In my opinion, this lens is considerably affordable as it comes with a fast but not-so-favorable f1.2 and pretty decent focusing performance. As I mentioned earlier, I think treating this lens as an f2 lens instead of an f1.2 lens will make me feel better. Then f1.2 is a “bonus” when I really need that big aperture, then it is there for me to use it.

There is room for improvement with this series, and I hope to see better image quality at wide-open, comes with an aperture ring and probably some form of weather protection.

And yes, this is the first of the 3 Sirui lenses I have reviewed. 2 more to go.

Thank you for reading.

Disclaimer:
1. All the shots taken here are shot by me.
2. Most of the shots are straight out of the camera with some shots edited via In-Camera Raw Processing and Capture One.
3. The opinions are based on my experience. If there is any mistake, please kindly drop me a message and I will gladly make the amendment.
4. I reserve ownership of these images, if you wish to use my images, please notify me.

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