Tag: 33mm f1.4

When it comes to the 33mm focal length (or 50mm in full-frame equivalent), there aren’t many options available. Unlike the 50mm to 56mm range, which is well-represented by nearly every brand, the 33mm/35mm focal length seems to lack strong competition in the market.

Meike likely recognized this gap in the market and released their 33mm f1.4 to attract more attention from photographers like us.

Intro

There are some teases for this lens from the company and rumors before it’s official announcement in August 2024.

Prior to this lens, Meike released the quite impressive 55mm f1.4, which I tested and really liked. I often recommend it to anyone looking for a compact and lightweight portrait lens. Because of my positive experience with that lens, I have high expectations for the Meike 33mm f/1.4.

Before I move on, I want to express my gratitude to the wonderful team at Meike for providing this lens for my review. I sincerely appreciate their ongoing support.

Design and Build Quality

If you have the Meike 55mm f1.4, then you will be treated with many familiarities with this lens. It shares the same design language, same build quality, and same handling experience.

This 55mm filter-size lens comes with an aperture ring. It still has the same stiffness and same clickiness level applied to the aperture ring. The stiff level is strong enough to prevent accidental change in aperture value. This can be a beneficial thing for me, but definitely not so much for the videographer.

The lens still uses a plastic build, but it doesn’t feel cheap. Holding it feels quite solid, and it doesn’t attract fingerprints easily. While I’m not sure how much weight was shaved off to bring the total weight down to 314 grams, I believe Meike must have carefully considered this balance during the design process.

Image Quality

The Meike 55mm f1.4 gives me a very satisfying result. A result that has decent image quality, good level of contrast, and good chromatic aberration control. The Meike 33mm f1.4 follows the same. After knowing that it does not produce any soft unusable result, I am very happy to use this lens wide-open.

Vignetting, however, is still present at wide-open. In my opinion, it is acceptable as I am totally fine with a small level of vignetting but not too heavy too disturbing to the overall viewing experience.

When comes to sun stars, it is just fine. The lines are not well-defined or detailed. Just fine soft lines. Of course, it does introduce some flares too.

Focusing

Focusing is snappy in most scenarios but sometimes I do encounter the lens is not able to focus on any object at wide-open in bright outdoor and well-lit indoor environment.

This could be a bug or just the copy I have and it only happens if I shoot at f1.4 and did not encounter similar behaviour in any other aperture values. I hope there will have a firmware update to address the focusing issue at wide-open.

If you are concerning about lens breathing, this lens has actually one of the good minimal lens breathing among the third-party manufacturers.

Minimum Focus Distance (MFD)

40cm minimum focus distance is not the shortest. Using XF33mm f1.4 as a benchmark, it’s 30cm and Sirui 33mm f1.2 shared the same MFD as the Meike 33mm f1.4.

In most scenarios, short MFD does not really impact to my day-to-day shoots. Just that occasionally I wish it can close up more when I wish to do close-up shots. Nevertheless, I am glad that the image quality does not reduce significantly when taken at MFD.

Price Point

229.99 USD is what it is selling at this time of posting. It is about 3.5 times cheaper than the XF33mm f1.4 (799 USD) but comparable with the other third-party lenses like Viltrox 33mm f1.4 (279 USD) and Sirui 33mm f1.2 (279 USD).

Others

It has the USB-C port located at the rear lens to allow easy firmwares upgrades in the future. And similar to the Meike 55mm f1.4, this lens does not come with any weather sealing or weather resistance.

Who is this for?

With this price point, it is easy to recommend new photographers who plan to buy their first prime lens. For the professional, this can be a good getaway lens to enjoy the love of photography.

Conclusion

This lens may not be perfect in every aspect, but it offers solid performance for its price. In my view, Meike made a smart move by introducing this focal length to expand their lineup. I love how compact the lens is and how usable the image results are. Most importantly, I enjoy using it a lot. I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for a budget-friendly option without breaking the bank.

Alongside the Meike 55mm f1.4, the Meike 33mm f1.4 is one of the best lenses to complement it. What’s still missing, though, is a 23mm focal length (or perhaps even 22mm, given the 55mm and 33mm in the lineup) to complete a “Trinity” of lenses from Meike. While there’s no official word from the manufacturer yet, we can only hope they’ll eventually release this focal length to round out the set.

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.
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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