SLR Magic Hyperprime 12mm F1.6

For a couple of days I have been the proud owner of a Hyperprime 12mm lens. If you have not read them yet, here are two interesting reviews by Steve Huff and 3dkraft.de.

Disclaimer: I received my lens directly from SLR Magic a bit earlier than everyone else - which actually didn't work out due to some problems with sending the money the first time. Apart from that i consider myself quite unbiased.

I would also like to point out that the images shown here are not OOC-jpegs, but have been post processed in bibble5. This may be less puristic, but i am interested to show what this lens can do as part of the whole equipment.

All images have been uploaded to flickr in full resolution: SLR Magic Hyperprime 12mm F1.6

GF1 with the lens attached (taken with an Olympus E3 by my dear colleague Boril)

The Hyperprime is a manual focus, metal body lens. Its size fits quite well in combination with the GF1. Once you get used to the fact that the focus ring is the one closer to the camera it is great to handle - if you can live with manual focus.
I use some other manual focus lenses, and this is by far the easiest to use. Due to the small focal length, DOF is rather large for everything that is further away than approximately 1 meter and you hardly can miss the focus. If you get closer than 1 meter, DOF gets more shallow and have to pay attention to what you are doing. The minimum focus distance of the lens is 15 cm - measured from the sensor of the camera, so you can actually go much closer (~5 cm). This allows taking close-ups from a quite unique perspective, as the next images show.

Old Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM)

Old TEM II

Close up

Close up II

Close up III

If you return to a more regular distance you can still work with DOF quite nicely.

Stadtpark Graz

Schloßberg Graz

Schloßberg Graz

Uhrturm Graz

More DOF

Just for the record, a note about the vignetting on those last two images: They were taken at F1.6 and there is some vignetting at this aperture - but it is less dramatic unless post process the images in the way that i did (which was intentional).

DOF aside, one of the reasons for bright lenses is the ability to shoot images in dark places. Actually the places in the next images were not that dark; i could work easily at ISO 200-500 at 1/30s.

A dark place

Märchengrottenbahn I

Märchengrottenbahn II

A lot was written about flares when bright sources of light (mostly the sun) were involved. Stopping down to F2.0 was suggested to avoid them. As shown in the images below, most of the flaring (especially the one in the 4th image) was gone already at F1.8. The sun was somewhere above the right upper corner of the images.

DOF and flares I (F1.8)

DOF and flares II (F1.6)

DOF and flares III (F1.8)

DOF and flares IV (F1.6)

DOF and flares V (F1.8)

To conclude my first impressions of this lens, i really like the close up capabilities, the wide aperture and the handling of the lens. Flaring is a bit of an issue, but can be minimized by using F1.8.