![\"HandeVision](\"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/handevision_ibelux.jpg\")
<\/a>Construction and Handling<\/h3>\n
To say the Ibelux 40mm f\/0.85 is a large and heavy lens is somewhat of an understatement.\u00a0 Given that it’s intended for mirrorless system cameras, the lens is utterly massive.\u00a0 It is very long for a 40mm lens (indeed longer than the Sony 18-105mm f\/4), and extremely heavy at 2.6 pounds.\u00a0 To put that in perspective, it’s the same weight as the Canon 300mm f\/4 IS or the original Canon 70-200mm f\/2.8L. It’s a pound heavier than the Leica 50mm f\/0.95 or the Mitakon 50mm f\/0.95 and double the weight and size of the Voigtl\u00e4nder 42.5mm f\/0.95. This means that the lens doesn’t handle well on these tiny bodies.\u00a0 In fact, with my NEX-6 and a6000, I fear the lens could damage the lens mount due to the weight and the lack of a tripod collar.\u00a0 This lens needs a tripod collar.\u00a0 I can’t think of a modern lens this heavy that doesn’t have one. Every time I pick up the camera with this lens attached, I am surprised by the sheer mass of this lens in relation to its focal length, and it’s not a fun lens to carry around.<\/p>\n To that end, in the construction department, it’s a solid chunk of glass and metal.\u00a0 It’s got a very old-school aesthetic that reminds me of older Vivitar lenses, with a wide ribbed focus ring and thin paint filled engravings.\u00a0 There is a built-in hood that takes up a large portion of the front of the lens, but only extends about a centimeter, providing minimal shading.\u00a0 Despite the heavy solid feeling, there are several things that make it feel as if it’s not as well constructed as you may be led to believe by the weight.\u00a0 The aperture ring has detents that are somewhat weak, and the ring only clicks in full stop increments, which is bizarre for a large modern lens.\u00a0 The focus ring also has essentially no damping whatsoever.\u00a0 While this allows you to focus with one finger, it also makes it far to easy to knock focus off once you’ve achieved it.\u00a0 Those nitpicks aside, it does feel like a solid hunk of a lens, but as you can tell, I am not a fan of how this lens handles.\u00a0 At all.<\/p>\n One other thing of note is the rather long minimum focus distance.\u00a0 For a lens with a ‘long normal’ field of view on APS-C cameras, it doesn’t focus closely at all.\u00a0 The 0.75m minimum focus distance can be somewhat limiting at times.\u00a0 Additionally, the lowered contrast and very shallow depth of field makes the lens very difficult to focus accurately, especially at further focus distances.<\/p>\n The Ibelux 40mm has an aperture of f\/0.85. This is a half stop faster than f\/1.0, and should lend the lens a great ability for use in extreme low light situations.\u00a0 It IS a very fast lens, though it’s worth noting that due to pixel shading, the lens will not expose like an f\/0.85 lens on a digital camera sensor.\u00a0 Digital sensors are complex devices, and over each photosite sits a ‘micro-lens’ to help funnel the light on to the actual photodiode.\u00a0 Depending on a number of factors (microlens design, pixel size, sensor stack height etc), these microlenses can limit the light that can be collected.\u00a0 For the Sony bodies I used for testing this lens, the Ibelux exposes a bit less than 1 stop faster at f\/0.85 than it does at f\/1.4.\u00a0 I.e., it exposes slightly slower than an f\/1.0 lens ‘should’ based on the aperture alone. Note that depth of field is not affected by pixel shading, only exposure.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Image quality for a lens like this is somewhat difficult to evaluate in a comparative sense because there are no other f\/0.85 lenses on the market.\u00a0 However, I think given the price, my expectations are that the lens should perform at least as good as the cheaper and smaller f\/0.95 lenses in the same range.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the Ibelux 40mm doesn’t quite hit that mark.<\/p>\n The Ibelux 40mm f\/0.85 is able to produce images with decent, though not stellar, central image sharpness wide open.\u00a0 When focused close up to around 6 feet away, there is good fine detail reproduced over the central 50% of the frame at f\/0.85.\u00a0 As you move towards the edges, sharpness drops off and the edges and corners are quite soft. This level of performance isn’t bad for such an extreme design, but I was rather disappointed in how the lens performed stopped down and at further distances.\u00a0 As you focus further away, the lens is much softer wide open, with very little detail when focused near infinity at f\/0.85.<\/p>\n Stopping down, unfortunately, doesn’t sharpen the lens up as much as you would expect from a $2100 lens.\u00a0 The center gets very sharp indeed at smaller apertures, but the edges and corners still lag a fair bit, especially at further distances.\u00a0 There is very pronounced field curvature near infinity, such that the field of focus bends sharply towards the viewer at the edges.\u00a0 My review sample also had some slight decentering of the optics that was visible by the right edge showing stronger field curvature than the left edge when focused at infinity (though this didn’t come into play much at closer distances).\u00a0 Overall, I expected better for a lens in this price class.<\/p>\n The Ibelux 40mm f\/0.85 is a mixed bag with regards to bokeh.\u00a0 In that ‘sweet spot’ focus range of minimum focus distance to about 6 feet, the bokeh is frankly gorgeous.\u00a0 Silky smooth and with a slight swirly character, the lens can produce simply beautifully images in this focus range, provided you are a fan of that lower contrast fade into the background look. \u00a0While point light sources wide open are rendered in a\u00a0sort of ‘gumdrop’ shape, it can still be rather nice. For portrait subjects and the right detail subjects, I find this look quite stunning and unique.<\/p>\n Foreground bokeh, on the other hand, can be rather harsh, with strong magenta fringing around specular highlights and bright edges and nervousness. \u00a0Also, very funky patterns can take shape with point light sources in the foreground (which you can see in one of the sample images of people walking through trees with lights on them.) Similarly, as you focus further away, this nervousness\u00a0makes its way into the background. \u00a0Some may like this look, but it’s not to my taste.\u00a0 If you concentrate on the types of shots this lens is best at, though, you’ll find it works quite well in this department.\u00a0 The lens has an 10 bladed aperture, which keeps\u00a0out of focus highlights round\u00a0when stopped down as well.<\/p>\n At wide apertures, the Ibelux 40mm f\/0.85 suffers from rather severe spherical aberration, which results in a low-contrast ‘glow’ throughout the images.\u00a0 This significantly reduces image contrast, while still showing the fine detail through.\u00a0 This look can be extremely flattering in some situations, and decidedly bad in other situations, though for the most part I don’t mind it.\u00a0 Images remain very low contrast at f\/1.0 and start to gain contrast as we pass f\/1.4. \u00a0Stopped down, the lens produces nice punchy contrast and good color response, though it’s nothing out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n The lens is also very prone to certain types of chromatic aberration.\u00a0 There is lateral and longitudinal CA present in the images and the 40mm f\/0.85 is extremely prone to purple fringing at the widest apertures in high contrast situations. \u00a0It’s actually among the worst lenses I’ve ever shot with regards to purple fringing. In the right circumstances, it can bleed over the subject.\u00a0 Care must be taken in the situations where this is present to avoid giant purple blobs around the edges.\u00a0 For most indoor work, though, it doesn’t pose much of a problem.<\/p>\n The Ibelux 40mm has some barrel distortion, which doesn’t pose a problem in most circumstances, but can be quite visible if you have a lot of straight lines.\u00a0 It’s fairly easy to correct in most post-processing workflows.<\/p>\n One area that the 40mm f\/0.85 fares very poorly is in vignetting.\u00a0 While you would expect an ultra-fast lens like this to show some notable corner shading, at f\/0.85, the Ibelux takes it to the max.\u00a0 The corners are VERY dark.\u00a0 In the right circumstances, this can be a great look, but all too often, it’s just too much.\u00a0 I’m someone who likes a bit of vignetting in my images, but not to the level this lens produces.\u00a0 At f\/0.85, it’s very difficult to correct all the vignetting.\u00a0 Even a +100 adjustment in Lightroom leaves very visibly dark corners.\u00a0 Note the wide open vignetting in the shot of the Ferris wheel.\u00a0 Stopping down to f\/2 eliminates the majority of the vignetting, however, and there’s none to be seen at small apertures.<\/p>\n The lens is mediocre against bright light. While some flare ghosts can definitely be introduced if the sun is in the frame, it does OK in outdoor daytime shooting. \u00a0However, when shooting at night, if you have light sources aimed into the lens, it is quite easy to induce multiple rings of flare throughout the frame. \u00a0If used artistically, this can be great, but you really need to watch the angle sometimes to avoid it. Luckily, it’s very easy to see in the viewfinder, and often a very minor adjustment in position can get rid of it.<\/p>\n Looking at the above analysis, you may be thinking ‘this lens isn’t very good.’\u00a0 In some respects, many respects actually, that would be a fair assessment.\u00a0 It’s average at best stopped down and at a distance, and while it’s fairly good wide open for such a fast lens, it’s not stunning by any real empirical measure.\u00a0 It’s very good ‘given the f\/0.85 aperture.’\u00a0 That caveat is one that I don’t have a problem making for a lot of older fast lenses. \u00a0It’s a caveat I have a harder time making for something new at this\u00a0price point.<\/p>\n However, you don’t buy this lens to shoot it stopped down. If you do, I question your sanity.\u00a0 There are tons of lenses in this range that are a fraction of the weight and price that will outperform this lens at f\/2.8 and smaller. \u00a0You buy this lens to use wide open.\u00a0 And, provided you aren’t using it wide open for distant subjects, it creates a very unique and often beautiful rendering when used for people shots or other closer subjects.\u00a0 The bokeh is gorgeous (in most cases), the low contrast glow and vignetting can create unique and intriguing images that can’t really be replicated.\u00a0 In that respect, the lens succeeds.<\/p>\n That said, for a new lens that retails for over two thousand dollars, and has major size and weight penalties, I can’t really give it a pass because of a nice look in a very specific set of circumstances. \u00a0It just doesn’t meet expectations, or really even approach them in my opinion. \u00a0The bigger problem is that there are smaller, lighter and far less expensive lenses that perform better than this one. \u00a0It doesn’t perform nearly as well as Voigtl\u00e4nder’s f\/0.95 lenses for Micro 4\/3, and in most cases, doesn’t outperform my Canon FL 55mm f\/1.2 when put on a Metabones SpeedBooster (a 39mm f\/0.9 combination) \u00a0(See my comparison here<\/a>).<\/em> There simply isn’t the performance to justify the price that this lens costs.<\/p>\n This is not a detriment of the lens, but it’s worth noting for those of you shooting with Sony’s a6000.\u00a0 While I love my a6000, something in the way the sensor is constructed or the circuitry routed causes banding when there are wide ray angles from the lens, such as with an ultra-wide aperture lens such as the Ibelux.\u00a0 (It’s also been reported to occur when shooting bright backlit subjects, which may also expose the circuitry to these situations).\u00a0 At base ISO, clear banding can be seen in the background on the a6000 when shooting at f\/0.85 or f\/1.0.\u00a0 By f\/1.4, the banding is mostly gone and it’s completely gone by f\/2. \u00a0At higher ISOs, the banding is obscured by fine noise as well, so it’s not a big deal when shooting in very low light.<\/p>\n Again, this is not a problem with the lens, but it’s worth noting if you are considering this lens to use on an a6000.\u00a0 After I saw the banding on every wide open shot the first day with the lens, I shot predominantly with the lens on my NEX-6, which does not show banding at wide apertures.\u00a0 For the image samples with the a6000 on the next page, banding reduction has been performed using Topaz Denoise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Ibelux 40mm f\/0.85 is an extremely unique lens: It has the fastest aperture of any current interchangeable lens on the market.\u00a0 When used for portraits or closer subjects, the 40mm can produce images with a truly magical feel to them.\u00a0 If you enjoy this low contrast look, it delivers in spades.\u00a0 Shooting wide open, the lens produces good central image sharpness and excellent background bokeh, and you get this lens to shoot wide open.<\/p>\n However, this great look can only take you so far, and the truth is, the lens does one thing really well, and beyond that\u00a0the Ibelux 40mm f\/0.85 just really isn’t a very good lens.\u00a0 It has tons of lens aberrations, mediocre borders at small apertures, very high purple fringing, and low contrast.\u00a0 Then there’s the fact that the lens is absurdly large and heavy, and exceedingly expensive for what amounts to mediocre performance in most situations.<\/p>\n Frankly, it’s a lens that is essentially impossible to recommend. If you are a Sony shooter and want an ultra-fast native lens, the Mitakon 50mm f\/0.95 will actually produce more background blur, and it costs less than half what the Ibelux costs and weighs significantly less.\u00a0 If you are shooting Micro 4\/3, sacrifice the 1\/3 stop of aperture and get the Voigtl\u00e4nder 42.5mm f\/0.95 – it’s a much\u00a0better lens overall and a fraction of the size.<\/p>\n If you shoot Fuji or simply must have something in the 40mm range with this speed, adapting an old fast manual focus lens and adding a SpeedBooster is the more sensible way to go as well.\u00a0 My Canon FL 55mm f\/1.2 with Speed Booster (39mm f\/0.9) costs a total of $625 ($225 for the lens and $400 for the Speed Booster), weighs half what the Ibelux weighs, and generally outperforms it.\u00a0 It has much higher contrast and similar sharpness wide open, while massively outperforming it at smaller apertures and further focus distances (though the Ibelux produces notably smoother bokeh close up).<\/p>\n The enormous size makes it uncomfortable to use, a pain to carry and something you are far more likely to leave at home when you pack your bag. And simply put, given the overall performance of the lens, the asking price of $2,070 US is absurd. To put the weight and cost of the lens in perspective, for the price of this lens, you could buy a brand new Sony A7 full frame body, an adapter and a Minolta Rokkor 58mm f\/1.2 (which will give you a very similar look in focal length and background blur).\u00a0 The resulting Camera AND Lens together would weigh 2\/3 of a pound\u00a0less<\/em> than the Ibelux 40mm by itself, while saving you a few dollars and producing better images.<\/p>\n While I love the look this lens produces up close, there are simply too many flaws outside of the main usage scenario and too many better options for a fraction of the cost and weight.\u00a0 I applaud IB\/E Optics for daring to produce such a design, but unfortunately, in the real world, it’s simply a lens that doesn’t make sense.<\/p>\n You will notice that the majority of the shots here are at f\/0.85. \u00a0There’s a reason for that. \u00a0If you aren’t buying this lens to shoot at f\/0.85, then you shouldn’t buy the lens. \u00a0Get a Voigtlander 40mm f\/1.4 for $400 and get something that weighs next to nothing and is significantly better at the same apertures.<\/p>\n (Click on an Image to Enlarge)<\/em><\/p>\n Speed.\u00a0 It used to be than an f\/1.4 lens was considered quite fast and f\/1.2 was the pro-grade ultra-fast aperture.\u00a0 Very, very rarely, a manufacturer would produce a lens at f\/1.0 or very slightly faster…the elusive f\/0.95.\u00a0 Until recently, f\/0.95 was an exceptionally rare aperture lens, only produced by Leica with their 50mm Noctilux.\u00a0 However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/handevision_ibelux.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28RGq-119","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3915"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3977,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions\/3977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Speed<\/h3>\n
Continue: Image Quality<\/a><\/h4>\n
Image Quality<\/h3>\n
<\/a>Sharpness<\/h4>\n
Bokeh<\/h4>\n
<\/a>Color, Contrast, Spherical and Chromatic Aberration<\/h4>\n
<\/a>Distortion, Flare and Vignetting<\/h4>\n
Important Image Quality Thoughts<\/h4>\n
<\/a>Banding on the a6000<\/h4>\n
<\/a>Continue: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a><\/h4>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
<\/a>Pros<\/h4>\n\n
Cons<\/h4>\n
\n
Image Samples<\/h3>\n
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