Review – Pergear 35mm F1.2 lens Fuji X mount

This article is an ongoing review of newest affordable ultra-fast manual focus lens – Pergear 35mm F1.2 in Fuji X mount.

Initial Review

Lens unboxing and initial shooting impressions are listed in my Pergear 35mm F1.2 mini-review article on 35mmc portal.

Review – part 2

I’ve spent more time shooting with Pergear 35mm F1.2 lens on Fujifilm X-E2s camera. It looks that lens has some field curvature, which need to be taken into account when taking shots at wide apertures. In comparison Fuji XF 35mm F1.4 lens is designed to have flat field, so if you take a shot of a brick wall – borders will be in focus (though with lower sharpness). Pergear 35mm F1.2 lens has focus area shifts toward the camera closer to image borders, and DOF field has “bow” shape.

Here are few images taken at F1.2 and at F2 aperture values. Corners are little dark – due to a quite long filter thread I think.

Borders details are more detailed at F2 due to DOF become wider enough to capture expected flat focal pane into “bow” shape. So if you take picture of flat surface, the DOF area will shift down in borders.

And now set of few close-up pictures at F1.2, with slightly shifted focus toward infinity at next shots. The background OOF area looks very smooth, however I’d prefer to avoid including the foreground blur in the picture.

Outdoor image samples from Pergear 35mm F1.2

It was about +5 Celsius so I was wearing light gloves. Surprisingly focus ring and aperture ring are easy to operate! It was enjoyable walk at Gold Creek Pond, Washington. Most close up pictures are taken at F2.8, and landscape shots aperture varies from F1.2 to F4. No post processing, JPEGs are out of X-E2s camera, just resized for preview.

Lens hood and stray light

In some cases light flare artifacts were noticeable in image corners, so Pergear are supplying lens with a vented hood for a good reason. I didn’t have the hood on my hike to keep the set as small as possible, so in few cases just used my hand to block the stray light.

Here is a look of lens with the hood mounted. Personally I prefer more compact size and never using hoods. But you may get better image results in many cases when shooting during sunny weather with the hood attached.

Click-stop aperture MOD investigation

Good news is – it is possible to relatively easy modify Pergear 35mm F1.2 aperture ring to introduce click stops. After modification I also took the lens for taking pictures on the mountain hike. It was quite cold so I used gloves, and it was much more convenient to set exact aperture and keep it unchanged while shooting. However clicks were not strong enough at F1.2 and F2, so later I reworked clicks in another ring section with smaller diameter stops.

Conclusions

Pergear 35mm F1.2 is a small and well constructed manual focus lens with durable parts and well performing optics for its price. It’s important to know optical limitations to properly master Pergear 35mm F1.2, e.g. taking into account its field curvature when composing shots. I’ll keep shooting with this lens on Fujifilm X-E2s camera for more and update article with extra details based on daily use experience.