SLR Magic 25mm T/0.95 Hyperprime Cine Lens Review

SLR Magic 25mm T/0.95 Hyperprime Cine Lens Performance

Even though this lens is sold more for the effect it can produce, than the sharpness it can deliver, it still performs well in the centre of the frame. T/0.95 is very usable, with care to ensure accurate focusing, as the depth of field can be very shallow at this aperture value. Sharpness here is good in the centre, but fairly poor towards the edges of the frame. Stopping down improves sharpness across the frame, with outstanding sharpness in the centre from around T/2 onwards and good clarity towards the edges of the frame from around T/5.6 onwards.

Resolution at 25mm

How to read our charts The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. For this review, the lens was tested on a Panasonic Lumix G3 using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are a little high towards the edges of the frame, exceeding one pixel width for much of the aperture range. Care may need to be taken when shooting scenes with high contrast areas near the edges of the frame as a result.

Chromatic aberration at 25mm

How to read our charts Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc. to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. For this review, the lens was tested on a Panasonic Lumix G3 using Imatest.

Falloff of illumination towards the corners is quite well controlled for a lens with such a fast maximum aperture. At maximum aperture, the corners are 1.81 stops darker than the image centre and illumination is visually uniform by T/4.

Imatest detected 1.65% barrel distortion, which is fairly typical for a standard lens with a fast maximum aperture. The distortion pattern is uniform across the frame, so applying corrections in image editing software should be relatively straightforward.

Contrast is pretty good with this lens, even when shooting into the light. The shallow slide out hood does little to protect the lens from extraneous light that may cause problems with flare.

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