Meike 25mm f/0.95 Lens Review

Meike 25mm f/0.95 Handling and Features

The Meike 25mm f/0.95, here reviewed in MFT fit, is designed for CSC cameras with formats up to APS-C size. The 35mm-equivalents are 50mm and 37.5mm respectively. This equates to a traditional standard lens on MFT and a wide standard on APS-C. This is and always has been an excellent general purpose, high-quality focal length. The difference is, of course, the ultra-bright f/0.95 aperture. This is not unique, but it is uncommon and certainly can be very expensive.

The lens feels heavy for its size, being mainly metal in construction. It weighs in at 540g. From the front, we find a useful but not particularly deep pull-out lens hood. It's a nice touch and makes use of the lens hood as convenient as possible. Lens hoods are always a good idea, and if convenient they will be used, hopefully, all the time. The front element is surrounded by the 55mm filter thread. Peering into the glass we see the 12 bladed diaphragm, almost perfectly circular and no doubt helping to improve the bokeh of the lens. The diaphragm is totally manual, so stays where it is set.

The wide and comfortable focusing ring is marked in feet and metres and behind this a depth of field scale is provided. These scales are rarely accurate, but definitely useful in providing a rough guide. Finally, the aperture ring is marked with several of the normal values not shown. There are no click stops, fine for video shooters, not so helpful for stills as the aperture set has to be guessed if the camera is kept to the eye. Both focusing and aperture rings are smooth and precise in their action.

The bayonet mount is well made, although a slight amount of rotational play can be felt. This will not affect the focus of the lens and is very slight, but it does indicate a slight lack of precision.

Optical construction is 12 elements in 10 groups. The lens focuses down to 0.17m, or 0.6 feet. This is a maximum magnification of 0.135x.

Handling is very straightforward, the manual focus point being very precise as a consequence of the minuscule depth of field at f/0.95. Focusing at open aperture and then stopping down to make the exposure seems to work fine, the only difficulty being estimating the aperture set. That is, if we don't want to bring the camera away from the eye to actually look at the value set. In practice, I would suggest focusing at f/0.95, closing the lens all the way to f/22 and then learning how far to turn it back to the common settings used, such as f/8. This can be surprisingly accurate after a short while. The only difficulty is keeping the spot at wider apertures, so with moving subjects such as people it may take a number of shots to catch the eye exactly at the right focus point.

Add your message