Introduction

The Aporis 135mm 2.4 is the latest and also longest lens made by MS-Optics, a one-man-lens manufacturer. It even features one of Canon’s famous CaF2 Fluorit glass elements, which is mostly used in their great super tele lenses for minimizing color aberrations. Does it help to actually combine fast maximum aperture, small size and good image quality?

Sample Images

You can find most of the shots in this review in full resolution here.

About MS-Optics

MS-Optics is a lens manufactory from Japan named after its owner and founder Miyazaki Sadayasu. He specialized in designing very small M-mount lenses, but so far most of them could be best described as character lenses with significant residual spherical aberrations. Furthermore they were not designed for the Sony E-mount filterstack, so the corners suffer quite a bit when used on these cameras.

The Aporis is the first longer lens of his M-mount lineup and comes with an Apo tag and quite promising hand drawn MTF graph. Because of the focal length it shouldn’t be affected as badly by the filterstack as his wider pancake lenses. But can this underdog lens keep up with the offerings from the big manufacturers?

You can find information on all the MS-Optics M-mount lenses in my Overview: MS-Optics M-mount lenses.

Specifications and Version History

There are two versions of this lens; a rangefinder coupled version and a non rangefinder coupled with manual floating elements (see handling section) with mirrorless users in mind. I am reviewing the mirrorless version here which has the following specifications:

• • Diameter: 60 mm
  • Field of view: 18.5° (diagonally)
  • Length:  120 mm
  • Weight: 360g + adapter
  • Filter Diameter: 58 mm
  • Number of Aperture Blades: 16 (rounded)
  • Elements/Groups: 5/5
  • Close Focusing Distance: 1.3 m* (measured)
  • Maximum Magnification: 1:7.6* (measured)
  • Mount: Leica-M

*depending on the settings of Coma and SA adjustment rings these values are subject to change

These are only made in small quantities. For new ones go to japancamerahunter, after that you need to resort to ebay.com (affiliate link) and hope for someone selling his. Price is around 1200$.

Build quality and Handling

There is a lot to talk about here, as there are not only aperture and focusing rings but also rings to adjust the correction of spherical aberration and coma individually (“manual floating elements”).

The focus ring travels ~190° from infinity to the minimum focus distance of roughly 1.3 m. The focus ring is actually the whole front barrel (unit focus design), so aperture ring and front element also rotate when adjusting focus. Therefore taking the test shots in this review this was quite annoying, because I had to readjust focus for every shot. In the field this was barely an issue for me as I usually set aperture before focus anyway. On focusing closer the length of the lens increases by 19mm. The resistance of the focus ring is very nice.
The aperture ring is clickless and turns roughly 100° from f/2.4 to f/16.

The lens also features a small screw-in type lens hood made of metal:

Before getting into detail about the SA and Coma correction rings let me get this out of the way first: I am not overly happy with the markings on the SA and Coma rings. They feature the same  distance values as the focus ring and so at first I thought both should be set to the distance I want to shoot at for optimal performance. But if I set both rings to their infinity setting I can’t actually focus at infinity anymore (tested with Metabones, VM-E close focus and too short Fotodiox adapter). So I ended up doing quite a bit of testing myself, which settings work best for me. Luckily I found that I only need to use the SA ring  to get the results that I like, but more on that in a bit.

Coma adjustment

To be honest, I didn’t see a huge impact making alterations to the setting here. My recommendation: keep it at the left most position and don’t worry about it anymore.

Spherical Aberration (SA) adjustment

You can “unscrew” the front element and thereby changing the distance between first and second lens element. If you minimize the distance (turn counterclockwise) this leads to an overcorrection of the spherical aberration and to somewhat harsher bokeh, but field curvature at infinity is minimized.
If you increase the distance (turn clockwise) the bokeh gets significantly smoother but the sharpness will also suffer (if you go to far). I am not sure the markings are the same on all copies of the Aporis  (I only tried one) so I will try to be as clear as possible describing the position of my settings.

When I screw in the front barrel as far as possible the red dot is about a 70° rotation away from the “1m” mark on my sample.
This setting I use for stopped down infinity landscape or architecture shooting because of minimal field curvature, the harsher bokeh is not relevant here.

Setting it to the “1.5m” mark (about a 100° rotation from the aforementioned setting) is what I used for most of my shots not taken at infinity. It is a good compromise between sufficient sharpness and smooth bokeh.
Further unscrewing of the front barrel will lead to significant glow, if you are after that:

Vignetting

Wide open there is vignetting of roughly 1.5 EV, stopped down to f/2.8 this improves to only 0.9 EV, stopped down to f/4.0 it is negligible with 0.5 EV and further improves to 0.1 EV at f/8.0. There is no Lightroom profile for this lens.

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

Sharpness

infinity (SA ring set to left most position)

With the SA ring set to the left most position the lens is rather soft across the whole frame wide open. You need f/4.0 for very good center performance, f/5.6 for very good midframe performance and corners look best at f/8.0 to f/11.
The exposure of the f/2.4 and f/2.8 corner crops has been slightly lifted in post.

infinity (SA ring set to1.5m)

What has changed when adjusting the SA ring to 1.5m? We gained about one stop in the center and midframe and at f/2.4 the lens does not look as soft anymore. Already at f/4.0 most of the frame shows very good resolution figures. But, as I told you in the handling section before: setting the SA ring to the left most position results in the least field curvature, so at f/8.0 to f/11 the former setting gives best across frame results. The 1.5m setting on the other hand works best if there are no details in the corners anyway.
The exposure of the f/2.4 and f/2.8 corner crops has been slightly lifted in post.

Compared to Canon EF 135mm 2.0 L:
I shot the scene above with both lenses side by side. Wide open the Canon shows a little more fine details in the center, but contrast is very similar. The further you move towards the corners the better the Canon looks, it shows a very flat field and impressive performance already wide open (see my Canon 135mm 2.0 L review).
Between f/5.6 and f/11 it is hard seeing any differences in the center. The Canon shows sligthly more edge acuity in the midframe, but you really need to be pixelpeeping to see the difference here. The corners of the Aporis never show the excellent resolution you can find with the Canon.

close focus (1.3 m)

A minimum focus distance of 1.3 m is quite good for a fast 135mm lens. The performance at f/2.4 is not bad and can already give satisfactory results, but stopping down to f/2.8 boosts contrast and resolution considerably.
Adding a close focus adapter like the Voigtlander VM-E close focus does not have a huge impact. Because of the 135mm focal length maximum magnification only increases from 1:7.6 to 1:6.6, not a big difference, so I rather use a lightweight non-helicoid adapter with this lens.

Flare resistance

I have yet to find a (fast) tele lens which is a good performer in this category. Ghosting is barely a problem, but you will encounter a loss of contrast when shooting straight into the sun. Placing the sun (or a point light source at night) close to one of the corners can yield in significant veiling flare across most of the frame, very similar to the Leica Tele-Elmar 135mm 4.0. Slight reframing can help quite a bit.
Using the hood didn’t really help though, as you can see in this worst case scenario:

Distortion

There is only an absolutely negligible amount of pincushion distortion with no field relevance. No correction was applied to the photo above.

Bokeh

For a fast portrait lens this is a very important aspect for me and as I already told you in the handling section the bokeh rendering can be influenced by the SA correction ring. Personally I prefer smooth rendering without double edges or outlining and the good news is the lens can be adjusted to render this way.
But if you prefer a more “classic”, harsher look you can also have that, as you can see in this comparison:

After having spent some time figuring out the settings of the SA correction I am really quite happy with the results I get when the SA ring is set to 1.5m. This is the setting I used for most shots you can find in this review.

Thanks to the 16 rounded aperture blades highlights stay perfectly round even when stopping down to f/5.6 or further. This is really nice to have in a portrait lens. The mechanical vignetting (cat’s eye effect) is average for a lens in this class but quite good considering the comparably small front element diameter.

Sunstars

With 16 rounded aperture blades my expectations were pretty low, but thanks to the even number of blades the sunstars ain’t that bad actually. I rate this performance as average, for further reference you can also have a look at our Best lenses for Sunstars article.

Chromatic aberrations

longitudinal

The apochromatic correction of the Aporis is not as perfect as we have seen with the Zeiss Batis 135mm 2.8 Apo Sonnar or the Voigtlander SL 180mm 4.0 Apo-Lanthar, but it is still very good and handles the fountain stress test with ease.

lateral

There are only very minor lateral CA which can easily be corrected by using e.g. Lightroom.

Alternatives

Leica Apo-Telyt 135mm 3.4:
I haven’t tried this one myself yet. What is obvious: 1 stop slower, 30% heavier, a bit more than 2 times as expensive. Judging by what I have seen from this lens so far resolution looks better but bokeh doesn’t. So the Leica might be the better choice for landscape and architecture while the Aporis might be better for portrait and street photography.

Leica Tele-Elmar 135mm 4.0:
This lens is pretty cheap, especially considering the Leica dot, but I wasn’t overly happy with it: too slow, bad minimum focus distance, too heavy for what it is. Still worth considering if you are just looking for a small low budget option for landscape and architecture shooting.

Zeiss Batis 135mm 2.8 Apo Sonnar:
This is a very modern design with AF, excellent color correction, great contrast and resolution already wide open. Compared to the Aporis it looks pretty bulky though and is quite a bit more expensive.

Canon EF 135mm 2.0 L:
The Canon EF 135mm 2.0 L is a great lens that I still own and regularly use as it is one of the few lenses combining high resolution with smooth bokeh. But it is also 2 times as heavy, much bulkier and loCA correction is worse.

Samyang 135mm 2.0 ED UMC:
Pretty much the same as the aforementioned Canon lens with apochromatic loCA correction and even more bulk. The color rendering also differs by quite a lot from my other modern lenses (much warmer).

Older 135mm 2.0/2.4/2.8 SLR lenses:
The Canon FD 135mm 2.8 is a good example of this class of lenses: most of these are significantly cheaper, but they are often lacking a bit in terms of contrast wide open and color correction isn’t really great either.

Conclusion

As some of you may remember that in my search for a light 135 mm lens I already reviewed the Leica 135mm 4.0 Tele-Elmar and the Jupiter-11 135mm 4.0 and I wasn’t overly happy with either. Due to being only f/4.0 bokeh didn’t really impress me and while the Leica showed good resolution figures the correction of loCA was a let down, as was the weight of more than 500g without adapter.
Those issues are most certainly solved with the Aporis: it is 1 1/2 stops faster, very lightweight with only 360g, offers a very good loCA correction and boasts high contrast already wide open.
Furthermore bokeh can be adjusted to your taste from harsh to soft and even glowy. The 16 rounded aperture blades will yield nice round highlights even stopped down and the even number leads to unexpectedly okay sunstars.

What are the downsides? Resolution wide open is not as high as you see from significantly bulkier modern lenses like the Zeiss Batis 135mm 2.8 or the Samyang 135mm 2.0. To keep the weight down the mechanical construction is rather simple with rotating front element, which is not very polarizer friendly.

If you like this lens as much as I do really depends on what you want to shoot with it. As your “do everything” 135mm lens the Zeiss Batis 135mm 2.8 or Canon EF 135mm 2.0 L might be the better choice, featuring AF and higher resolution.
But if you are looking for a fast yet compact portrait lens to supplement your VM 35mm 1.7 or VE 40mm 1.2 this Aporis might be exactly what you are looking for. I was already looking for a lens like this for quite some time, as the Canon EF 135mm 2.0 L was already too big and heavy for this application for me, while the Zeiss Loxia 85mm 2.4 didn’t feature the level of subject isolation I wanted to have.

Still, this lens needs a bit of work to make fully use of it and fiddling with the SA correction ring from time to time. But if you are willing to do this the results can be quite rewarding. To give you a small impression of how much I liked it: on my last trip I also carried the Zeiss Loxia 85mm 2.4 and the Olympus OM 180mm 2.0, but this is the lens that could most often be found mounted on my camera.

These are only made in small quantities. For new ones go to japancamerahunter, after that you need to resort to ebay.com (affiliate link) and hope for someone selling his. Price is around 1200$.

Sample Images

You can find most of the shots in this review in full resolution here.

Further Reading

• Leica Summicron 90mm 2.0 pre Asph Review
• Wide angle lenses for A7 series cameras
• Mini tripods for mirrorless cameras

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BastianK

My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

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