Introduction

After Simera and Eureka Thypoch’s next lens lineup is called Ksana. The first lens of this series is the Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana. A modern optical design with aspherical element but coatings reminiscent of Canon’s FD lenses from 1973. An interesting combination on paper, so let’s have a closer look!
Lens is being tested on 24mp Leica M10 and 42mp Sony A7rII

Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.

Specifications

The Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana has the following specifications:

• • Diameter: 57 mm
  • Field of view: 90.6° (diagonally)
  • Length: 27 mm
  • Weight: 131g (without caps)
  • Filter Diameter: 39 mm
  • Number of Aperture Blades: 9 (straight)
  • Elements/Groups: 8/6
    
  • Close Focusing Distance: 0.50 m
  • Maximum Magnification: 1:18.9 (measured)
  • Mount: Leica-M

buy from manufacturer’s shop (use code PRNET for 5% discount) | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for $549

Disclosure

Thypoch lend me a sample of this lens for reviewing purposes. Thanks a lot!

Handling / Build Quality

Thypoch likes to give their different series of lenses fancy names and this 21mm 3.5 is the first entry for the new “Ksana” series. If you have seen one of the Simera or Eureka lenses you will immediately notice that Thypoch went a different route here, as they chose a knurled focus ring and a rather unusual font.

The focus ring could have a little higher resistance but as is typical for Thypoch’s M-mount lenses it features a click stop at 0.7 m. It turns around 100° from the minimum focus distance of 0.5 m to infinity.

The aperture ring has small wings similar to the Voigtländer VM 40mm 1.4 Nokton and features equidistant half-stop click-stops as it should be.

Because of the size of this lens both focus and aperture ring are narrow and have almost the same diameter, so there is certainly some risk grabbing the wrong one.

There are not a lot of non-moving parts to grab this lens to mount or unmount it, so most of the time you will grab it by the focus ring and rotate it until you hit one of the hard stops.  

This Thypoch 21mm 3.5 brings up the 28/90mm frameline pair and because it is so small there is hardly any rangefinder blockage. 

This is a very small lens: a bit shorter than the Voigtländer VM 21mm 3.5 Color-Skopar, actually closer to the older Voigtländer VM 21mm 4.0 Color-Skopar. The rear element of the Thypoch is more protruding though, giving the impression of both these lenses having the same length in the picture above.

Because of its small size this lens is also a great fit to the smaller analogue M-mount cameras like the Minolta CLE.

I did not receive a lens hood with this lens and I am not sure if a lens specific one will be available.

Vignetting

light falloff

Smaller lenses usually show a higher amount of vignetting and as this Thypoch 21mm 3.5 is a very small 21mm M-mount lens we should also expect strong light falloff. With 3.0 EV at f/3.5 and still 2.5 EV stopped down this is indeed the case.

Compared to the VM 21mm 3.5 Color-Skopar we see about 0.5 EV higher vignetting figures at all aperture settings.

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

color cast

In scenes with an overcast sky (or a snowy landscape like you see below) you will encounter the infamous “italian flag” color cast on the digital Leica cameras M10 and earlier. The situation will likely be worse on M9/M240 compared to what you see from the M10 here. I did not correct any of the pictures in this review for color cast.

On Sony’s later BSI cameras and Nikon’s Z-mount cameras you won’t be running into any issues like this.

If you are still using an older digital M-mount camera, best have a look at the Voigtländer VM 21mm 3.5 Color-Skopar, as it has less issues with color cast than this Thypoch lens while being similarly sized.

Sharpness

infinity (24mp Leica M10, 42mp Sony A7rII)

Center and midframe look good at all apertures but the corners certainly benefit from stopping down and because of that best across frame performance is reached between f/8.0 and f/11.

Usually M-mount wide angle lenses (especially those with small rear elements close to the sensor) fare worse on Sony E-mount cameras with their thicker filter stack. Interestingly here that isn’t really the case. This review sample wasn’t perfectly centered, so the reason could simply be sample variation.

In this category the Voigtländer VM 21mm 3.5 Color-Skopar showed a more even performance on the Leica M10 already looking very good across frame from f/3.5.

close (0.50 m, 1:18.9)

A minimum focus distance of 0.5 m is decent for an M-mount lens but not that exciting for a 21mm lens in general which is also reflected by the maximum magnification of only 1:18.9. 

In the center of the frame we see a good performance here, but again the Voigtländer VM 21mm 3.5 Color-Skopar looked even more impressive with a lot of Moiré already at f/3.5.

Flare resistance

This Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana features coatings that are supposed to be reminiscent of Canon’s FD lenses from 1973. These coatings are supposed to create warm lens flares. So let’s have a look how this lens f(l)ares in this category.

At the maximum aperture we can indeed see some “warm” (meaning orange/red) lens flares. With the sun outside the frame we can also see a noticeable loss of contrast.

Stopped down to f/11 the ghosts are a bit more prominent. 

Thypoch certainly delivered on the promise of warm lens flares. Whether that is something anyone is looking for in a rather slow 21mm lens I am not so sure though. Please tell me in the comment section what you think about this.

If you are looking for a 21mm M-mount lens with an impeccable performance in this category have a look at the Voigtländer VM 21mm 3.5 Color-Skopar.

Coma

Coma at f/3.5 and f/4.0 can be noticeable but improves significantly at f/5.6, so I recommend to stop down to at least f/5.6 when taking pictures of a city scene with point light sources.

Similar performance as the Voigtländer VM 21mm 3.5 Color-Skopar here.

Distortion

This Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana shows a very low amount of slightly wavy distortion. It is so low that I did not feel the need to try and correct it in any of the samples in this review.

Bokeh

A 21mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/3.5 and a minimum focus distance of 0.5 m is not exactly great news if you are into shallow depth of field photography.

For a wide angle lens the bokeh is comparably clean and undistracting though, but there are certainly better lenses available for this task.

Sunstars

Here Thypoch decided to use 9 straight aperture blades, which is a bit of a dangerous choice when it comes to sunstars. With these smaller light sources we see decent mostly symmetrical sunstars though. Looking at the flare section we can see that isn’t always the case though.

If you want to know more about sunstar rendering of different lenses have a look at this article.

Chromatic aberration

lateral

I could not find any lateral CA with this lens.

longitudinal

As this Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana is a comparably slow wide angle lens longitudinal CA are usually nothing to worry about.

Thypoch’s lenses always feature some kind of gimmick: the Simera lenses have the visifocus distance scale (and initially the annoying infinity focus lock), the Eureka lenses are either very compact or collapsible and now these Ksana lenses feature coatings inspired by lenses from the past and an interesting choice of font for the writings on the casing.

Generally – as is the case for most Thypoch lenses released until now – also this 21mm 3.5 features a modern optical design with ED, HR and aspherical elements and therefore also shows a good performance with high contrast and resolution from the maximum aperture and an almost complete lack of chromatic aberrations.

I haven’t really made up my mind regarding the choice of these historic coatings and the increased amount of lens flares compared to other modern 21mm lenses that comes with them. I would understand that design choice when it comes to portrait lenses. A 21mm 3.5 wide angle lens is something I would expect most people to use for landscape or architecture shooting and maybe some for street photography though and here I wouldn’t embrace such kind of lens flares. But maybe I am the minority here, so please tell me in the comment section what you think of this design choice.

If you are looking for an as compact as possible 21mm M-mount lens this is surely worth a closer look, be sure to also check out the Alternatives section below though.

Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.

Further Reading

• Review: Laowa 9mm 5.6
• Review: Thypoch 21mm 1.4 Simera
• Review: Thypoch 28mm 1.4 Simera
• Review: Thypoch 50mm 2.0 Eureka
• Review: Thypoch 75mm 1.4 Simera

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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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