Introduction
As second lens for their “Ksana” series Thypoch decided to release a compact 35mm 2.0 M-mount lens with black paint finish. These Ksana lenses feature vintage coatings – to create a distinct color signature – but are otherwise modern designs. The Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana proved to be a capable yet compact lens, will this Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana follow its footsteps? Let’s find out in this review!
This lens will be reviewed on the 42mp Sony A7rII and the 24mp Leica M10.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Contents
Specifications
This Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana has the following specifications:
-
- Diameter: 51 mm
- Field of view: 63.1° (diagonally)
- Length: 27 mm
- Weight: 199g (no hood, no caps)
- Filter Diameter: E39
- Number of Aperture Blades: 10 (slightly rounded)
- Elements/Groups: 8/5
- Close Focusing Distance: 0.5 m
- Maximum Magnification: 1:12.5 (measured)
- Released: May 2026
- Mount: Leica-M
buy from manufacturer’s shop (use code PRNET for 5% discount) | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (advertisement/affiliate links) for $599
Disclosure
Thypoch lend me a sample of this lens for reviewing purposes. Thanks a lot!
Handling / Build Quality
When it comes to the mechanical and casing design of these Ksana lenses, I think Thypoch is still experimenting a bit. While the Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana features a matte finish, a hill-valley focus ring, 9 aperture blades and a serif font was used, this 35mm 2.0 comes in black paint and silver, features a focus tab, 10 aperture blades and the font being used is less distinct (and in my opinion also nicer).
The focus ring has a bit higher than usual resistance and turns 90° from the minimum focus distance of 0.5 m to infinity. The focus ring is also equipped with a focus tab and there is a soft click stop at the 0.7 m setting when leaving the rangefinder coupled range.
The aperture ring has equidistantly spaced half-stop click-stops.
The lens brings up the correct 35/135mm frameline set and because it is so small there is hardly any rangefinder blockage when using the lens without a hood.
There seems to be an official hood available for this lens, but I did not receive it with the lens, so I cannot tell you anything about it.
This Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana is not the smallest 35mm M-mount lens but still a very compact one. The Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e and the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron are slightly heavier and in case of the Light Lens Lab lens also bigger.
When using Sony E or Nikon Z mount cameras you can pair this lens with w.g. the TTArtisan 6-bit adapter to get EXIF data or with the Techart LM-EA9/TZM-02 adapter to get autofocus.
Vignetting
light falloff
| f/2.0 | 2.8 EV |
| f/2.8 | 2.1 EV |
| f/4.0 - f/16 | 1.6 EV |
As this is a small lens, high vignetting figures shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The situation here is not nearly as bad as it was with the Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e though. The Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron and the Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar showed a similar amount of light falloff.
It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.
optical vignetting
In the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.
There surely is some optical vignetting to be found here, but when looking at the Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e or the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron for comparison, this Thypoch lens shows significantly less optical vignetting. This could be good news for the bokeh quality.
This lens also features one aspherical element, but onion ring structures are almost unnoticeable.
Sharpness
Focus shift
50% crops, A7rII
Many of the compact 35mm M-mount lenses have some issues with focus shift, examples are the Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e or the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron. Here I do not see any field relevant focus shift though, good news for rangefinder users.
infinity (42mp Sony A7rII, 24mp Leica M10)
On the Leica M10 this 35mm 2.0 shows a solid albeit not amazing performance, as at f/2.0 the whole image is a bit soft. Stopping down to f/2.8 increases the contrast noticeably. For the midframe to look very good f/4.0 is needed and for the corners f/5.6.
The Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e has some field curvature issues and needs f/8.0 to perform well from corner to corner. The Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron performed noticeably worse (the corners look barely ok at f/11) whereas the much bigger Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar looks very good across the whole frame already at f/2.0.
The performance on the Sony A7rII is significantly worse due to its thicker filter stack – as was to be expected.
portrait distance 1.1 m (24mp Sony A7III and Leica M10)
For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.
We will be looking at 100% crops from the 24mp Sony A7III and the Leica M10. Both cameras do not have an anti aliasing filter in front of the sensor.
Leica M10 <—> Sony A7III
At portrait distances the performance is very good in the center of the frame but gets worse towards the corners. Compared to the the Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e it looks better in the center at f/2.0, but worse in the midframe. The Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron performed similar in the center but worse in the midframe. The Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar again shows an amazing performance everywhere in the frame.
Contrary to the situation at infinity, here the differences between using this lens on the Leica M10 and Sony A7III are minor, just keep in mind setting precise focus is easier with the Sony camera.
close (0.50 m, 1:12.5, 42mp A7rII)
A minimum focus distance of 0.5 m is a clear improvement over most older 35mm M-mount lenses which often only focus down to 0.7 m.
At f/2.0 this Thypoch lens is a bit soft, contrast increases on stopping down to f/2.8 and from f/4.0 it looks very good.
The Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e looked worse here while only offering a minimum focus distance of 0.7 m. The Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron generally showed a similar performance, but again only features an MFD of 0.7 m. The Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar shows about a one stop improvement while also focussing down to 0.5 m.
Flare resistance
This Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana features coatings that are supposed to be reminiscent lenses from 1980 (for the Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana it were coatings from the 1970s). These coatings are supposed to create warm lens flares. Let’s see how it performs.
Not many lenses from the 1980s perform this well here. At the maximum aperture I hardly encountered any artefacts. A faint crescent can be seen in the last picture above with the sun outside the frame, but that is about it.
Stopped down the performance is even better, in my usual tests I did not encounter any unwanted artefacts.
Honestly, the situation here leaves me wondering a bit. Thypoch says the delibaretly chose coatings that should create warm lens flares, but in my testing this lens handles backlit situations way better than many modern lenses claiming superior, state-of-the-art performance in this category.
Coma
100% crops from extreme corner
The corners don’t look amazing at wider apertures – we already saw that in the sharpness infinity section. Probably thanks to the aspherical element, Coma artefacts are small though and therefore not overly obtrusive.
This Thypoch’s performance is far ahead of the all-spherical compact 35mm M-mount lenses (e.g. Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e and Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron), but again the much bigger, highly corrected Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar easily shows the best performance.
Distortion
This 35mm 2.0 lens hardly shows any distortion. Good news in case you also want to use it on a film M camera.
Bokeh
As I am sure you are aware, these days there are much faster 35mm M-mount lenses available, e.g. the Voigtländer VM 35mm 1.2 Nokton III. So if you are looking for bokeh quantity, this might not be the right place.
We will still have a look at the quality, as usual at different distances.
The Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e and the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron both create a busier “vintage” bokeh and the Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar also creates a busier, very high contrast bokeh with complex backgrounds – neither of those lenses’ bokeh rendering fully convinced me.
As was already the case for many of Thypoch’s faster Simera lenses, it seems to me also here they put a stronger emphasize on creating an appealing rendering of out of focus areas.
At close distances – even with complex backgrounds – the bokeh looks very smooth and appealing to me.
This also holds true at mid distances. In the last sample above we can see some bokeh falloff towards the corners (due to a mix of optical vignetting and maybe field curvature) but it does significantly better here than the Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e and the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron, both of which showed severe issues with field curvature.
Also at longer distances the bokeh still looks mostly appealing without apparent field curvature issues – a positive surprise. The corners are not rendered as smooth as the central part of the frame though.
Among the compact 35mm f/1.8 to f/2.0 M-mount lenses I reviewed so far, this Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana is actually the one that creates the most appealing and most predictable bokeh.
Sunstars
While the Thypoch 21mm 3.5 Ksana features an aperture diaphragm made of 9 straight blades, this Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana makes use of 10 slightly rounded aperture blades leading to distinct sunstars between f/8.0 and f/16.
If you want to know more about sunstar rendering of different lenses have a look at this article.
Chromatic aberration
lateral
Lateral CA are well corrected, I didn’t see any in my tests.
longitudinal
Thypoch’s optical engineers usually pay attention to correcting longitudinal CA well and that is also the case here. Bokeh fringing is very low from f/2.0 – similar to the Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e and noticeably better than the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron.
Purple fringing is also not be found, not even in extreme scenarios like the one below.
Conclusion
good
|
average
|
not good
|
After Thypoch released a lineup of five f/1.4 Simera M-mount lenses they now seem to focus on slower and more compact options with their Eureka and Ksana series. The table above already gives it away: also their compact lenses are well rounded products without any outstanding flaws.
With Leica, Cosina (Voigtländer) and all the new Chinese manufacturers the M-mount market is getting a bit crowded lately and Thypoch surely tries to find some arguments to pick their lenses. In case of the Simera lenses it was the (questionably useful) visifocus distance scale, in case of the Eureka lenses the vintage styling and handling and for these Ksana lenses they claim to use coatings reminiscent of lenses from the past (80s in this case), but the interesting thing is: this 35mm 2.0 actually performs much better in the flare resistance category than many modern lenses.
With its lack of focus shift, 0.5 m minimum focus distance, absence of distortion, good flare resistance and appealing bokeh this Thypoch 35mm 2.0 Ksana actually compares favourably to many of its similarly spec’d competitors (see next section).
buy from manufacturer’s shop (use code PRNET for 5% discount) | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (advertisement/affiliate links) for $599
Alternatives
There are countless 35mm options for M-mount available. Closes competitors are the Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Ultron – which I haven’t reviewed yet – and the Light Lens Lab 35mm 2.0 8e. Also the Mr. Ding 35mm 1.8 Pactcron comes to mind, being similarly small. Compared to these, this Thypoch’s benefit is its lack of focus shift, significantly better flare resistance and the better minimum focus distance. This Thypoch also creates the smoothest and least obtrusive bokeh among those.
If you are looking for a compact lens with a more classic rendering – which is also affordable – be sure to have a look at the Voigtländer VM 40mm 1.4 Nokton MC, too.
If you are looking for a 35mm 2.0 lens with very high resolution and contrast you should have a look at the noticeably bigger and heavier Voigtländer VM 35mm 2.0 Apo-Lanthar.
You can find all my reviews of 35mm M-mount lenses here.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Further Reading
- M-mount lens reviews
- Review: Zeiss Hologon 16mm 8.0
- Review: Leica 35mm 1.4 Summilux-M FLE Asph MK II
- Review: Leica 90mm 2.0 Summicron-M pre Asph
- Analogue Adventures
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