Introduction
It has generally been difficult to find ultra wide-angle prime lenses for any system until a few years ago. It has become much better for full-frame cameras, but still a scarce market in the APS-C world. If available, most of the ultra-wide angle lenses are zoom lenses, with variable apertures and usually not that fast. Here we have a new lens that breaks that trend, a 10mm (15mm equivalent on FF) at the impressive f/2. Let’s see how this lens is!
UPDATE: 2023.12.19 , Flare Resistance.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review and many more can be found in higher resolution here.
Specifications
| Focal Length (FoV) | 10mm (105° diagonally) |
| Aperture Range | f/2 – f/16 |
| # of Aperture Blades | 8 |
| Min Focus | 0.25 m |
| Filter Size | 72 mm (with included extra lens hood) |
| Lens Mount | Sony E / Fuji X / Nikon Z / M43 / Canon RF |
| Weight | ~333 – 345 g |
| Size (D x L) | 62 x 65 mm |
| Elements / Group | 13 / 10 |
You can order this lens from the TTArtisan Store for $159 (affiliate link)
Disclosure
TTArtisan kindly sent this lens to me on loan for testing purposes and review.
Handling
The TTArtisan 10mm f/2 is a fully manual ultra-wide angle lens, without any electrical contacts, that is available for almost all the APS-C camera brands. It is not very big but heavy for its size as it is all metallic. The metallic focusing ring turns a little stiff about 90 degrees. The focusing ring is reasonably large and located at the center of the barrel, it is damped. The aperture ring is very thin and is very near the rear of the lens. I found it quite difficult to grip and fiddly to rotate as it is so thin, stiff, and close to the focusing ring. Most of the time when I tried to change the aperture, changing the focus was inevitable. Then I had to refocus. I don’t even have large hands or fingers, meaning people with larger hands may find this even more annoying.
The aperture ring is clickable with half a stop click-stops. The distance between clicks is variable. The lens has a fixed and very small petal-shaped lens hood. Because of this and the bulbous front element, you can not attach any filter directly on the lens, but you can screw on an included wide hood with 72 mm filter thread, which allows attaching filters. The metallic lens cap is a screw-type cap that can be put on the lens only if you have this lens hood on. It’s meant that you can have the extra lens hood on at all times. This is a great and welcome addition, especially for landscape photographers.
Optical Features
Sharpness (Infinity)
For the infinity sharpness test, we look at three areas of the image, center, mid-frame, and corner, see highlighted areas in the image below!
The sharpness in the center of the image is already good at f/2, it becomes very good at f/2.8 and comes up to excellent at f/4 and up to f/9.5. The center sharpness’s peak is at f/6.7 (the half-stop between f//5.6 and f/8), after which the diffraction decreases the sharpness slightly for each stop but as mentioned excellent to f/9.5. very good at f/11 and good at f/16.
The mid-frame and corners are another story, they are not good until f/5.6 and f/8 respectively. At f/11 midframe is more or less the same but the corner gets a little better, f/16 they deteriorate a little due to the diffraction effect.
Sharpness (Close-up)
Let’s look at the sharpness near the minimum focusing distance at the center of the image!
Wide open at f/2 the sharpness is good. Stopping down to f/2.8 makes the sharpness improve to very good. At f/4 it is excellent, and remains excellent at f/5.6. At f/8 we see a very small decrease in sharpness due to the diffraction but still excellent. At f/11 the diffraction shows its effect more clearly and the sharpness goes down to the very good territory. At f/16 we can see even more diffraction effect but it’s still quite good.
Lens Distortion
There is some barrel distortion present, if you want to fix it in LR or PS, you have to apply +5 in manual distortion correction.
Vignetting
There is some visible vignetting but it is not more than other lenses with this focal length or equivalent with this focal length (15mm in FF world). It is even better than many FF 15mm wide open. Stopping down helps a little but even at f/5.6 (4 stops from wide open) we have about 1.5 EV vignetting, but again not unusual for this focal length/FoV.
- f/2.0: 2.2 EV
- f/2.8: 1.9 EV
- f/4.0: 1.7 EV
- f/5.6: 1.5 EV
Focus Shift & Aberrations
There is no focus shift or LoCa present in the images, here is an image taken wide open at f/2 and no sign of any color fringing can be seen.
Lateral chromatic aberration is an issue though. It is easily fixed in post, in LR/PS just by ticking the box to remove CA. Here is the 100% crop of the corner of an image, both before and after the correction. The effect is most obvious in the upper right corner area.
Flare Resistance
The flare resistance is so-so, you can get flares in your pictures when the sun or other strong light sources are in the frame. The extra lens hood is not much help, all the following images were taken with the extra hood on.
During the time I was testing this lens there was no sun in sight until after the release of the lens and this review. After the release, when the sun came up again, I made new tests with the sun in the image. The result was not very favourable. My recommendation will be to avoid the sun in the image or even outside the image but close to the edges.
Coma
Such a wide-angle lens with such a bright aperture at f/2 would be a perfect lens for astrophotography, provided that the lens does not have any coma problem. The most common problem that most lenses struggle with is sagittal astigmatism and in some cases both sagittal and tangential astigmatism. This TTArtisan has tamed sagittal astigmatism very well, which is very good, but suffers from a mild degree of coma in the form of some tangential astigmatism. It is not very bad but it is there. The bad thing is that it is very resilient and does not disappear by closing the aperture 1 or 2 stops. You need to stop down to f/11 to get rid of it completely. In the following, you can see the 100% crop of the extreme corner of the image.
Sunstars
One of this lens’s strong points is its sunstars, It can produce quite distinct sunstars with well-defined rays from f/2.8. The sunstars have eight equally long rays, which look quite clean and beautiful, but this is a personal preference.
Note: When I took the pictures, it was snowing and the flares are from snowflakes on the front lens surface.
Focus Breathing
The TTArtisan 10mm f/2 suffers from focus breathing, as you can see in the image animation below. This is less good news for the video makers.
Bokeh
Conclusion
| I LIKE | AVERAGE | I DON’T LIKE |
| Price Center Sharpness overal sharpness stopped down to f/8 LoCA |
Sharpness midfram/corner Lens distortion Size LaCA |
Flare resistance Coma Focus Breathing Handling |
This is an ultra wide angle lens, which is quite difficult to make very good in all categories. The question is how good do you want it to be? And to what cost? It is best to directly mention that this lens’s mid-frame and corner sharpness, at wider apertures is weak, but it is very sharp in the center right from f/2 and sharp everywhere at f/8 or smaller apertures. Most of this lens’s applications do require stopping down to f/8 or f/11 anyway, where the lens sharpens up everywhere in the frame. The coma issue fails this lens in the only application that requires sharpness wide open to the edges and corners, astrophotography. You can still use this lens for astrophotography, as it has good control over the worst type of coma, just put the most important part of the sky in the center of the frame. On the other hand, its price and sharpness, stopped down to f/8, together with its gorgeous sunstars, makes it one of the most (if not the most) affordable and best value for money ultra wide angle lenses available for APS-C.
If you are interested in buying this lens or any of the lenses in the Alternatives section, you can support our efforts by using the links below or given under each lens. It won’t cost you a penny and it won’t affect the price, but it will help us a little.
Buy it from the TTArtisan Store $159 and get 10% discount (Affiliate link)
Alternatives
LAOWA 9MM 2.8 APS-C
It has a wider angle of view than the TTA, but it is one stop slower. Smaller and lighter than the TTA. More than double the price of the TTA 10mm.
Buy new: LAOWA Store (discount %), amazon.com, amazon.de, amazon.co.uk for $359, €489 (Affiliate links)
Buy used: ebay.com, ebay.de, ebay.co.uk (Affiliate links)
NISI 9mm 2.8 APS-C
It has a wider angle of view than the TTA, but it is one stop slower. It’s about the same weight but larger than the TTA. Very good flare control. About 3 times the price of the TTA 10mm
Buy new: NISI Store, amazon.com, amazon.de, amazon.co.uk for $459 (Affiliate links)
Buy used: ebay.com, ebay.de, ebay.co.uk (Affiliate links)
LAOWA 10mm f/4 Cookie
It is like a pancake lens and a lot smaller and lighter than TTA 10mm and all the alternatives, but it is two stops slower. It is also 2 to 3 times the price of the TTA 10mm.
Buy new: LAOWA Store (discount %), amazon.com, amazon.de, amazon.co.uk for $299, €489 (Affiliate links)
Buy used: ebay.com, ebay.de, ebay.co.uk (Affiliate links)
Meike 10mm f/2
The closest alternative with the same focal length and same maximum aperture. The Meike has more complex optical design is heavier and larger than the TTArtisan.
Buy new from Meike: Meike Store,
More Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review and many more can be found in higher resolution here.
Further Reading
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Buy it from the TTArtisan Store $159 and get 10% discount (Affiliate link)
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Martin
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Thank you for the review !
It is usefull and the lens worth its price.
I did not saw pictures with the sun in the picture, such photos would be usefull to have the complete image. But probably it was short time to make the review and I guess it is dificult to catch the sun now in Sweden. Thank you for all the info posted here !
Probably Nisi 9mm it is a better choice, but of course the price is more than double.
Thanks. You are right, during the entire time I had this lens the sun refused to show itself where I live. I made the flare test the very last night, when it was not possible to wait more.
I’ll probably add some images with the sun later. NISI is about 3 times more expensive.
The sun came out and as promised I made the flare resistance tests again.
For those, who read the review before the update, I recommend to check the result with the sun in the image before any buy.
Could you add a star shot to see if that concerning coma heavily impact the star shape?
Thank you
Unfortunately, due to my location up north in Sweden, I have very limited possibilities to take pictures of the starry skies, especially during the winter.
But I can email you a starry sky picture taken with that lens by another photographer. The same picture that TTArtisan has at their site, if you click on my affiliate link in the article and scroll down the page, you will see the same picture.
Thank you, Martin, for adding pictures with the sun !
It’s very usefull.
Of course, no problem.
How would you rate this lens compared to Nisi 9mm F/2.8 ?
Thank you in advance !
Well, as always you should set your preferences first.
The Nisi has better midframe/corner sharpness, especially at wider apertures. At f/8-f/16 it would be difficult to see the difference. Nisi’s coma is slightly better too. It also seems that the Nisi handles flares better.
Distortion and CA are more or less at the same level. Both have nice sunstars but are different.
But this TTA is one stop faster, it is much smaller, it has better vignetting, and is about 1/3 of Nisi’s price.
Thank you for your comments, Martin !
Very appreciated.
I agree, TTA it’s an interesting choice. I don’t exclude buying it.
Thanks a lot for a thorough review, this is very valuable!
Tough choice between this, Nisi and Laowa cookie…
Agreed, the Laowa cookie lens at twice the cost and half the size also deserves a comparable thorough review.
Thank you for the review! I’m considering this as a fast 20mm-e on m43, seems like a win, unless there’s a better option out there I’m not thinking about.
There is the better option – native m43 Laowa 10mm f/2. It is smaller, lighter, has contacts, produces 10-sunstars. The only downside is that it’s more expensive.
Captions to some pictures (in particular, Vignetting and Focus Shift sections) say “TTArtisan AF 35mm f/1.8” instead of 10/2. I guess it is an copy-paste error.
Thanks Ilya, yes, a copy/paste miss. I’ve corrected them.
Thank you for the great review.
Any chance for a comparison with the Meike 10mm F2.0?
I am interested too!
Hmm…, don’t have the Meike and I have not had any contacts with Meike either.
It does not seem to happen very soon by I can reach out to Meike.
Thanks Martin. Some reviewers recommend the Meike 10mm F2, but it’s 2-3 times the price of this TTA 10mm F2, so very keen to see a side by side review by a reliable reviewer such as yourself.
I agree with terrible tiny, fiddly, stiff, aperture ring and also kind of stiff focus ring. And yes, close to each other.
Hi Martin, thank you for this thorough review.
Do you have plans to review the Laowa 10mm f4 Zero-C?
Yes, I do and I received a sample of the Laowa 10/4 cookie but it was defect, so I did not go through the review.
I have to send this sample back and ask for another one, but don’t know when it will arrive there and when I can get another sample back.
Thanks for your review. I was looking at images from this lens on the TTA FB page and they are all blurry, I assumed it was a bad lens. Your photos are sharp and rich. I love my TTA 50 1.2 and this has similar ‘painterly’ feel to it. Cheers!