SainSonic Kamlan 50 mm f/1.1 review - Introduction

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SainSonic Kamlan 50 mm f/1.1

15 October 2018

Arkadiusz Olech

1. Introduction

History moves in mysterious ways. When, at the beginning of 21st century, digital photography was becoming commonly available, amateur photographers were eager to get rid of their well-used analogue cameras with manual lenses. At that time, Internet auctions and second-hand shops were literally inundated with equipment and the prices were decreasing sharply so it was a splendid opportunity to buy many interesting lenses for very little money.

Still another breakthrough was hovering on the horizon, connected to video recording with the help of reflex and mirrorless cameras. All of a sudden plenty of people found out that even old Russian manual lenses were able to provide resolution good enough for Full HD or even 4K formats. What’s more, autofocus is simply redundant while shooting professional videos but a good quality, smooth manual focus ring, with a wide working range, can add a lot of value. Such luxury, unheard-of in a case of autofocus lenses, caused the comeback of manual lenses – they become fashionable once again and their prices increased.

Still the market hates empty niches so, as a result, there have been more and more Asian companies offering new manual lenses with good price/quality ratio and interesting parameters.

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The SainSonic company is undoubtedly an ex ample of that new wave of producers and the Kamlan 50 mm f/1.1 is one of the more interesting models in their line-up. It is a device designed for mirrorless cameras with an APS-C or Micro 4/3 sensor and for a price of less than 800 PLN it allows you to enjoy a truly impressive aperture fastness, as good as f/1.1. We really like testing new companies and their products so we were eager to find out how the Kamlan 50 mm f/1.1 would fare. The results? Read on to find out!

We would like to thank the Fotopanorama shop for sending us the lens for testing purposes.

You are also invited to get acquainted with our test procedure, described in the article "How do we test lenses?" If you feel it’s still not enough, please go to our FAQ section where you can find some further explanation.