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Please recommend me some Manual Focus EF lenses!


kye
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I bought an EF-MFT speed-booster, now I need some lenses!

It's a VILTROX EF-M2II, and I tried my 50mm F1.8 and the AF was somewhere between functional and like it had a mind of its own.  The focus ring on the lens has such a short travel that it's impossible to use as a MF lens (which it wasn't designed for so I understand).

I'm looking for some interesting / fast / cheaper EF lenses that will be fine manually focusing.
I'm especially interested in lenses F1.4 or faster but are still budget lenses.

My thoughts immediately turn to the early days of cheap Chinese glass, but I can't seem to find any as any search is overrun with Canon AF lenses, or with new MF lenses that are for EF-M mount but are incorrectly labelled as EF (even Meike has a lens labelled as EF that is clearly a mirrorless lens!), and while EF was the only mount people never bothered to include that information and so things don't appear in searches.  Laowa doesn't even let you browse their products by mount!

Our new robot overlords suggested some options:

  • The Samyang/Rokinon series: 35mm 50mm 85mm F1.4
  • Zhongyi Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm f/0.95 (nice but it's over AUD1000!)
  • Zeiss ZE series: 35mm f/2, 50mm 85mm f/1.4
  • MEIKE 50mm F1.2

Anything else I should be looking at?  I really thought there were more third-party options around than just those.

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Samyangs at f1.4 are not cheap plus they are big and heavy. As far as I remember you don't like big and heavy. 
Maybe older sigma lenses from HSM generation as Anaconda_ suggested. Sigma 24mm f1.8, 30mm f1.4, 50mm f1.4 HSM. They are all under 200 E/$. Not small though. 

If you want smaller and cheaper lenses then you have to accept they start at f1.8, f2 and f2.8. Then you have lots of option and not only with Canon. You can also adapt vintage lenses to EF adding second adapter. With speed booster they become f1.4 to f2 both quite usable in low light on m43 in my personal experience.

I was in this place more than 5 years ago with BMPCC 4K. Went trough speed boosters, calculating focal lengths, spending lots of time researching and trying to build decent lens sets both vintage and modern. My frustration grew with time as I realized this won't be cheap nor ideal to my goals. Went FF and never looked back. My decision was driven specifically by lenses. I realized the hard way a well-known truth: We buy systems not cameras and lenses are more important than cameras. If I want to use vintage lenses, cheap lenses, have access to the largest pool of lenses - FF is the right choice. I may change one FF camera system with another, my vintage lens sets stay, lenses have the same focal length and character. Same is true for Canon EF lenses.

A FF system is no longer more expensive than m43, especially when we include the lenses. Example Panasonic S5 vs Panasonic GX85 + speed booster. Paradoxically a FF system (body + lenses) may even come cheaper due to large pool of lenses than m43 + speed booster.

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