Please recommend me some Manual Focus EF lenses!

[kye]

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.

[Anaconda_]

I love the sigma 30mm f1.4. When I was using the GX80, it was pretty much the only lens I used. 
 

[stephen]

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.

[kye]

18 hours ago, Anaconda_ said:

I love the sigma 30mm f1.4. When I was using the GX80, it was pretty much the only lens I used. 

As a 47mm F2.2 it's pretty close to a 50mm, so a pretty good FOV if that's the look you like.

I've just bought the Panasonic 25mm F1.7, which is 50mm F3.4 on the GH7, and it's my first 50mm FOV lens, so I'm keen to start taking that out and about and "learning" that focal length.  It probably seems odd to most that I've never shot with that focal length, but it's never really suited the situations I've been shooting in.

14 hours ago, stephen said:

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. 

Big and heavy isn't desirable, especially as I have some pretty killer combinations in that range already.

I've got the Voigtlander 17.5mm and 42.5mm F0.95 lenses, which are 35mm and 85mm F1.9 equivalents, and with the Sirui 1.25x adapter they're as wide as 28mm and 68mm F1.5.  Problem is those combinations are each 1300g / 4.6oz (2100g / 74oz with GH7) which is usable for hand-held shooting but my arms are pretty much done after a few hours.  Of course, I'm also pretty much done with being on my feet for that long too so the setup isn't the limiting factor.

These setups also have the advantages and coolness factor of being anamorphic too, so there's that!

I'm slightly tempted by some other much stronger anamorphic adapters too, but in playing with the Sirui I've learned that they're very dependent on the taking lens, and some lenses work and other lenses that seem very similar are an absolute train wreck, so it's basically a blind purchase and these things aren't that cheap.

14 hours ago, stephen said:

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.

My current preferred Night Cinema combo is the Takumar 50mm F1.4 and M42-MFT speed booster, and I bought the EF-MFT speed booster to try and get a slightly cleaner image, but unfortunately the 50/1.4 -> M42-EF adapter -> EF-MFT speed booster stack doesn't work as the back element of the Takumar interferes with the EF SB glass.

I figured that the EF SB would open up a whole new world, as EF used to be the default standard for about half the worlds camera users, plus EF and PL were the de facto standards for cinema.  My recollection was that there were tonnes of interesting and super-fast third party EF lenses, but now I go looking there doesn't seem to be so many to be found.

If budget was no-option then there are a lot of cinema lenses that are very interesting, even anamorphic ones, but budget is a consideration so unfortunately things like the USD1400 Blazar Cato 85mm T2.8 2x anamorphic lens will have to just remain a dream!

14 hours ago, stephen said:

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.

Apart from this being like me asking "can you recommend a lawnmower?" and you suggesting "just sell your house and move to a NYC apartment", I actually don't think it's true.

I've done a lot of "what if" scenarios for what I'm trying to achieve, and while it might have worked for you specifically, when I look at the lenses for a given system I find every system to be very lacking.  Sure, you can get fast lenses at 28/35/50/85, but there are all kinds of other gaps that MFT just doesn't have.  This is gradually changing, as manufacturers gradually fill out the various lens lineups, but my impression of the current landscape is that most FF systems have the fast primes and holy trinity zooms (28/35/50/85 and 16-35/24-70/70-200) but very limited and patchy coverage of small and light lenses and in-between focal-lengths, etc.  Adapting vintage SLR lenses gives access to character lenses, but only FF ones, not really S35 cinema ones (unless you go to crop mode which is throwing away resolution and now you're half-way to MFT!), and not the S16 ones.  You sort of get the standard focal lengths in modern and in vintage, but that's it.

MFT has all the small and light and in-between focal-lengths, but the weakness is in the fast primes and fast zooms.  MFT used to have all the advantages of mirrorless essentially being able to adapt any SLR lens, but as time goes on, more and more of the interesting lenses are designed for mirrorless APSC/FF cameras and therefore not usable (or only available in MFT mount so you don't get a SB advantage) or are EF cinema lenses and are huge/heavy/expensive because they compromised on size and cost to ensure they're sharp sharp sharp sharp sharp enough for modern use.

As an example, I have a tracking sheet of all the lenses I own (not every one available) and it's FF equivalent.  This table includes:  15mm 18mm 26mm 28mm 30mm 31mm 34mm 35mm 40mm 50mm 53mm 56mm 59mm 64mm 70mm 71mm 75mm 78mm 80mm 82mm 83mm 85mm etc.  I don't even think it's complete!
Most of those are different characters too, being a mix of different manufacturers, vintages, and combinations of being native / with a SB / with an anamorphic adapter / with SB and anamorphic adapter, etc.

So yeah, if you happen to want a fast standard focal length, or a fast trinity zoom (that's enormous), then FF is great, but the rest is pretty lacking.

The other reason I'm not moving to FF is that most of what I shoot is on a native 10x zoom, which FF doesn't really have a good answer for.

The other other reason is that the work for me to sell all my MFT equipment and re-buy in FF would make it so that I should just work those hours at my day job and increase my budget, so selling things isn't really cost effective.

The other other other reason is that the GX85 has all sorts of configurations that FF can't match, so I wouldn't be selling that anyway.