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Danielle Hart photo
Honduras, Tegucigalpa
1 Level
490 Review
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Review on πŸ“· Irix IL-11FF Firefly Ultra Wide-Angle Lens: Discover the Unmatched 11mm F4 Experience by Danielle Hart

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Superb full frame ultra super mega wide angle lens

Why I bought it: I bought this lens for my Canon 5D Mk IV solely for my real estate photography and I am so glad that i did it My favorite lens is the Tokina 17-35 f/4 ATX Pro, which is a great lens, but in some of those bathrooms, tiny bedrooms, and dressing rooms, even full-frame 17mm just isn't wide enough. enough. I wrestled with the question of whether I should spend more than $500 on a lens just to shoot bathrooms and finally convinced myself that getting 1-2 extra gigs for it would pay off. My logic proved solid. First shoot with him and the client loved the shots I got with him. She didn't think it would be possible to take such shots, so I looked like a hero. Pros: (1) This lens is insanely wide. It's so wide that looking through the OVF is almost confusing. As I said above, I can take pictures that would otherwise be impossible. In the first photo I posted (a direct shot of a sink), I was only 3 feet from the front edge of the vanity. (2) The build quality is excellent. It looks like a $3,000 lens. Excellent, Iris! (3) Minimal barrel distortion, remarkably minimal for such a wide-angle lens. The small BD is fixed in one click with Lightroom's built-in lens correction profile. I can't tell you anything about the rest of the aperture range). (5) Excellent color and contrast, especially for such a wide-angle lens. (6) So much lens for the money (7) Despite being a manual focus lens, the focus confirmation chip works perfectly with Canon's autofocus system. Just hold down the focus button (my camera is set to back-button focus) and rotate the focus ring until you hear a crackle in the area you want to focus on. (8) This is not a fully manual lens. The aperture is controlled from the camera, so you get both a live image (important for real estate photography) and a sharp image without an aperture via OVF. Disadvantages: (1) This lens produces a clearly perceptible lateral chromatic aberration. However, it's (a) unreasonable to expect anything else from a full-frame 11mm lens on a DSLR. Different frequencies of light are diffracted at different angles. When you stretch the field of view to 126 degrees, as with this lens, those inconsistencies inevitably create magenta fringes along the fringes of color. These are immutable laws of physics. I'm curious to see what this lens can do on a mirrorless camera with a shorter working distance (presumably this reduces the LCA). (b) LCA is easy to fix in Photoshop. The chromatic aberration removal tool in Lightroom is useless for any lens. I go into Photoshop and use the camera's raw filter and move the purple CA remover all the way up and it absorbs the LCA straight up without destroying any detail elsewhere. I know I spend more time defending this scammer than complaining, but deep down I feel like LCAs are forgivable here, especially given what makes this lens stand out - 126-degree field of view coverage . (2) It's hard. I have the Firefly version. I can only imagine how heavy the Blackstone version is. But really, so what? This lens is not suitable for hiking. This is a specialty lens that real estate and architecture photographers want to have in their bag along with many other heavy things. (3) a bit soft around the edges, but remember what this lens does - a 126 degree field of view. view.Conclusion: GET THIS LENS!

Pros
  • Best of its niche
Cons
  • I will add it later