Meike 50mm 0.95 review: a very unique lens

[BFR]

Hello everyone.

I want to share my experience of the Meike 50mm 0.95, which I find a very unique and interesting lens. Here is my review with some samples to show its performance.

Introduction
The Meike 50mm 0.95 is a manual lens for APS-C. It is available in different mounts (E/ X/ M43/ EFM/ Z mount). I own the sony E mount which I use on my Sony A7IV, with the crop mode.

Construction
The construction of the lens is extremely good. It is mainly made of metal, both the body and the bayonet. The lens is very compact and solid, but lightweight for its size. It has a a non-clicking diaphragm ring located on the edge of the lens. Its focus ring is not very large, but easy and pleasant to use; The construction of the lens is, overall, excellent.

Image quality
The image quality of the Meike 50mm 0.95 is very good. Its sweet spot is at around f2, where the sharpness in the centre of the frame is very good, and noticeable in the corners. But also at 0.95 the lens is still sharp. Actually, it is at that aperture where it shows a unique character that I will talk about later. Regarding the flares, they appear frequently in the presence of direct light sources. But they do not ruin the photos at all. In fact, we can get nice flares when shooting in the presence of the sun, so it is a very interesting feature to use on artistic shots. Chromatic aberration and distortion are present, but I do not find them a big deal, especially if we consider the price of the lens. So, overall, the image quality of the lens is very good.

The bokeh
As said before, the 0.95 Meike’s aperture is what makes this lens unique. Wide open, and up to f2, we get an incredibly soft, creamy, special, and beautiful bokeh. So if we manage to focus the subject properly, which is challenging, we will get a very good isolation of the subject which makes the lens perfect for portraiture, product, street or even macro-kind of photography.

Use
I would say that the Meike 50mm 0.95 has all good characteristics to be a very interesting portraiture dedicated lens. Its focal length, together with its extremely wide aperture, makes it a very interesting piece of gear for this field. Although it is challenging to focus at f0.95 manually (especially if the subject moves), it allows us to isolate subjects very well getting a special and dreamy out of focus background. At the same time, that extremely wide aperture makes the lens very good to shoot in low light conditions. All that, together with that mentioned special character that it has, makes the lens a very good option for portrait sessions and social acts as weddings, for example.

Conclusion
The Meike 50mm 0.95 is a unique lens. It’s wide aperture, together with a special character, makes the lens a very good option for those who look for a 50mm manual portrait lens at a budget price. I personally think that is more interesting than its competitors (ex: 7artisans, TTartisan) for its superior image and built quality, character, but also for its compactness at a very similar price.

I bought it to Skymeedirect, through amazon: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0B2W2NYXW?ref=myi_title_dp

Here you can see some samples: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67516065

Regards