In these dark times, with a pandemic in most of the world, I am blessed living in a country with fairly light restrictions and a virus that is almost under control. At least on paper…. At the moment Denmark is reopening a bit, the smallest children going back to school, people are allowed to go out in the parks (max 10 persons in groups), and we are allowed to do sport alone, like running and cycling. And we are also allowed to go out to photograph. We are lucky I guess. I hope the situation is not getting worse again.
In boredom, we often do the strangest things. Like ordering goods online. And so did I. Found a new Meike lens, cheap on Amazon. The 25mm f/1.8. A full manual lens, that gives a focal length about 37mm (full frame eq) on my Fuji cameras. And my favorite focal lengths for street and daily life documentation has always been 40mm and 28mm. So I gave it a try. And 64 Euros are not exactly expensive, for a lens.
So I asked my good friend and great photographer Peter Kirkeskov, if we should meet an afternoon in Copenhagen. In good distance of course. The situation cannot be taken serious enough! He accepted – and he also had a new toy to test out. The Noblex Pro 150 analog panorama camera. I will put a link to his blog in the comments, if he decides to publish any of his work. A very interesting camera!
So did the lens work, and was the image quality ok? That was to find out. You can see the results below. All images are post processed in Lightroom CC to my likings. What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment below!
My own thought are, yes this is actually a great lens for the price. It has its own personality. And faults. A big vignetting full open (can easily be corrected in Lightroom), not as sharp as the Fuji lenses in the corners – but still sharp. The aperture ring has no click stops – this is actually my biggest complain with the lens. The focus ring can be moved way over infinity, so everything becomes out of focus.
But with that said, you can overcome all these things. And for me it has personality. A nice analog like bokeh and is very fun and creative to use. For the price, the creativeness in use and for the fun factor (and the fantastic look on the Fuji cameras) I would recommend this lens. Are there better lenses out there? Yes of course. But maybe not for that price!
Take care out there, and stay safe and in a distance! And don’t forget to be creative. It is medicine in these times.
You can see more of my work here:
Jan Jespersen Photography - Blog 
Lovely work Jan. Happy to hear photographers are slowly coming back to their walks. Here in France we still have a couple of weeks to go at least.
Thank you Yuri! Hope everything turns out well for you and hopefully you can go out in the streets soon! And hopefully we can visit France again in the near future. So hard times for sure. Stay healthy!
Many thanks Jan. I think the last couple of weeks are going to be hard for everyone. I see more and more people on weekday afternoons…the world will never be the same no matter what… Take care!