The Peargear 35mm f1.6 and the TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 are without a doubt the top two best inexpensive APS-C 35mm lenses you can buy right now.
But which one to buy?
I keep getting asked this question instead of putting my foot in my mouth with vague responses since I can’t remember off the top of my head which lens does what of the 50+ lenses I’ve reviewed.
I can at the least put together some charts to give you some clarity on the situation. These lenses all have a great character so it does come down a lot to sharpness, vignetting, distortion, and flaring. If you care a lot about sharpness and contrast there is the winner is obvious.
Note: Understand that this isn’t perfect. Usually, when I do comparisons I’ll reshoot them both under the exact same lighting setup. Since I have to pack everything away between these shoots, it’s never 100% exactly the same, and the way the light spills and potentially flares on the lens could cause slightly different results with contrast and the vignetting. However, that would take me time I don’t have right now, so the least I can do is put up the charts I have. For a quick comparison.
Table Of Contents
TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 – Amazon / Pergear
Pergear 35mm f1.6 – Amazon / Pergear
TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 vs Pergear 35mm f1.6 |Center Sharpness
TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 Center Sharpness
Overall pretty good. The blacks aren’t super black like they are with the Pergear.
Pergear 35mm f1.6 Center Sharpness
Very good results. Blacks are very black with very good contrast here. I’m curious if there was some light spill on the TTArtisan sample. The edges in the details are just slightly crisper with this lens.
Pergear 35mm f1.2 Center Sharpness
I’ll include the Pergear 35mm f1.2 as well. Unfortunately, it was shot on an older chart with the X-T2 with different lights. The chart was printed with laser so I’m not sure how the contrast compares. At least it will give you an idea of the details. Better than nothing.
Winner – Pergear 35mm f1.6
It’s pretty close but the Pergear 35mm f1.6 is a touch sharper. Not only that it has slightly better contrast.
Actually, all the Pergear lenses, the 25, the 35mm f1.6, and the 50mm are all really sharp.
Sample was taken at f2.
MidFrame Sharpness
Understand that a lot of these lenses will have good and bad spots mid-frames in slightly different positions. Moving a few inches over on the chart could produce different results.
TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 MidFrame Sharpness
It’s a little softer at f1.4, f2 is pretty good and v2.8 is overall very nice.
Pergear 35mm f1.6 Midframe Sharpness
f1.6 midframe is pretty close to the TTArtisan at f2. After that, the TTArtisan is a little nicer overall.
Pergear 35mm f1.2 Midframe Sharpness
I don’t have an exact 1:1 for this chart. But you can see it doesn’t really perform very well until about f4.
Winner – Pretty Close
It’s pretty close depending on where you look. Still, the contrast is a little nicer on the Pergear.
Corner Sharpness
I want to say quickly, that these corner charts are taken from the extreme corners if you back off a little the TTArtisan does improve a little bit.
TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 Corner Sharpness
The TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 is not that sharp in the extreme corners unless stopped down to f4 or f5.6.
However, vignetting is really only bad at f1.4. It clears up nicely by f2.8
Obviously, you will want to verify to see if these results are similar to other reviews as I can never know how good my copy is and what is supposed to be baseline performance.
If you back off from the extreme corners the TTArtisan 35mm does improve quite a bit. It just seems those outer corners pinch out with pretty aggressive field curvature.
Pergear 35mm f1.6 Corner Sharpness
The Pergear35mm f1.6 is surprisingly sharp in the corners. I was not expecting this at all, but there is a lot of vignetting as you can see how dark it’s gotten.
Pergear 35mm f1.2 Corner Sharpness
The Pergear 35mm f1.2 appears to be slightly sharper in the corners compared to the TTArtisan 35mm f1.4. I was not expecting this. I knew this lens was awesome too.
Winner – Pergear 35mm f1.6
It appears this little Pergear lens is better than I was expecting when it comes to sharpness. The 50mm didn’t perform quite like this in the corners. But also, now that we have all the carts side by side, the Pergear 35mm f1.2 is looking surprisingly good.
Here is a corner comparison at f2.
Edge Sharpness
TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 Edge Sharpness
The TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 is a little soft in the edges. It improves by about f2.8 and f4.
Pergear 35mm f1.6 Edge Sharpness
The Pergear performs very well in the edges even at f1.6.
Pergear 35mm f1.2 Edge Sharpness
Pergear 35mm f1.2 is a little sloppy in the edges. The TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 consistently outperforms it. Again, my lighting was different with this 35mf12 chart, so it’s not a perfect comparison. But we can still see there is a bit more strange aspherical things going on here.
Winner – Pergear 35mm f1.6
Again the Pergear just pulled in the details better with more clarity.
Sharpness | The Winner Is
Winner: Pergear 35mm f1.6
As to be expected the slower lens has the best performance when it comes to overall sharpness scores.
Distortion | The Winner Is
Winner: Pergear 35mm f1.6
The Pergear again is the winner when it comes to distortion. Both have a slight barrel distortion, but the Pergear controls it a little bit better.
Vignetting | The Winner Is
Winner: TTArtisan 35mm f1.4
The TTArtisan does have some minor vignetting and it clears up pretty quickly as you stop down, whereas the Pergear gives you some vignetting even at f2.8.
The TTArtisan vignetting is also a little more even and you don’t notice it as much.
With regards to the Pergear 35mm f1.2, it’s a pretty good lens. Better in some areas than the TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 like with corner, sharpness, but each lens improves overall in sharpness the slower they are.
Flaring | The Winner Is
TTArtisan 35mm f1.4
This is one of the big reasons why I kind of think the TTartisan 35mm f1.4 is better for a lot of people. Sometimes the crazy flaring can be hard to deal with with the Pergear. It sort of makes it a special lens that you will need to be careful about how you use it, whereas the TTArtisan, even though less sharp, will always produce a clean image.
Pergear 35mm f1.6 vs TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 | Bottom Line
My personal take. Both lenses are nice. I like the clickable aperture ring on the TTArtisan lens, and the even vignetting makes the image feel a little cleaner when wide open, but that comes at the cost of sharpness.
Overall technical characteristics are better on the Pergear although it does flare quite a bit more which you will need to manage if that is something you do not like.
When looking at detail, they both produce pretty close to the same results when looking at the center or midframe, but the Pergear is overall a little cleaner wide open, and at f2.
With there only being a fraction of a stop difference, which lens do you prefer?
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How does the two lenses compare with the 7artisans 35mm 1.4 mark II? I need to choose between the 3.
I don’t have the 35mm f1.4 II so I don’t know for sure, but I will say all the updated 7Artisan lenses have really nice build quality, definitely better than the Pergear.
If the 7Artisans 35mm f1.4 is similar to the Meike 35mm f1.4, I didn’t love that lens. It’s a little too compact for being that fast and the rendering wasn’t something I was in love with. I generally liked the slightly slower lenses if they are going to be very compact, or if it’s a 35mm f1.4 I prefer they’re a little bigger design like the TTartisans, it helps with the rendering having larger designs. Unless 7Artisans did something crazy with new aspherical elements, which I don’t think they did, it looks like it’s still just a classic double Gaussian structure.
But I would probably lean towards the TTartisans or the 7Artisans unless you want a lot of that classic amber flaring that the Pergear lens does. I like the Pergear lenses specifically for that effect.
I’ve gotten the Pergear 35mm f/1.6 straight from Pergear this week and my copy – just as Christopher Frost’s (YouTube) suffers from abysmal field curvature. Oh, it’s sharp alright, even in the corners wide open, but you can never get both the center and the corners in focus, even if you stop it down to f/8 or f/11.
I got this lens after seeing the test charts of yours and Marc Alhadeff (SonyAlphaBlog) where corners looked fined, especially stopped down and there was no word on field curvature. But then I saw the review of Christopher and tested my unit and lo, and behold, neither of us got the results as you and Marc did. My copy has the same issues and can be clearly seen in Chris’ review – field curvature so strong you can only shoot creative portraits with this lens, that’s it. Very weird – could it be sample variation? I always imagined field curvature is a trait you have to nip in the bud in the design stage and a loose element due to poor QC wouldn’t cause it, but hey, maybe I’m wrong?
This is just a QC issue. A lot of the third-party brands don’t do any optical QC, or they do, and the elements slip out during shipping. Probably 30-40% of my Voigtlander/Cosina Zeiss lenses over the last few years have had to be returned and swapped out for these issues.
This is something I do a lot. I mention it in many reviews but haven’t gotten a bad TTArtisan lens. All the Pergear lenses I have are good, except they sent me a 12mm lens with elements out of alignment.
If you’re buying premium lenses from big brands, you can get a stable lens. But even my Nikon 35mm f1.8 S lens is way softer than it should be; I never knew when I got it because I only had a Z6 and had nothing else to compare them to on that system.
But generally, give a lens a good run-through when you first buy it, and if it has issues that make it unusable, you should send it back.