Irix Ultra Wide-Angle Lens Firefly 15 mm f2 – Lens quality good image not

January 30, 2020

Irix Ultra Wide-Angle Lens Firefly 15 mm f2 – Lens quality good image not

Purchased this from camarthen cameras via amazon, arrived on time and as advertised. I am not going to write an in depth technical review of this lens, other people have already done that and i found nothing to disagree with in their largely favourable conclusions. In short it is very good value for money and produces excellent pin sharp vibrant images. Obviously it doesn’t have autofocus so if you plan to shoot moving subjects with a wide angle look elsewhere. I bought this lens because i wanted a good quality full frame wide angle lens for occasional landscape photography. Since i have to carry it i wanted small and light, which this just about is. I use it on a nikon d750 camera. The metering works well on the d750 giving nicely exposed images. The manual focus is smooth and if you use live view, and fully zoom in to focus you can get pin sharp pictures pretty much edge to edge. You do get some vignetting, but in real world it doesn’t matter unless you plan on shooting architecture wide open.

Love it, love it, love itsharp as a tack even when wide open and very little distortion – what else can you want from a lens?the focus ring feels solid and smooth. With the addition of a raised lever type bit on it, it’s easy to operate to a high level of accuracy. There’s a focus locking ring too but that’s a little harder to operate as it is sandwiched between the lens hood and focus ring – my fingers feel like they’re likely to be moving the focus ring whilst i apply the lock. Kinda the opposite of its purpose. But it’s not really a problem – if you really needed to lock the focus off i’m sure you could with a bit of care. The packaging it arrived in was very fancy but probably overkill – knock five quid off the price and do away with the irix biscuit tin – i’m not going to use it, everi wondered about getting the metal version of this but went for the cheaper plastic version. It doesn’t feel cheap or look cheap or perform cheaply so i think it was the right choice. I really can’t complain about the look or feel of the materials. Treat the lens with a little respect and i don’t see why it won’t last decades. I’m sure there’s a good reason for it but the 95mm filter thread seems unnecessarily large.

I was very pleasantly surprised with this lens it is very sharp in the middle wide open and stopping down to f4 and all the way through to f16 it is very sharp edge to edge. My favorite landscape lens for quite a few years has been the nikon 16-35 vr f4 lens which is lovely and sharp but the irex is a lot sharper especially on the extreme edges,yes it is a prime lens and should in theory be sharper than the zoom but the difference is much more than i expected. The build quality is superb,the little extras like depth of field scale and the ability to use screw on filters make this a wonderful wide angle lens.

If you can live with manual focus, this has to be the least distorted & sharpest wide-angle lens available for nikon full-frame shooters currently available at an affordable price. It is much sharper & less distorted than my nikon 16-36mm f/4 is at the wide end.

Delivered promptly and top quality, well worth the price.

I was looking for a wide angle lens for my full frame camera and this one was suggested. Reading the reviews most said it was ‘pin sharp’ but i was disappointed with the sharpness. I tried it against my standard lens which was not the same focal length and the quality was nowhere near as good; so i returned it. It was straight forward to us once i had taken a couple of photos. The lens itself was of a good quality and was not to heavy. The lens hood was a tight fit and i found i had to squash it slightly in one area to remove it. Some of the reviews i read before purchase said there was a variation in quality and i may just have received a substandard one. I did not want to keep buying and returning the lenses until i found one i liked as i may never get a better one and according to posts on the web i could be banned by amazon for too many returns.

The focus ring has a nice feel, not being sloppy and the outer ring
A big surprise
Big bang for your buck

This is a fine lens, which fully matches the reviews i had read before ordering. However it is enormous and heavy – much too much so, i am afraid. I returned it and bought the voigtlander equivalent.

I have an old nikon d5200 and wanted a lens for use with astro-photography. I spent ages looking at lens reviews but was put off by the 5 star/1 star reviews of the samyang and it’s rebadged versions. The samyang seems to suffer on soft edges and incorrect focus markings (infinity not being infinity)i looked at reviews about the irix and have seen stunning shots by local photographers. I was put off by it not being autofocus but i shouldn’t have worried, particularly as i am a landscape photographer so tend to only need infinity focus. The lens arrives in a very fancy white box. Taking off the lid and the lens is perfectly packaged to stop it banging around. The lens comes with a soft bag, lens caps and lens hood. It looks and feels well-made particularly next to the plastic, cheapo kit lens. Initially a bit stiff to put onto the camera, but this has eased. The focus ring has a nice feel, not being sloppy and the outer ring can lock the focus ring so it doesn’t accidently move.

Features of Irix Ultra Wide-Angle Lens Firefly 15 mm f2,4 (95 mm Filter Thread Full Size, Extremely Light Weight, optimised Lens Focus Ring)

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Irix Lens for Nikon DSLR Cameras 15mm Focal Length F/2.4 – F/22 Aperture Range 35mm Full Frame Image Size 9 Rounded Aperture Blades Weight (g) = 608