The Zhongyi Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm F0.95 III ($799) is the lens to get if you've always wanted to experience extremely shallow depth of field and low-light imaging, without spending thousands of dollars on a Leica Noctilux. It's one of just a few all-manual lenses of its type made today, competing with alternatives like the TTArtisan 50mm F0.95 ($755) and 7artisans 50mm F1.05 ($486). Like these others it skips autofocus, but if you're able to take the time work manually, you'll be able to capture photos with soft, pleasing backgrounds, beyond what F1.4 lenses can manage.

F0.95 for Thin Plane of Focus

The Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm F0.95 III has all the trappings of a proper manual lens. It's a purely mechanical affair, with no electronic communication, and throwback metal construction. The aluminum barrel is finished in black and includes knurled rings to set aperture and focus.

You can buy the lens for different camera systems. Mitakon markets it for Canon RF, L-Mount Alliance, Nikon Z, and Sony E mirrorless systems. Aside from the mount they're identical, and relatively slim given the ambitious f-stop. We received it in L-mount and used it with a few different cameras, incluiding the Sigma fp L for lab tests, and the Panasonic S5 and Leica SL2-S in the field.

The Speedmaster measures 3.3 by 2.9 inches (HW), weighs 1.6 pounds, and supports 67mm front filters. It ships with a zippered carrying case, front and rear lens caps, and a metal hood. There's no dust, splash, or fluorine protection—those features are unheard of in third-party manual lenses like this one—so you'll need to take a little care when working outdoors.

The focus ring turns smoothly, but it takes a little torque to move it. The barrel extends slightly when focusing close, and nearly a full 360-degree turn to move from the closest to farthest focus distance. It makes the lens better suited for slower, more deliberate work—keeping focus on a quick-moving subject is tough.

And it's not always easy to get focus spot-on when working with cooperative models and still-life scenes, especially if you're taking advantage of the F0.95 aperture. There's less contrast and the depth of field is ultra-shallow, so you need to take care and leverage in-camera focus aids to set the lens just right. There's no electronic communication with your camera, so you need to engage frame magnification and focus peaking manually. Likewise, if your camera has IBIS, you need to enter the 50mm focal length in the menu for effective stabilization.

The ability to open the iris all the way and use the lens at F0.95 sets this one apart from other fast primes. It gathers a little more than twice the light as an F1.4 lens, making it a better fit for exploring the shadows, and snapping shots with an incredibly thin slice of the world in focus.

There's a reason that one of the earliest designs of this type, the long out-of-production Canon 50mm F0.95, is referred to as a Dream Lens—it's easy to make abstract, dreamlike images with an F0.95. It's a classic with a cult following today, and one that gets real use—Zak Snyder just used an antique Canon F0.95 for the cinematography in Army of the Dead.

Aperture control is silent; the ring turns without detent stops. There's some effort needed—the ring is a little tight—but you won't have to worry about it slipping out of place.

If you're thinking about the lens for video, be aware that it does show some breathing—the effect where the angle of view blooms or shrinks as you adjust focus. It's expected given the optical design—the lens elements visibly extend for close-up focus—something to keep in mind if you love video shots where focus racks from one point to another.

The lens focuses as close as 1.6 feet (0.5m), good enough for 1:10 life-size magnification. It's well short of macro—we like to see a lens net at least half-size, 1:2 magnification to qualify, and those are typically F2.8 designs in this focal length. I couldn't focus any closer on the small leaf in the preceding image, but the lens should do a good job with the bigger, colorful leaves falling from trees in autumn.

In the Lab

To check the Speedmaster's resolution, I paired it with the 60MP Sigma fp L and Imatest software. The lab scores confirm what you can tell from images shot in the real world—the lens draws photos with a soft, dreamy quality.

Recommended by Our Editors

Sony FE 50mm F1.2 GM - Review

Nikon Nikkor Z 50mm F1.2 S - Review

Sigma 35mm F1.2 DG DN Art Review - Review

See How We Test Cameras and LensesSee How We Test Cameras and Lenses

At f/0.95, contrast at the center is low (2,500 lines), netting results without razor-crisp details. It's much better at f/1.4 (3,400 lines), very good at f/2 (4,000 lines), and excellent by f/4 (4,500 lines) and f/5.6 (5,000 lines). Off-center clarity suffers, even stopped down a bit, not surprising as Zhongyi's designers have put the emphasis on the f-stop.

Narrower f-stops are available, too. You can set the lens down to f/16, but if you're using it and want to get the best results, f/8 and f/11 are as far as you want to close the iris. At those settings we see outstanding central resolution and excellent results off-center, up to the edge of the frame.

Looking beyond resolution, the lens shows plenty of aberrations, most visibly at wider apertures. It's easy to spot longitudinal chromatic aberration (LoCA), a visual effect that introduces false magenta and green color. It's most visible if you have an image with bright reflections, especially in areas where sharp focus gives way to background blur. You can see their rainbow effect in the cobweb, pictured above.

The quality of defocused highlights is especially important for a lens like this, one that's sure to snap more shots with a blurred background than without. When working wide open at f/0.95, the highlights are round at the center of the frame, but quickly give way to an oblong cat's eye shape as you look off-center.

Closing the aperture down to f/1.4 changes the look—you'll see circular highlights through most of the frame, with slight octagonal edges, and still slightly oblong at the edges. At f/2.8 and smaller settings, the octagonal lines are more clearly defined, but highlights are more uniformly symmetrical, even at the edges of the frame.

There's some barrel distortion too, pretty common for ultra-fast 50mm lenses, and relatively modest (1.6%) here. There's a visible vignette at f/0.95 and f/1.4; photos shot at these settings are a bit darker at the edges than at center. At f/2 the effect is minimal, and it's absent when the lens is set to f/2.8 or smaller.

The F0.95 You Can Afford

There are other extra-bright primes out there if you want a lens that's optically corrected. Canon, Nikon, Sigma, and Sony all offer F1.2 primes with autofocus and world-class optics, but expect to spend more. The Sigma 35mm F1.2 Art is the most obtainable, around $1,500, while the other 50mm F1.2 lenses cross the $2,000 mark. If you must have an optically exquisite F0.95, the Leica Noctilux-M is an option, but at $12,795, not one for mere mortals.

That makes the Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm F0.95 III an especially appealing lens for photographers and cinematographers who want an ultra-fast prime for shallow-depth-of-field imagery, and it gets you there for less than a name-brand, autofocus option. It's also smaller and lighter to carry than most F1.2 autofocus lenses.

Despite its moniker, the Speedmaster rewards slow photographers who work at a deliberate pace. Manual focus at f/0.95 is tricky, so you'll have a tough time with candids and action shots. The speed refers to the aperture, one that lets you use a shorter, faster shutter speed than others. This is one for productions with actors hitting their marks, portraits of cooperative subjects, and still-life scenes.

It manages to overcome many of its foibles and technical drawbacks simply based on its charm. The shallow, slightly soft photos you can make with the Mitakon Speedmaster 50mm F0.95 III show loads of character, and the lens captures them with aplomb.