Arsat Arax Photex

[iND]

Arsat Arax Photex 35mm f/2.8 Tilt Shift Lens for Canon EOS


I'm looking at this as an entry lens into the Tilt Shift world.

Anyone have experience with this lens manufacturer?

Thanks

[Dr Croubie]

I've had a fair bit, and I could give you a really detailed rundown of the entire Ukrainian lens-making industry if you want (and if i had time).

In short, they're not bad, but they're not great. The Arsenal factory in the Ukraine, along with a few others (like kmz, gomz etc), produced Medium format cameras (kiev 60 is a ripoff of the east-german Pentacon six, kiev88 is a ripoff of the Hasselblad 1000), and lenses (mostly designs stolen from the Zeiss Jena factory after WW2). Generally the lenses were very good optically (being zeiss designs), but coatings not the best and QC was worse than SigRon on a very bad day. Companies like Hartblei took all of those shoddy-quality lenses and bodies, re-worked them, QCed them, put their own badges on them, and sold them for higher prices (but at least you knew you were getting something decent). Hartblei also came up with the superrotator, taking MF lenses with MF flange-distances and image circles, putting 35mm lens-mounts on them, decent T/S mechanics with independent tilt/shift rotations (years before the 24L II), and selling them for under $1000. A guy called Stefan split Hartblei up, took the good half to Germany, went into partnership with Zeiss, and now still makes superrotators for $5000 each.
This Arax t/s is unfortunately not a superrotator. Araxfoto does pretty much the same thing though, takes the MF lens designs and turns them into t/s lenses. The 35mm is a bit different, there was never a 35mm MF lens (except for 30mm fisheye), so it's not a zeiss ripoff design, they designed it themselves (for whatever that's worth. I'm not sure if it has fully independent rotations for everything though. There's a review here if you haven't already read it. Centres look sharp from f/5.6, corners at f/8. So in comparison to the TS-E 24 L II, it's a fraction of the price but it's nowhere near the quality either.
One word about the price, the araxfoto website has them for $700. If you're patient you can find someone selling one second-hand on ebay and it might go for closer to $2-300. You can also get second-hand superrotators for about the same price (if you wait long enough), that's where I'd be putting my money.

Given that Samyang are also know to do really good optics, and they're about to release a TS 24mm, I'd be waiting on reviews of them as well before dropping more than a few hundred (The samyang will probably be about $1-1200, but should be worth the upgrade from the arax)

[Sean Setters]

That was a wonderfully insightful post. Thanks Dr Croubie.

[Dr Croubie]

That was a wonderfully insightful post. Thanks Dr Croubie.

No Problem (and that was the short version).
I think the interesting thing is that Arax designed this 35mm themselves, which I didn't even know until today when I read it on their website.
Their 80mm (and the original 45/80/120mm superrotators) were all straight MF glass and a new mount, so much better quality. Like the 80mm MF standards, biometar/planar in zeiss and the vega/volna ripoffs are supersharp (as a standard lens length they beat the pants off any canon 50mm). So they're perfect for macro/product photography, but not wide enough for landscapes and architecture where t/s is also very handy.

I may have said it before, that I get paid waaay too much for the amount of work I actually do, which results in me being able to research any number of cameras from all points of the world, and afford to buy them to play around with for a while until I get bored of them (still, it's nothing compared to what some guys around here spend on L-glass). I've just recently started getting into rangefinders (the leica/zeiss/contax originals, their soviet kiev ripoffs, and their japanese cosina reincarnations) if anyone needs any info on them any time... I've got a Bessa L in the post, and a set of 35/50/135 Schneider Kodak-Retina glass also coming. That's an interesting one, a rangefinder lens that you can mount to M42 (and EF by adapter). Maybe I might have a new pancake walkaround instead of my 40mm (although i doubt it, i love my shorty).


Anyway, thinking more about the the upcoming Samyang, I'm totally guessing with reading no reviews, and before it's even been released. But I reckon a Samyang 24 on a 7D will give you better images than an Arax on a 5D (mk2or3) for about the same FOV (and almost same price, too). But that's just going on the wonderful quality of Samyang that i've seen so far, maybe they'll fail at TS? (I don't think so. It'll be good, but maybe they'll try cash in and put the price to high for the IQ that they deliver?)