Our standard advice for food photography comes in two parts. Firstly, start with great light. Second, shoot with a 50mm perspective. It's a simple equation that has proven itself over and over, and lets you focus on the creative aspects of composition and styling.
But a 50mm lens is no longer 50mm when you have an APS-C sized sensor in your camera. That image is being cropped and you end up with a "telephoto" view instead of "standard". We had just such a case on a recent workshop, where our participant was using a Nikon Zfc and wanted to know what the right lens would be for her camera.
The solution is to put a 35mm lens on the Zfc, so you're captures end up pretty close to 50mm. We did some research and saw that TT Artisan had the perfect lens for her, and at a great price.
My recent experience with the small autofocus lenses by TT were very good. I took a similar lens to the Himalayas last year, a full-frame 40mm F2, and just loved it. Very very compact design, very very affordable price tag. The image quality was fantastic, and the AF performance was good too.
Having had a chance to see this 35mm F1.8 for APS-C up close and performing on our workshop, I have no hesitation to recommend this lens. The bokeh is nice, the contrast is good and the autofocus delivers well against the capabilities of the smaller sensor. It's a great fit.
On this workshop we make very large prints of what we shoot, every day. So we got to see how well the images look from the Nikon Zfc and the TT Artisan 35mm F1.8 when enlarged to A3 size. Keep in mind that this little setup was being printed side-by-side against the LUMIX S9 full frame 24MP, and Leica SL3 6full-frame 60MP. Both of which were shooting on the Sigma 50mm F1.2. That's some heavy hitting to compare a US$125 lens against.
The results were impressive, and our Nikon shooter was ecstatic with the results she was getting. Rightly so.
TT Artisan make this lens for Fuji X-mount, Nikon Z-mount and Sony E-mount. It's beautifully compact and a great match for those smaller camera bodies. I love a fast lens, and this one is just fast enough to work some lovely bokeh.
Two thumbs up from me.
– Ewen
Sample image taken on the 35mm F1.8 and Nikon Zfc (Image by Sharon C.)
Link here to my lengthy field review of the 40mm F2 AF full-frame lens by TT Artisan:
https://ewenbell.com/blog/Full_Frame_40mm_F2_AF
Link here to the TT Artisan website for the 35mm F1.8 AF lens:
https://ttartisan.store/products/ttartisan-af-35mm-f1-8
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