Zonlai 22mm F1.8 APS-C Wide Angle Manual Fixed Lens for Fuji X Mount Cameras Like X-A1 X-A10 X-A2 X-A3 X-AT X-M1 XM2 X-T1 X-T10 X-T2 X-T20 X-Pro1 X-Pro2 X-E1 X-E2 X-E2s X-E3 (Black)

What I mean by the headline is, this lens is really compact.I've shot with Leica lenses in the past and what really impressed apart from image quality was their neat size.Does this lens compete with Leica on image and build quality? Probably not, however given the fact that this lens costs a small fraction of what they do, you could hardly expect it to.And as regards image quality comparisons, I've given up on the whole 'pixel peeking' thing anyway.All I'm looking for is a lens that is pleasant to use and provides good quality images, and this little lens delivers in spades on both fronts.Used on an aps-c body with a 1.5 crop this 22mm has a 35mm focal length equivalent of 33mm, a very versatile focal length and ideal for street/reportage style photography among other things.The fact that it comes with a lens hood as well as front and rear caps is a bonus.So would I recommend this lens?Well put it this way....If I lost this lens tomorrow, I'd be straight back on Amazon to buy another one.

I am a fan of manual lenses, especially ones like this, that simply work without issue. I've previously reviewed other manual lenses with similar content. If you are a professional that requires the best kit for reliability of tools to get paid or you shoot fast moving objects and need AF, don't buy this lens.If you're a casual photographer with an understanding of what your trying to achieve you'll love this lens. I see my shot, set my camera for it and snap. I don't need phase detect, AF or different colour lens shells to highlight its cost (L Lenses)The lens is solid and reliable and strangely does exactly what it says it can do, capture 22mm 1.8 images which translates to 35mm with crop factor. Worth the money for sure.

Great little lens, looks great on my xpro, has a premium feel for such a low price lens

The Zonlai 22/1.8 is surprisingly sharp in the centre even at f/1.8 and focuses close to about 1:4 magnification. In terms of image quality, it is an OK lens if you don't look too close. There is some barrel distortion you might want to correct in post processing. The vignetting is quite strong at f/1.8 and is still noticeable at f/4.0. The lens is well built and handles well, except the focus ring is slightly loose and is easy to bump accidentally (which will be a problem if you are zone focusing). The hard stop for infinity focus is spot on, though the distance markings for 3 and 6 meters are noticeably off and so is the DOF scale.I returned this lens because it had a very strong field curvature which means that the area between the corners and the centre is never sharp. My copy was perfectly centred with all four corners sharping up nicely as the lens was stopped down. However, the off-centre areas of the image remained blurry. I attach a 100% crop of some tree tops that shows how sharpness changes from the centre of the frame to the edge of the frame at f/1.8 and f/4. Even at f/8 the off centre areas are still blurry, while the edges and the corners are noticeably sharper. There is no way of getting rid of this circle of blur around the centre of the image but to downsample the image to about 4-6 Mpx so this flaw is less noticeable. Any Fuji zoom is sharper at any aperture across the whole frame and is a much better choice for landscape or as a walkabout lens. I don't see the point of using the Zonlai 22/1.8 at f/4 and above if you already have a kit zoom lens.I also compared the Zonlai 22/1.8 to an old Vivitar 28/2.8 on a speedbooster, which makes it a 20/2.0 lens. The Zonlai was sharper in the centre, slightly worse off centre and much sharper in the corners, but the Vivitar had a smooth roll off of sharpness across the frame, just how one would expect a lens to behave.The speciality of the Zonlai 22/1.8 is the close up shots with shallow depth of field at f/1.8-f/2.0 when only 10% in the centre of the frame is in focus. For everything else any XC Fuji zoom (they go used for well under £100 on ebay) will do a much better job.