Meike 50 f/1.2 Full-Frame Lens Review

50mm is one of the classic focal lengths because it's so versatile for a fixed focal length prime lens. It can be wide if you back up in an open space and telephoto if you move in closer OR use the fancy APS-C Super 35 crop mode with high-resolution sensors like what's on the new Sony A7IV. Now it's like a 75mm lens.

Today we're taking a look at the Meike 50mm 1.2 stills lens, which of course, I'm also going to use for video. It's a premium, budget-friendly 50 that you might not have heard of. The version I have is for Full frame Sony cameras. If you're up for the challenge to go all manual, the lens has a lot of character. If you’re interested in learning more about it or purchasing, here is the amazon link -

https://geni.us/Meike50

Depth of Field

Apple likes to simplify shallow depth of field to call it portrait mode on the iPhone. Deep depth of field is what you're used to seeing in landscape photography, where everything is in focus. It's the area that has acceptable sharpness around the focus plane. You have a distance that's 1/3 in front of the focus plane and 2/3 behind. That's the depth of field. The three main things that affect how much is in focus are the camera sensor size, the distance from the camera to the subject, and the aperture, which is what makes this lens special. It has a huge aperture or hole that creates shallow focus when you keep it open.

Boulder Colorado Flatirons 50mm Meike 1.2 Lens — Boulder, CO with Meike 50mm 1.2

One benefit of shooting wide open is that it makes it simple to separate the subject from a busy background, which cleans up distractions. I think it also looks like abstract art when it gets super blurry. You can create bokeh balls with light sources, and yes, I think the proper way to say it is bokay, but I like bokeh, so I'm sticking to it.

By blurring out the background with a fast aperture like 1.2 or 1.4 on a 50mm, you can direct a viewer's eye to a specific part of the frame. For me, this is the part of shallow depth of field that I love the most - being able to direct the attention within a frame of the audience's eyes.

Another pro tip is to use a lens like this Meike 50 1.2 to create shots that work great to put a title graphic on a video or maybe even a YouTube thumbnail. Just find a medium grey or darker region, compose that background, so you have negative space for a bright graphic, and blur the crap out of it with f/1.2.

Low Light

Another inherent effect of using this 50mm f/1.2 lens is that it's fantastic for use in low-light environments. It has to do with the logarithmic nature of light falling off and the physics of how aperture works. This 2.8 g master lens is good at low light, but at 1.2 with the Meike, that's actually 2 and 1/3 stops faster. And each f stop doubles the amount of light, so we are talking about 2.33 squared, which is over five times the amount of light that can hit the sensor. This thing sucks up a lot of light!

In practice, that means you could go from needing to shoot at ISO 4000 down to ISO 800 to give you the same exposure but with much less noise. It will be a cleaner image even with keeping your shutter speed the same. And since you can't always control how much light you have to work with, it's great to have a big chunk of good glass handy.

Build Quality & Specs

The lens is all metal. Meike put a red ring around it, which reminds me of Canon L series glass, but this one is blinged out with a bit of shine. There are no electronics. It's all manual.

It has a very smooth de-clicked aperture ring, which is nice if you're filming video and you want to smoothly change how bright a shot is. Still, the smooth aperture ring can also be a downside if you need to match another camera angle's settings because it's hard to tell the exact f stop you're parked at. The aperture goes from 1.2 wide open with several marks on the wide-open end of the lens and can stop down to f/22 for when you want everything on the planet in focus.

The closest you can focus the lens is .6 meters which is basically 2 feet, so you won't get big macro shots, but you can always use the APS-C mode or crop it later in post to bring unique new perspectives on objects. If you shoot at f/1.2 at this close focus distance, there is only 1/2 an inch of depth of field, so regardless it will look abstract and dreamy.

The focus ring is also smooth and rotates around 90 degrees from close focus to infinity. As a filmmaker, I would prefer this focus throw to go further, so it takes more of a rotation to get critical focus. A slight movement is a considerable change in the focal plane with this lens. I should note there are focus distance markings in both feet and meters on the lens, which are not common to find on autofocus lenses these days, which is very helpful when you want to shoot at a hyperfocal distance for street photography.

The lens comes with a hood, which might prevent some flares, but I like to use hoods instead of protective UV filters to protect the lens's front element. I've accidentally tossed one of my first DSLRs, pulling it out of my trunk, running to a shoot with a loose strap, and had a Canon 50 1.4 lens with the hood on it. The camera hit the pavement after flying 10 feet across a parking lot, and the only damage was some scratches on the lens hood and battery grip.

The lens is 72mm long, which is about the length of a Samsung T7 SSD, and weighs 620 grams.

Overall the lens build quality feels very premium and balances excellent in your hand on a Sony Full Frame camera like this A7IV.

All Manual Lens

Because this is 100% a manual lens, it will force you to learn the exposure triangle of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO and use the camera's built-in light meter. When shooting photos in manual mode, I generally shoot at around 1/200th of a second shutter speed to freeze most moderate action and eliminate handheld camera shake. For sports, you should have a faster shutter speed.

Then for filming a video, I use the 180-degree shutter rule, so when I film 24 frames per second, I am using a 1/50th second shutter speed. This shutter speed gives a smooth blur that you're used to seeing in movies. One thing to consider if you are filming a video outside at 1/50th of a second, you will need to add a neutral density filter to cut down on the light even further when you open the lens up. You could quickly need as many as ten stops of ND depending on the time of day and weather.

Having these set shutter speeds helps simplify things because I'm only balancing aperture for how blurry I want the background against the ISO, which is how sensitive the sensor is to get a proper exposure.

A couple of Sony camera settings make using an all manual lens a little easier.

First, since there is no image stabilization in the lens itself, it is super helpful to use SteadyShot's sensor stabilization in the camera. But the trick is that you need to tell the camera what focal length is attached to work correctly. To manually set this, go to the Menu - Shooting tab - Image Stabilization - SteadyShot Adjust - Manual - and set the focal length to 50mm. The SteadyShot focal length will show in the main display once you turn it on to either standard or, if your camera has it, active (which is ideal for video work). Remember when you change lenses back to one with electronics to set this to automatic.

One thing that's worth pointing out is there is no sony catalyst browse gyro data for video clips with this lens since there are no electronics.

The next features the Sony cameras have will help perfect your manual focus. You want to have a button set to do focus magnification to punch into the frame in your viewfinder and then turn on Focus Peaking. Focus peaking highlights the sharp edges with a color. I have mine set to red, but you can also pick yellow, blue, or white. And if you use these two features in combination, I would use focus peaking set to high to really get critical sharp focus with shallow depth of field. It's not a fast process, but it gives you the perfect detail where you want it.

For filming a video with manual focus, a pro tip is to start your video shot on your subject with it all dialed in, then move the camera away from it. Then in post-production, you can reverse the clip in DaVinci Resolve or your editing app of choice.

You might know the A7IV has a cool new feature for focus breathing compensation and a focus map to use instead of focus peaking, but neither of these work with all manual lenses like the Meike 50 1.2

Sharpness

To test the sharpness of the Meike 50 1.2, I took what Mark Rober calls a boring iPad made out of trees, taped it to the wall, and shot at all the different f stops at ISO 100. Therefore I only changed the f stop and shutter speed to maintain exposure and put the camera on a delayed timer, on a tripod to get the most accurate results.

Click the images below to download the full resolution extra-fine jpegs created in-camera.

Meike 50mm 1.2 Lens Sharpness — Meike 50mm 1.2 at f/1.2 - Click to Download Full Resolution File

Meike 50mm 1.2 at f/1.8 Newspaper Test — Meike 50mm 1.2 at f/1.8 - Click to Download Full Resolution File

The sweet spot to get the most detail on most lenses is to stop it down. Close the hole down 2 to 3 stops. But I found by the time you get to f/1.8 that the lens is very sharp.

Sharpness on any lens is always the best in the middle of the frame, and so everyone always looks to the corners, so we will do that, but guess what? I never put my subject in the extreme corners, so I don't care if it's not sharp out on the edge of the frame.

I also couldn't resist doing the same thing outside on a wall to confirm those results with a little more distance.

Meike 50mm 1.2 at f/1.8 - Click to Download Full Resolution File

Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic aberration is when the light can't entirely focus on high contrast areas, and you end up with colors, usually purple, that didn't exist when you shot the image. One type can be fixed easily in post with a checkbox in Adobe Lightroom. Still, the other type they call LOCA, longitudinal chromatic aberration, is trickier to remove because it happens on different planes of focus.

The thing to remember is most folks gunk up their images anyway with artistic intent, so regardless of how much CA a lens has, it's minuscule compared to the Instagram filters most iPhone photographers slap on an image.

Flare

The lens certainly does flare even though it uses some multi-coating, but I view that as a fun part of the character that makes this lens unique. Point it to a bright light or the sun, and yeah, it will flare, and this is what that looks like.

If you don't want to see the flare, don't backlight your subject; however, if you want an image with more depth and to look filmic (notice I didn't say cinematic). Always backlight when you have the opportunity. It just looks cooler to see the shadows in front to define a shape.

Cons

The first thing I had trouble with was letting go of some lens muscle memory. On my sony lenses, the focus is in the same spot that the aperture ring is on the Meike. So when I think I'm going to grab the focus, I'm actually changing exposure which slows me down as I learn that the focus ring is actually closer to me like the zoom ring on this 16-35.

The other most significant opportunity to explore unmet potential is the throw on the focus ring. I want to turn the focus more for minor adjustments to nail in a focus pull at f/1.2. Maybe the cinema lenses for Meike have more distance to travel? This is really only a negative for shooting video, and yes, this was designed as a stills lens.

The last couple of cons are pretty minor. There is no weather sealing, so cover your camera if you're in bad weather and there is no built-in stabilization, so make sure you are using it with a camera that has sensor stabilization or have it on a tripod.

Who's it for?

I think for video, this can make an excellent lens for filming interviews, but I would stop it down to at least 1.8 and maybe even more if your subject moves very much. But I think it's great for anyone that wants a unique, perhaps less clinically correct, sort of retro artistic vibe to the images they create. The image quality is excellent.

It's perfect for photography and cinematography students looking for their first manual lens to learn how to control exposure, depth of field, and composition.

It's for someone who doesn't mind slowing down a little to craft images that match their vision. Sometimes automatic features get in the way of our own creativity. This lens takes you back to the basics, so while I wouldn't use this to cover a one-time-only event that needs a ton of coverage of moving pieces, I wouldn't hesitate to take it on a photo walk or film some specific b-roll with it.

Now, it's incredible for the price, which is around $360 in the US. The Sony G master 1.2 costs more than four times this Meike lens. Sure the Sony GM lens is terrific, and you generally get what you pay for, but the Sony GM might not be for everyone's budget, certainly not mine right now.

Good glass doesn't change, or age and the Meike will be one of those timeless bits of kit you'll be glad you have ready for those right moments. So even if you don't plan to use this one all the time, it will be a good investment for many years to come.