Introduction
Most Chinese lens manufacturers prefer to enter the market on the value end of the food chain. However, there are a few exceptions to this. Meet Thypoch – a manufacturer that most of you probably haven’t heard of so far (not helped by the rather strange company name). They started their journey by offering lenses in Leica M mount. Leica M is a difficult ecosystem for third-party manufacturers. Consequently, Thypoch has now started to ship their lenses with the more popular mirrorless system mounts as well. One of the first lenses in Nikon Z mount is the Thypoch Simera 28mm f/1.4, which retails for $649 USD. This is quite ambitious for an all-manual lens without electronic coupling, so let’s dig to the bottom of this.
Thypoch is clearly targeting users with a tooth for vintage-style photography. And one differentiator compared to TTArtisans and the likes is the beautiful craftsmanship. The Simera 28mm f/1.4 is available both in black (as tested) and silver (not in E-mount for whatever reason). The silver version looks especially posh, as you’ll see in the following review of the 35mm f/1.4. Also reminiscent of Leica lenses, they provide a square-shaped metal lens hood, contributing to the premium feel. The focus ring turns silky smooth, and the crescent-shaped focus adjustment tab is also a nice touch. The aperture ring responds with snappy clicks, and a clickless mode is available. Do you notice the set of holes between the aperture and focus ring? When stopping down, a red marker moves up, thus changing these holes from black to red to indicate the depth-of-field. Weather sealing is not provided.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Optical construction | 11 Elements in 7 Groups (1x ED, 1x aspherical, 3x HRI) |
| Number of aperture blades | 14 |
| min. focus distance | 0.4m |
| Dimensions | φ54×72.1 mm |
| Weight | 368g |
| Filter size | φ49mm |
| Hood | square-shaped (bayonet mount, supplied) |
| Available Mounts | Nikon Z, Canon R, Sony E, Leica M, Fujifilm X |
| Other features | Active Depth-of-field indicator, Floating system (close-focus correction) |
Distortions
The Simera 28mm f/1.4 produces a mild degree of pincushion distortion (~0.7%).
As hinted above, auto-correction isn’t available – it’s an all-manual lens.
Vignetting
The vignetting characteristic is typical for such a fast wide-angle lens.
At f/1.4, the light falloff is very obvious at 2.6 EV (f-stops). Stopping down by 1 f-stop reduces this substantially, and the vignetting settles around the 1.3 EV (f-stop) mark from f/2.8 onward.
MTF (resolution) at 45 megapixels
The Simera 28mm f/1.4 has its ups and downs in this chapter. The center performance is very good at f/1.4 already. The near-image quality is still good, falling further towards the edges, which are on the soft side. f/2 boosts the quality quite a bit already, although the corners remain unimpressive. This changes at f/2.8. The center quality is outstanding here and the borders are very sharp as well. The corner recovered to good levels. The peak performance is reached around f/5.6 with the corners reaching very good results.
The center quality of the tested lens was good. The focus field is slightly wavy.
Please note that the MTF results are not directly comparable across the different systems!
Below is a simplified summary of the formal findings. The chart shows line widths per picture height (LW/PH) which can be taken as a measure of sharpness. If you want to know more about the MTF50 figures, you may check out the corresponding Imatest Explanations.
Chromatic Aberrations (CAs)
Lateral CAs are well controlled with an average pixel width of ~0.8px at the image borders at f/1.4. Stopping down reduces this further down to ~0.4px.
Bokeh
Thanks to its large aperture of f/1.4, the Thypoch lens can produce some decent object separation at moderate focus distances, so let’s check the quality of the bokeh.
Out-of-focus highlights are very nicely rendered at f/1.4. The inner zone of the discs is very clean, with no obvious outlining. Stopping down to f/2 and f/2.8 maintains the circular shape near the center at least.
The above applies to the center. When looking at the whole image field, we can observe some deterioration of the disc shape toward the edges, starting from the midfield at f/1.4. As usual, stopping down broadens the area of circular discs. The corner discs are a bit squarish at f/2 and they are mostly restored to a circular shape at f/2.8.
The smoothness of the blur in the focus transition zone is good in the more critical background – shown to the left below as usual. The foreground blur is more nervous with shadowy edges at contrast edges.
LoCA (Bokeh Fringing)
LoCAs, aka axial CAs, aka bokeh fringing, is about color fringing that is purplish front and greenish beyond the focus point. The Simera 28mm f/1.4 is only mildly corrected in this respect, and the fringing can be very noticeable at f/1.4 and f/2, as you can see below. It’s much reduced at f/2.8 and gone by f/4.
If you scroll through the aperture range below, you may also notice that the focus point moves towards the rear. Focus shifts (RSA or “Residual Spherical Aberration”) can be an issue in close-focus scenarios.
Flare
One aspect where the Simera 28mm f/1.4 struggles more than most is flare – it doesn’t like contra light, as you can see below. Admittedly, you probably won’t take such a shot in real life anyway, but keeping this in mind – and having the lens hood attached to mitigate stray light – is a good idea here.
Sun Stars
The Simera 28mm f/1.4 features no less than 14(!) aperture blades, which is normally not the best recipe for producing nice sun stars – an aperture effect at pointy bright light sources. However, this is actually not the case. The first relevant light rays appear at f/4 already, and they are pretty nice and pointy at f/8, which is very “early”. As so often, the nicest setting is still f/16.
Sample Images
If you want to download full-size images, click on the “view” link in the image preview or access the gallery directly by clicking on the lens name link below.
The Thypoch Simera 28mm f/1.4 Z is certainly not a mainstream lens. Its lack of electronic coupling—no AF, EXIF, or camera-controlled aperture—simply limits the target market.
While the lens has its weaknesses, it also has merits. Interestingly, the Simera 28mm f/1.4 Z sticks to what some consider a quite typical 3D pop recipe - comparatively few elements, just one ED element, and a high element/group ratio. I will leave it to our readers to determine this based on our sample gallery. In purely technical terms, the lens is usable at f/1.4 if your main subject is near the image center. However, the corners are soft at this setting and the overall contrast is somewhat subdued. Stopping down the f/2 helps to boost the image contrast quite a bit. For good results, you should stop down to f/2.8, and it touches excellence around the f/5.6 mark. The vignetting is high at f/1.4 but quite well controlled from f/2.8. Image distortions and CAs are quite negligible. The quality of the bokeh is very good for a lens in this class, and sun stars are nicely rendered. On the downside, flare can be very obvious in contra-light scenes, and LoCA/bokeh fringing can be an issue at closer focus distances, at least. Also check your focus in magnified view due to RSAs.
If you appreciate great build quality, you will like the Thypoch Simera 28mm f/1.4 Z. The lens body is fully made of metal, and the quality of the imprints shows a nice attention to detail. The focus ring is buttery smooth, and the click-action of the aperture rings feels premium. The Leica-style square-shaped lens hood feels special as well. At least out of the box, it feels pretty much comparable to a Voigtlander lens, for instance.
Overall the Thypoch Simera 28mm f/1.4 is a decent performer and if you are into video or enjoy vintage-style photography, it could be worthwhile.
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Optical Quality
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Build Quality
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Price / Performance