7 Artisans UFO Lens: Street Photography with the Most Expensive Camera Cover I’ve Ever Bought

In all honesty, I can’t remember ever buying a camera cover. Anyway, now I have this so-called UFO lying here. Pancake lenses are familiar to me, but flying objects as lenses are new to me.

My original plan was actually to buy the Fujinon 18mm F2.0 WR, but it failed because of the price. Since I would like to work mostly manually with the 18mm, I got the idea to look for a used Minolta Rokkor and then adapt it to my Fuji X-Pro 2. Unfortunately, the Minolta lenses with the corresponding focal length are traded around 300 €. So I had to look for an alternative.

Then I came across the UFO lens from 7Artisans at a large online retailer. With a street price of around € 80 you can’t go wrong, so I just ordered the lens.

The first impression when it arrived was consistently positive. It appears to be made entirely of metal. The silly Roman numbers on the lens bother me less than I initially feared. With a fixed aperture of 6.3 it won’t be of much use for night photography, but that’s not what I bought it for. I wanted a focal length that I like so much about the Ricoh GR. With 18mm and an aperture of 6.3 you have a large depth of field, so you can work without an autofocus. Except for the shutter speed and ISO, you don’t have to set anything and you can take photos relaxed.

The image quality of the lens is of course not as outstanding as with an expensive lens, but I didn’t expect that at all. The colors, the sharpness and also the strong vignetting are fine for me. Overall, I like the look very much. It looks a bit vintage, which I like anyway.

The lens will certainly not be my “always on”, but every now and then I will go out with it and have fun. Since there is space for the lens in every jacket pocket, you can at least take it with you wherever you go.

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