ZY Optics Launches 17mm Speedmaster

2020.09.16

ZY Optics expanded their series of extremely bright lenses this morning with the new Mitakon Speedmaster 17mm F/0.95. This lens exclusively designed for the Micro Four-Thirds mirrorless platform provides a normal field-of-view of 65% comparable to a 35mm lens mounted on a Full-Frame camera. It is by far the widest focal-length available with a lens brighter than F/1.2 and provides the depth-of-field of a F/1.8 lens when accounting for the 2X Four-Thirds crop-factor.

For an extremely bright lens, the Mitakon Speedmaster 17mm F/0.95 is exceptionally compact and manages a very reasonable weight for 461g or just over one pound. It takes a lot of glass to accumulate so much light and focus it. The rest of the lens is mostly made of metal with a plastic manual focus-ring. Like all current ZY Optics lenses, this is a completely manual lens which requires manual focusing and setting the aperture directly on the lens.

The focus ring has a wide throw for the extra precision needed to focus such narrow depth-of-field. Although the aperture ring is marked in full-stops, it can scale the iris smoothly from F/0.95 to F/16. There are no steps or detents throughout the aperture-range which is helpful during video recording when stops might cause jitters or sound to be captured.

ZY Optics include an unusual even 8-blade aperture ring in their Speedmaster 17mm F/0.95. This will render sunstars with fewer spikes that most cameras as even blades overlap each other. Although unlikely to be used on such an extremely bright lens, there is a 58mm filter-thread at the front.

This lens is scheduled to be imminently available. Both Adorama and B&H Photo are ready to accept preorders for around $400 USD. Canadian pricing has not been announced yet but these reputable affiliates of ours ship to Canada and many international locations.

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