Sirui 35mm f/1.8

• Anamorphic Lens by Sirui
• Single Focus : Synchro Focus
• Mount: E, MFT, EF-M, Z, RF, L

I’m absolutely mindblown that Sirui could put together not only one revolutionary anamorphic lens like no one has done before, but TWO of them in less than a year! The 50mm was pretty neat and since we, the people, clamored for something wider, they delivered a 35mm! Same as the 50, if you’re craving for more anamorphics in your life, this is definitely worth investing in.

Considering the 50mm was Sirui’s first venture into big camera lenses, they’re taking this in stride on the 35mm. Both lenses are pretty much the same size, although the 35mm is bulkier, at 700g.

Filter threads are the same, 67mm, and they also listened to our requests for video shooting, since this 35mm comes with a pair of gears for focus and aperture. They’re super neat and get a great grip on the body. It’s definitely a good sign to see that they’re listening to their customers and reviewers.

Moving on, aperture ranges from f/1.8 (crazy!) to f/16 and the focus ring has 180 degrees of throw, with witness marks for both meters and feet. Minimum focus is the same as the 50mm, sitting at 85cm or 2.8ft which is a bit too far out for a 35mm, but I can see why they wouldn’t focus any closer at the expense of even less anamorphic squeeze. If they keep working on other focal lengths, my bet is that minimum focus won’t change on them either.

If you’re landing here without much prior anamorphic knowledge, many anamorphics see reduced squeeze factor when approaching minimum focus. This one for example is marked for 1.33x, but that’s only at infinity. At minimum focus we’re looking at 1.25x!

While the 50mm came in three different mounts, for MFT, Sony and Fuji, this one is natively MFT, and if you want to mount it to something else, Sirui designed the mount in a way that you can easily attach a different mount over top, like the e-mount I have here.

There are eight screws holding the mount in place. To add a Sony, or mirrorless Canon or Nikon mount you need to take out the four outer screws, put in the new mount, which also features a very handy pin to keep alignment correct, and then reinsert the four screws. This lens also isn’t and won’t be EF mount compatible. This mount feature is so awesome I’ve been asking them if it’ll be implemented on the 50mm.

This 35mm lens is also designed for APS-C or S35 sensors, so NOT full frame. By the way, with all this crop, squeeze and whatnot, what’s our actual wider field of view? Well, when you use a 35mm lens in S35 mode, it crops to match a 52.5mm lens. But because of the anamorphic block, the horizontal field of view on the Sirui is 39mm, while vertically it remains 52.5mm, creating some depth separation that anamorphics are famous for.

Shooting wide open does not hurt how this lens performs in terms of sharpness. And it being wider also increases depth of field, which pushes me to shooting wide open. An interesting thing I noticed is aberrations seem optimized for close focus, since it’s tack sharp there, and we lose a little sharpness as we rack to infinity.

I think this is a pretty wise call when it comes to anamorphics actually, since the biggest challenge with scopes is shooting close range. That’s where the best performance should be, and not at infinity, like a lens used for projection.

Flares are consistent with the 50mm, bright vivid blue/teal, very Panavision C-series. If you’re bothered by how saturated they are, you can pick them out in color correction. I have another video about that, just check the card on the screen now, or the link in the description.

In terms of distortion the wider focal length makes the curved lines even more pronounced, screaming “scooope!”.

Bokeh is still subtle, since this is a 1.33x lens, and the ovals are also smaller since it’s a wider focal length. There’s still some warping when you get to the sides of the frame, where bokeh gets really squished or cutoff, but I feel overall this one does better than the 50mm.

Coverage is interesting. Designed for S35, it looks super awesome. But on the A7s2, that’s limited to HD resolution, so I step up to 4K and full frame, and this is what you get. Then, I’ll cheat a little bit and use Clear Image Zoom on the Sony to crop out the vignetting and still go a liiiittle bit wider than the original plan of S35, as you can see!

Sirui is on a roll with their anamorphic releases and I’m loving how this is making the format accessible and popular. This lens is small, relatively lightweight, definitely affordable and it packs a punch in performance and ease of use when compared to most anamorphic adapters. Sure, it doesn’t fit EF, and yeah, it has a light squeeze factor, but I feel the pros defeat the cons by a landslide.