Quick take: The Brightin Star 35mm F0.95 is a sub-$200 manual focus lens for Fujifilm X-mount with a roughly 53mm full-frame look. Wide open it's soft in a pleasing, film-like way, it resolves well on the 40MP X-T5 and it's small for an F0.95. Expect noticeable fringing in high-contrast scenes, some flaring, no weather sealing and no lens data in your EXIF.
A Walk Around Hoboken
I took the Brightin Star 35mm F0.95 for a walk around Hoboken on the Fujifilm X-T5 to shoot photos and video. On APS-C, 35mm is about a 53mm full-frame equivalent, and at F0.95 for under $200, that's a strong value proposition. Full disclosure: Brightin Star sent me the lens for free, but as always, I say what I want about it.
Because there are no electronic contacts between lens and camera, you won't know what aperture you shot at unless you note it yourself, and it's fully manual focus. Turn on focus peaking. It makes manual focus lenses so much easier to use on Fuji cameras.
Build and Handling
It's all metal with good weight to it, which reflects decent build quality. It comes with a regular cap plus a nice metal cap that looks like it belongs on the camera. The focus ring is heavily damped, and I really like that, because precise focus matters at F0.95.
One small quirk: infinity focus isn't at the very end of the focus ring's travel, it's slightly before. If you shoot street photography and just rack the ring all the way, you won't actually be at infinity. Line it up with the infinity mark, or watch focus peaking. It's a minor nitpick at this price.
Image Quality
Wide open it's soft, but in a good way. It's like the way Fuji images get grain at high ISO that looks organic rather than digital. This lens amplifies that look. Subject separation is clean, and colors are good even wide open. Shooting a sign, you can see how thin the focus plane is at F0.95: the center text is sharp while the top and bottom fall off.
It also resolves just as well on the 40-megapixel X-T5 as it does on the X-T3. That's a big deal, since Fuji refreshed several of its older lenses partly because they didn't resolve well on the high-resolution sensor. Punch in to 400 or 500 percent and it gets less razor sharp, which is par for the course for pretty much anything short of a GFX.
Fringing and Flare
In high-contrast scenes you'll get fringing, typically green in out-of-focus areas and magenta in focus. Lifting shadows in post makes it more visible. It stays fairly consistent as you stop down, so it doesn't really go away. For photos it's easy to correct, and in ten years no client has ever complained to me about chromatic aberration.
There's also a fair amount of flaring and ghosting, as you'd expect at this price. Personally I find it refreshing. Modern lenses, even kit lenses, are surgically sharp and don't have much character. If you've thought about adapting vintage film lenses (I adapt Canon FD glass to my Fujis a lot), this gives you a similar character without the adapter.
Video
Don't sleep on it for video. At F0.95, even with a five-stop ND, the background completely blows out, and the image is ironically better suited to video than photos, since video is allowed (and often preferred) to be softer. Considering I had no lighting, just the lens and an ND, the footage looks clean.
The catch is the fringing. Purple and green fringing on high-contrast edges, like the outline of my sweater, is much harder to fix in video than in photos. For paid work in an uncontrolled environment, I can't recommend it for video. It's comparable to the Fuji 56mm I used before the 50mm F1 came out.
Slowing Down
The best part was that I slowed down and enjoyed taking photos for a change. With a fast autofocus lens I wouldn't have spent time composing a reflection of myself in a Christmas ornament. I also shot Lackawanna Station, Frank Sinatra's statue, the Manhattan skyline, a very confrontational group of geese, and a couple taking photos with an Instax who were backlit, so I offered to shoot them and send the photos over.
Night Bokeh
Stuck in traffic on the way home, I took some in-car shots. Bokeh circles are nice and round in the center, with some cat's-eye shapes toward the edges. I really like how the out-of-focus areas render, and that matters more for night portraits than in daylight.
Weather Sealing
There's no weather sealing and no gasket. It'll tolerate some drizzle, but outdoorsy people will want to keep it in a bag in case of a downpour. I'd happily pay $50 to $100 more for a weather-sealed version.
Final Thoughts
This is probably going to be one of the most fun lenses anyone owns. For under $200 you get a small, very bright lens with real character that works in almost any light, and unlike the Fuji 50mm F1 and other ultra-fast primes, it isn't big. A good manual lens on a capable body like the X-T3 or X-T5 gives you the slow-down-and-enjoy-it feeling people buy film cameras for, without the development costs.
Brightin Star has since released more lenses. See my reviews of the Brightin Star 50mm F1.4 AF and the 50mm F0.95.
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