Petzval 55mm

Taking inspiration from vintage lenses

Lomography’s new portrait lens brings dreamy bokeh to mirrorless cameras

Inspired by Joseph Petzval, the inventor of the first portrait lens and widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern photography, the Petzval 55mm f/1.7 joins the intriguing list of ‘arty’ Lomo lenses. Built for Sony E, Canon RF andNikon Z mounts, it’s the first Petzval lens designed exclusively for full-frame mirrorless cameras.

The lens features a new bokeh control ring that allows you to change the quality of the bokeh. The higher the control ring number, the dreamier the bokeh. The lower the number, the sharper it appears. Its waterhouse aperture system enables you to insert plates into the lens to change the shape of the bokeh. The plates provided include snowflakes, stars and hearts.

The brass and black brass versions have a knob that steplessly controls the aperture, but our review sample was the black aluminium edition, which has an aperture ring instead. The three rings on this edition (aperture, focus and bokeh control) can be a little unwieldy at first, especially if you’re used to having a single focus ring.

As a manual-focus lens, we’d expect the Petzval 55mm f/1.7 to handle well – and it didn’t disappoint. Pleasingly hefty in the hand without feeling overly weighty, we found this boutique lens easy to use.

Performance

One of the issues with the Petzval range so far has been that most DSLRs aren’t typically built for manual-focus lenses. However, mirrorless cameras are surprisingly well-suited to non-autofocus lenses. This is because most offer focus peaking, which visually shows you which part of your scene is in focus via a coloured highlight. Using the Petzval 55mm with focus peaking was a game changer, allowing us to feel confident in our focus when capturing portraits.

While we loved the creative effect the 55mm f/1.7 gave, our biggest gripe with this lens is its limiting nature. The centre of the lens is the only place to capture sharp detail: anything else outside of this falls off into significant softness. While this means you can capture some truly dramatic portraits, it also limits your creative choices.

1 The Dual Aperture System includes an eight-bladed diaphragm. 2 The bokeh control ring allows you to change the quality of the bokeh. 3 The aperture ring is stepless, so you can adjust your aperture without experiencing sudden jumps in exposure. 4 The Petzval 55mm comes in brass (£399), black brass (at the front above, £449) or black aluminium (£349).