7artisans 18mm f/6.3 UFO Lens

Cheap, lightweight and fully pocketable (very small). Good center sharpness.

Weaknesses:

Strong vignetting and magenta cast.

No way to adjust focus nor aperture.

No lens cap, you can use instead a 56mm diameter binocular lens cap.

No lens hood, beware the sun.

Comments:

IMHO it is a toy lens, a funny one in anycase. Simply point and shoot... This lens renders subjects sharp when they are 3 meters away.

Mine is always on my Canon EOS M when the 22m is not in use.

Sharpness is good in center, a bit worse in the corners. Chromatic aberration is well controlled. But it has very strong vignetting, and a booring magenta cast. It has no bokeh to show.

If you shoot in black and white you will get nice vintage pictures without much post-processing, colour pictures need more work.

If you have concerns about damaging the front element of this lens as there is no lens cap, you can use cheap 56mm diameter binocular lens cap instead.

I also tried the second version of this lens which is less sharper in my opinion but provides manual focus function.

  Solid build, intuitive use, price,and creative "character" of the lens make it stand out.

Weaknesses:

  No lens cap possible, strong and direct light sources can overwhelm it and there is a tendancy to get some fingers in the angle of view if you aren't paying attention and your hand "thinks" it wants to grip the focus ring.

Comments:

  You might consider it a "toy" or "novelty" lens, but it delivers very usable imagery. Think "pinhole lens on steroids" as a referenece point. Not purely lomo, but lomo-esque in use to capture and throughput to the final edited work. I found the lens both motivational and very productive when matched to shoot perameters. I got a high acceptable rate among images captured during an urban decay shoot.

  I have no problem seeing use for this lens in many applications from street shoots to lanscapes, portraiture, still lifes, or any general use.