Meike 25mm f/0.95 lens for Nikon Z-mount review

By [NR] admin | Published: April 15, 2023

Meike 25mm f/0.95 lens for Nikon Z-mount review by Bill Hall (additional information on the lens can be found here and here):

I just got a Meike 25mm f/0.95 manual prime APS-C lens for Nikon Z mount. I have several of their lenses, and they are good lenses, and reasonably priced. This is an APS-C lens, but it will work with any of the Z-mount cameras. For a full-frame camera, just set it to APS-C (DX) mode. Or leave it set to full frame for that circle-in-the-middle fish-eye kind of look. This is not an extremely wide lens, though. The lens works great, and it feels good in the hand. The front aperture ring and the wide focus ring behind it rotate smoothly and stay where you put them. The aperture ring is not detented, but moves smoothly between f/stops. The focus ring turns nearly 90 degrees and is a good balance between speed and precision.

When I took it out of the box, my first impression is that this is a sturdy lens that appears to be all metal and glass. A lens hood is not provided, but if you find you need one, hoods that will screw into the 62mm filter threads are readily available and inexpensive. The lens did come with front and back caps. It is fairly compact and weighs 623 g / 1 lb 6 oz.

So, where is 25mm on the scale of wide-angle to telephoto? On an APS-C camera, 35mm is considered to be a normal lens. That is, the magnification is close to what our eyes see. I would call this lens a moderate wide-angle lens.

You are probably thinking that manual focus is hard, but it is not that difficult. I believe all of the Z cameras have focus peaking. If you are not familiar with that feature, it assists with focus by highlighting areas of the image that are in focus. The other thing that assists with focus is the magnification function. This will digitally zoom into the image so that you can more easily see how focused it is. That does make focusing slower than the AF systems on the Z cameras.

Since this is a manual focus lens, your Z camera will only operate in the aperture priority or manual mode when you have it mounted. If you set the mode to P or S on a Z9 with it mounted, the mode is actually set to A, and the A blinks. You can take pictures with the camera set that way, but it is really set to aperture priority mode.

One of the nice things about this lens is the f/0.95 aperture. This is nice for two reasons. The first is providing a narrow depth of field. The depth of field varies depending on the aperture. As the aperture gets larger (smaller numbers), the depth of field decreases. And as the distance to the subject gets closer, the depth of field gets smaller. This lens has a stated minimum focus distance of .25mm / 10 inches. I found that at f/0.95, I could get a little closer than that. At close distances wide open, the lens is not as sharp at the edges of the image. That is not that surprising at such close distances. If you move a little further away, this effect begins to disappear.

The second thing that the f/0.95 aperture provides is low light capability. It is one stop faster than a typical fast lens with an f/1.4 aperture. That means that under the same lighting conditions, this lens will allow you to double the shutter speed as compared to an f/1.4 lens. For example, assume you are shooting with an f/1.4 lens, and that lens needs a 1/60 sec. shutter speed for the lighting conditions you are using it in. This f/0.95 lens would be able to shoot at 1/125 sec. under the same conditions.