Irix 11mm f/4.0 Firefly Lens w/Built-in AE Chip for Canon

Why I Bought It: I acquired this lens for my Canon 5D Mk IV entirely for my real estate photography, and I'm so glad I did. My go-to lens is a Tokina 17-35 f/4 ATX Pro, which is a great lens, but in some of these bathrooms, tiny bedrooms, and walk-in closets, even 17mm on a full frame just isn't wide enough. I grappled with whether I should spend $500+ on a lens just to shoot bathrooms, and finally convinced myself that if I get 1 to 2 extra gigs because of it, it will pay for itself. My logic turned out to be solid. First shoot with it, and the client LOVED the shots I got with it. She didn't think it would be possible to get these shots, so I wound up looking like a hero. Pros: (1) This lens is sickly insanely wide. It's so wide that looking through the OVF is almost disorienting. As I said above, I'm able to get shots that are otherwise impossible. In the first photo I posted (straight-on shot of the bathroom sinks), I was only about 3 feet from the forward edge of the vanity. (2) Build quality is outstanding. It feels like a $3,000 lens. Way to go, Irix! (3) Minimal barrel distortion, shockingly minimal for such a wide lens. What little BD there is gets eliminated in one click with the native lens correction profile in Lightroom. (4) Tack sharp at f/10 from image center almost to the edges (I rarely shoot any real estate in anything other than f/10 so I can't tell you about the rest of the aperture range). (5) Great color and contrast, especially for such a wide lens. (6) So much lens for the money (7) While it's a manual focus lens, the focus confirmation chip works flawlessly with the Canon's AF system. Basically just hold your focus button down (I have my camera set on back-button focus) and turn the focus ring until you get the chirp in the area you want in focus. (8) It's not a full manual lens. Aperture is controlled from the camera, so you get both live view (critical in real estate photography) and a clear non-stopped-down view through the OVF. Cons: (1) This lens does produce quite noticeable lateral chromatic aberrations. However (a) it's unreasonable to expect otherwise on an 11mm full frame lens on a DSLR. Different frequencies of light get bent at different angles. When you stretch the field of view to 126 degrees as this lens does, those disparities inevitably produce purple fringing along color borders. These are the immutable laws of physics. I'm curious what this lens could do on a mirrorless camera with a shorter flange distance (this supposedly reduces LCA's). (b) The LCA's are easily correctible in Photoshop. Lightroom's chromatic aberration removal tool is useless on any lens. I go into Photoshop and use the camera raw filter, and slide the purple CA removal tool all the way, and it gobbles the LCA's right up without destroying any detail elsewhere. I know I spend more time defending this con than complaining about it, but in my heart of hearts, I feel that the LCA's are excusable here, especially considering what this lens succeeds at doing - grabbing a 126 degree field of view. (2) It's heavy. I got the Firefly version. I can only imaging how heavy the Blackstone version is. But really, so what? This isn't a lens for taking on hikes. This is a specialty lens that real estate and architectural photogs will want to have in their bag along with lots of other heavy stuff. (3) a tad soft at the edges, but again, remember what this lens is doing - 126 degree field of view. Bottom Line: GET THIS LENS!

Great build, very sharp, low distortion for 11mm. Cap needs to be carefully placed on and removed. Don't stay very well put. This is an only minor thing. Overal great buy.

Did much research on wide angle lenses costing up to $2500 and this IRIX 11mm is wide as can be and creates a nice clean sharp image. Its a big lens for a prime but so far, I am happy with its performance.

Great fish eye lens. Very sturdy and quality of pictures is on par with Tamaron, Canon ect. This is a manual focus and if you are not used to manually focussing on object this can be very difficult and the results are not great.

Irix, a plucky Swiss company has produced several high-quality no-frills lenses at incredible prices, that fill certain niches that the big companies like Canon, Nikon, and even Sigma, have left open. I’m a big wide-angle fan, so I was extremely curious to test out their new 11mm manual focus f/4 lens. It comes in a lightweight ("Firefly") and a heavier weight ("Blackstone") version, which is presumably more durable and slightly more expensive. I opted for the lightweight version, the Firefly. I had been using the Sigma 12-24mm auto-focus zoom f/4.5–5.6, which I had taken around the world. I discovered, however, that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with its edge sharpness. So I replaced it with Sigma’s new 14–24mm f/2.8 zoom, which was twice as expensive, but which was both a faster and a sharper lens. I figured I could live with 2 mm less of a wide angle. I had briefly looked at Canon’s 11–24 mm f/4 USM lens, but it was both huge and expensive (list: $2700). Then I met the Irix 11mm manual focus f/4.2 super-wide Firefly and fell in love. It’s a light-weight, full-frame lens, apparently the widest you can go before fisheye kicks in. And I couldn’t believe its price at $525 (I was expecting it to be over $1000). The heavier Blackstone edition is $650. I got ahold of one and tested it out. Here are five results: a studio test with a rather jerry-rigged grid I set up, the sun through fall foliage on my street at home, Paterson Falls after a rain, the New York Marathon from the middle of Fifth Avenue, and my 3-year-old grandson looking up at a dinosaur head at the Museum of Natural History in New York. The lens performed fine in all cases. I might add, that super-wides like this one are idea for small architectural spaces, especially in cramped archeological sites. I was looking in particular at three factors: edge sharpness, distortion levels, and color fringe. The lens performed quite well in the first two areas, sharpness and distortion. Although its depth of field is quite large, it’s still important to remember to focus. You don’t have to be very precise, but be sure the focusing ring is in the right range. I was quite happy with the sharpness. At 11mm distortion is inevitable, of course, and there are many situations in which it is not objectionable, for example, most botanicals, tight interior spaces, most landscapes. You want to avoid wide angles of any kind with medium distance architecturals, where you expect lines to be rectilinear, and of course, with closeups of people, where you risk making caricatures of their faces. This lens distorts less than would be expected at this focal length. As for color fringe, it is visible at high enlargements, certainly more than the 14–24mm Sigma. This is adjustable in Camera Raw. You probably won’t notice it in normal enlargements. Overall, for wide-angle afficcionados, this lens is a blessing. It's the widest lens you can reasonably buy and carry around, that delivers good sharpness and relatively low distortion levels at an incredible price, in exchange for having to deal with manual focus and a fixed focal length. To my mind, it’s more than worth it. I recommend the Think Tank Lens Changer 25 or 50 for convenient portability. Joel Simpson

En tant que professionnel de l'image j'avais hésité entre ce modèle et le zoom CANON coutant plus de 3300.- €. Je ne suis pas déçu du tout, au contraite. Cette optique est excellente et elle pèse la moitier du poids du zoom de la marque. La mise au point manuelle est un plus appréciable. A acheter les yeux fermés ... si vous avez vraiment besoin d'un ultra grand-angulaire, car le champs de 126° est énorme, l'expansion aussi !

Great product!

L'avevo adocchiato al Photokina e fatta una prova la volo. Tra i due modelli (Firefly o Blackstone) alla fine ho preferito il Firefly. Piú leggero, si impugna meglio, é comunque tropicalizzato. Un 11 mm non é una focale che si usa cosí spesso, alla fine. La grossa lente frontale ha uno strato protettivo che dovrebbe evitare allo sporco di attaccarcisi. Arrivato nei tempi previsti, anzi con qualche giorno di anticipo. Provato sul campo: distorsioni veramente minime per essere un 11mm full frame ! Un pó di fringes ai bordi, ma nulla che un SW di produzione possa sistemare. Meglio usarlo a 5.6, si riducono di molto. Il fatto che non sia autofocus non é assoultamente un problema vista la focale. Le tacche della profonditá di coampo sono chiaramente visibili. Ottimo prodotto, consigliato

Objetivo de gran calidad y poca deformación/aberración para ser un 11 m/m con FullFrame, con las Aps/C con el factor recorte imagino que nada, cuesta un poco acostumbrarse al enfoque manual al tener tan gran amplitud de mira, pero una vez te acostumbras y usas la hiperfocal , disfrutas como un niño y ya no sólo en paisajes, me vale para todo, un 10

da ich sehr gute Erfahrung mit dem 15mm habe gönnte ich mit auch das 11mm Top schärfe bei Offenblende Ecke zu Ecke an der 6D. Bin super zufrieden .