This lens is a sleeper. When I first ran across examples of images shot with this C Mount lens, I was immediately attracted to the look. It has swirly bokeh like crazy, which is unusual for a 2 inch lens. The few references I found dismissed it as “too swirly”, but as with any other lens, the trick is finding the sweet spot of distance and aperture. I managed to find one, and I adore it. It has a look like no other. The Cooke Kinic 1 inch C Mount lens is also known for it swirly bokeh, but it has an entirely different look–much softer out-of-focus areas. It also vignettes severely on an APS-C sensor.
The Elgeet, for starters, is quite sharp in the center of the frame, with excellent contrast. Unlike most classic lenses, it is quite resistant to flare. And I love the way it renders areas not in focus–creating sharply delineated elements even when defocused. And at close focus distances, it covers the entire APS-C frame.
It is true that at further distances the swirl becomes annoying, but for classic bokeh shots, this lens is quite unique.
Here’s an interesting note: I have three of these lenses, and there is significant variation between them. While the general look is the same, the three have different amounts of what I would call “bokeh texture”. One has very smooth out of focus areas, and the other two exhibit varying degrees of edginess. Most of these shots were taken with the one in the middle, with a moderate amount of “edge”. I will caption those taken with the softest exemplar, which is labeled “Mati” for some unknown reason, though the lens is identical and otherwise has all the same markings as the other two.
