As someone who puts themselves on camera a lot, I find that the lens you shoot with makes all the difference. My first foray away from my camera’s kit lens felt like entering a whole new world. Thypoch’s Simera-C 28mm lens has been attached to my stream camera for a while, and the warm, cinematic look this lens gives me has ruined me for my usual lens.
The build quality of the Thypoch Simera-C 28mm lens is solid, with a sturdy metal body built with 11 elements in seven groups. Its focus and aperture rings are the smoothest I have felt, and the pronounced grip on the rings makes them incredibly easy to identify and manipulate. As an added bonus, using this lens with a FIZ (focus, iris, zoom) motor, such as the one that comes with the DJI Focus Pro kit, feels like a match made in heaven, with the gear on the motor fitting perfectly with the grip.
The size of the Thypoch Simera-C 28mm lens is also great for on the go. It measures approximately 54 x 70.3 mm and weighs 344 g for the E-mount version for Sony cameras, such as my A7 III. The yellow text and markers on the Thypoch Simera-C 28mm lens, in addition to being a nice aesthetic choice, make them incredibly easy to read in any setting.
The Thypoch Simera-C 28mm lens has a T1.5 maximum aperture. T-stops indicate the light passing through the back of the lens, unlike f-stops, which measure the light entering the front. This results in excellent low-light performance and next-level bokeh when your subject is close. Its minimum aperture is T16. It offers a 57-degree field of view, which is on the edge of being too tight for streaming and too tight for vlogging, but it is a fantastic option for immersing your subject in its scenery. The Simera-C has detail to spare.
The 14-blade aperture on the Thypoch Simera-C 28mm lens creates soft, circular bokeh, almost like a halo around your focal point. You will find, however, that detail does fall off slightly toward the edges of the frame at higher f-stops, although that is not an uncommon trait of wider-angle lenses. As someone who almost exclusively uses wide-angle lenses, I like how they draw attention to what matters most, and if a viewer’s focus is on the edges, you’ve already lost.
“The build quality of the Thypoch Simera-C 28mm lens is solid, with a sturdy metal body built with 11 elements in seven groups.”
The fact that the Thypoch Simera-C 28mm lens is a manual-focus prime can be a bit of a showstopper for more novice users and for people who need something more adaptable to their needs, especially if they are on a budget or simply don’t want to carry an arsenal of lenses in case the need for a specific piece of glass arises.
The US$879 price tag feels steep for a manual-focus lens, but you’re paying for a product with a premium feel and delivers fantastic image quality. Ultimately, I think the Thypoch Simera-C 28mm lens is a great tool to have in your kit, but it’s not going to be your one and only lens if you are a professional, or at the very least a serious shooter. It served my purpose incredibly well as someone who primarily uses it at my desk, and honestly, I’ve never looked better.
