Back in April, Pergear announced a new lens: Pergear 25mm f/1.7. This is a compact lens that’s not quite pancake, but not far from it either. It’s a little larger than the Fujinon 27mm f/2.8, and a little smaller than the Fujinon 23mm f/2. I appreciate small gear, so I got this diminutive lens specifically to pair with my Fujifilm X-E4. The Pergear 25mm f/1.7 looks really good on the X-E4; it’s an aesthetic match to the retro-styled Fujifilm models, with the right amount of vintage-like charm. The 25mm focal-length is 37.5mm full-frame-equivalent, which is good for everyday walk-around photography.
It is a manual-focus lens, which means there’s no auto-focus capabilities. I learned photography on manual lenses, so I don’t mind them personally; however, if you don’t have much experience manually focusing, it will likely take you a little practice to feel comfortable with it. The focus ring is smooth on this lens. The minimum focus distance is about eight inches, which isn’t bad. The lens has 7 Elements in 5 Groups, and 10 blades. The filter thread size is 37mm. Also, there’s no communication with the camera.
The aperture ring has clicks, and steps in full stops—there are no intermediate apertures, such as f/3.5 or f/5, which is a bit unusual (although a long time ago this wasn’t odd at all). The maximum aperture is a bright f/1.7, but skips f/2 and goes straight for f/2.8. The minimum aperture is f/22; however, due to diffraction, f/22 should probably be avoided. The aperture ring has a good amount of stiffness, and the clicks obvious, meaning that you won’t accidentally change the aperture, and you can mentally keep track of the aperture adjustments without having to take your eye off the EVF.
The Pergear 25mm f/1.7 is a very different lens depending on the aperture. When wide open at f/1.7, center sharpness is sufficient but not impressive, and the corners are soft with some vignetting. It’s also prone to a hazy flare if there is a bright light source in front of you. This can give a cinematic or even atmospheric effect sometimes, and can be used creatively. Things improve notably as you stop down. By f/5.6 the technical flaws that are obvious at f/1.7 are nearly gone, and this lens can hold its own pretty well against many others. In other words, for a clinically clean lens, you will want to be in the f/5.6 to f/8 range, but for more interesting character, you’ll want to increase the aperture. Also, you can get some nice sunstars at f/11 and especially f/16. I feel like there is enough of a difference in outcome at f/1.7, f/2.8-f/4, f/5.6-f/8, and f/11-f/16, that you could almost compartmentalize those apertures for specific situations and desired picture aesthetics.
This lens retails for only $75, which is quite affordable. It seems well built and robust. There’s a lot to like about the Pergear 25mm f/1.7 lens, and it’s easy to overlook the shortcomings because it is so inexpensive. I’m very happy with it, personally, and plan to use it regularly on my Fujifilm X-E4.
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Pergear 25mm f/1.7:
Amazon
Example photos, all camera-made JPEGs using the Pergear 25mm f/1.7 lens on my Fujifilm X-E4:
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Most of your photos seem to be at or near maximum aperture and I like the way they look, especially the Bougainvillea shot which goes well with the Portra simulation.
It’s strange that there’s no f2 click.
I mostly used f/4 and larger, f/1.7 a significant amount. The lack of f/2 is quite strange indeed, I would have appreciated its inclusion.
I’ve got some old Minolta lenses like that. They go straight from f/1.7 to f/2.8 with clicks. Granted, just because they used to do something like that, doesn’t mean there’s no benefit to changing it.
Nice pictures, like always. I’ve bought it 2 weeks ago from pergear directly – still awaiting the delivery….
I think mine took about two weeks or so to arrive.
It looks like this lens has minimum focusing distance 0.2m. Did you try it for macro?
It’s about 8 inches. Definitely not macro territory, but decent nonetheless.
More gear I don’t need but I will probably buy as it’s cheap small and 1.7. Soft is good for portraits and vintage looks etc. As for why no F2, maybe it’s really a F2 with a miss-labeled ring. Thanks for the post, appreciate it. I’d like to know your evaluation of contrast and colour, it’s hard to tell when recipes are enabled in samples. Have a great day
I hadn’t considered that… testing it today, there seems to be only a 1/3 stop difference between f/2.8 and f/1.7; however, comparing to a Fujinon lens, f/2.8 seems to actually be f/2, f/4 is actually f/2.8, etc., etc.. Weird.
I feel like the biggest problem with this, and it’s less of a problem with the lens itself, is that there are actually alternatives now. It’s cheap, sure, but the number of $200 and under autofocus lenses for Fuji has greatly proliferated in the past two years. There are 27, 35, 56, and 85mm lenses from various manufacturers under $200.
Anyhow, looks reasonable. I couldn’t stand the 7Artisan 25/1.8, with the clickless aperture. I really disliked using that lens. This seems like it handles better.
I definitely prefer the clicking apertures over the clickless.
So do I, Ritchie. 🙂
PS: I thought, my lens is being twisted somehow, on the E1, but i can see on your nice E4, the lens front ring font is also “twisted” not centered, when mounted on the X-E4. It’s a shame, i’d love to have the font writings being centered, when mounted. Somehow, this is against my aesthetic feeling…haha.
🤣 I understand. We all have a little OCD sometimes…. 😀
Hi Ritchie,
if you look at the lens design – and especially front ring, it looks like a 7Artisans 25/1.7 into disguise,
same 7 Elements into 5 groups lens design, albeit 1) a bit smaller and 2) click-stops, vs. non click stops, so into the end, i do like the pergear or “Purger” as some UberTuber wrote, better than the 7Artisans lens. I paid 55 EUR incl. shipping, and it sits on my X-E1 since last Saturday, perhaps forever….
I am not doing videos, so i do prefer always click stop apertures, over click-less.
I think many of these cheap Chinese manual lenses are likely made at the same factory, and the designs are frequently borrowed/recycled. The clickable aperture ring of this one is a big plus.
I had bad experience with this lens. The quality control on these are not very good. Some are better then others. Amazon ended up giving me a full refund as two in a row were completely blurry on the right side of the image at all apertures. At F8 for example the center and left side of the image was sharp but the whole right side was out of focus so bad it looked like some one had smeared gel across the image. Amazon said a faulty batch most likely but now I’m hesitate to buy another from a different dealer. Shame as it seems like a fun manual lens to play around with on my XE-4.
I experienced some similar quality control issues with the TTartisans 27mm f/2.8 lens. I have two copies, both with issues (different issues on each)—this is a lens that received a lot of praise online, and I was actually criticized for criticizing the QC issues that I experienced. I have wondered if there’s one or maybe two factories where all of these different third-party lenses are manufactured, and they each are susceptible to the same quality control issues. I don’t know if that’s true, but I suspect that it is.
Unfortunately, with these cheap third-party lenses, it’s like rolling dice. Most likely you’ll get a well-made product for a good price, but maybe you’ll get a poorly-made one with some faults, and maybe, if you’re unlucky, you’ll even get two with faults. I’ve been on both ends: lucky and unlucky.