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Meike 50mm T2.1 s35 Cine Prime Announced – for EF or PL Mount

February 24^th, 20216

Meike 50mm T2.1 s35 Cine Prime Announced – for EF or PL Mount

by Olaf von VossFebruary 24^th, 2021

Chinese lens manufacturer Meike has just announced the second lens in its range of s35 cine lenses: the new Meike 50mm T2.1 s35 cine prime comes with either EF or PL mount and offers most of the features you would expect from a fully manual cine prime. Let’s take a closer look at it!

The new 50mm T2.1 covers s35 sensors and complements the existing 35mm variant very well. Like the first, the new nifty fifty is available with either EF or PL mount, offers a 270° focus throw, a 77mm front filter thread and 11 aperture blades for smooth out of focus rendition.

Meike 50mm T2.1 s35 prime lens

The optical design consists of 12 elements in 9 groups, the minimum focus distance is a set to 58cm. The 33.6 image circle offers a s35 field of view of 34.7° (diagonal), 28.1° (horizontal) and 21.2° (vertical). Both, iris and focus rings come with standard M0.8 gears.

The Meike 50mm T2.1 s35 weights 970g (PL) or 990g (EF), and it measures:

EF: 106.5mm (length) x 80mm (front diameter)
PL: 98.5mm (length) x 80mm (front diameter)

According to Meike, the 50mm T2.1 optical resolution is capable of capturing up to 6K images. Both variants will be available for purchase in April this year for around $570.

There are tons of budget-friendly “cine” lenses out there, and this new offering from Meike seems like a decent choice for aspiring filmmakers. Whether the optical performance lives up to expectations remains to be seen but at this price, getting one of these lenses seems like a reasonable thing to do.

Today’s budget cine primes

Fully manual “cine” prime lenses are a popular choice for filmmakers these days. But for different reasons than just a few years ago, I think. Back then, autofocus was a feature for photographers that was pretty much useless in the world of moving images. So AF-capable lenses were more of an inconvenience than anything else. Obviously, that changed (and still does).

Cine primes were then seen as uncompromising pieces of high-end glass that had pure optical perfection in mind, no less. Long focus throws, smooth iris gears, you name it. Now that autofocus is becoming an actual useful feature for indie filmmakers, manual prime lenses can be seen from a different angle: budget.

A decent manual lens won’t break the bank, offering good (sometimes very good) optical performance but at the cost of a reduced feature set – no electronics also mean no lens data. You have the choice between fancy electronics or better optical performance. Pick one or be prepared to spend serious money.

Meike is one of the manufacturers serving the growing need for decent lenses capable of capturing stunning images without fancy electronics, but with a reasonably appealing price tag. Meike offers two lines of higher-end cine primes, a full-frame line consisting of two lenses (35mm T2.1 FF and 50mm T2.1 FF) and now a new line for the s35 sensor format. Following the 35mm T2.1 s35, a new 50mm T2.1 s35 prime is now being launched.