Review by Klaus Schroiff, published July 2022. Lens sample provided by Meike.

Introduction

This is the first Meike lens that found its way into our lab. Until recently, their product design language was somewhat mixed, but they seem to have settled on a more uniform one in their latest set of manual focus lenses, and it's a pretty attractive one as well. The lens body is a tightly assembled, all-metal construction. Weather-sealing is not provided, but you won't use such a lens during rain anyway - rain drops on the front element would be inevitable because the built-in lens hood is tiny. The fluted focus ring is dampened and operates smoothly. The aperture ring has one of the best tactile actions we have used so far. It provides full-stop, almost noiseless and soft clicks from f/2.8 to f/16. While the lens itself has an almost luxurious feel, the lens cap is made of cheaper plastics that scratches easily.

Due to the manual nature of the lens, there's no EXIF data, no AF and no camera-controlled aperture. Given the depth-of-field of a fish-eye lens, this is hardly an issue in real life. If you set the focus to ~1.5m, all of your average scenes will be in focus even at f/2.8. Most cameras offer efficient guidance for manual focusing, so close-ups shouldn't be an issue.