Today we are reviewing the latest lens from Irix, the 65mm T1.5 Cine. The lens was first shown as a prototype at IBC 2023 and officially announced before IBC 2024 and it will be the third Irix Cine lens that we shall be reviewing here on LensVid.
The Irix 65mm T1.5
Optical Design
The Irix 65mm T1.5 Cine has 12 elements arranged in 9 groups with one aspherical element, 2 HR, and 2 ED elements.
Materials
Like the rest of the line, this lens is made from magnesium to cut down on the weight. Despite that it feels very substantial in the hand, this lens will not be mistaken for any of those ultra-compact super 35mm lenses. Our lens came with metric marketing on both sides but it can be acquired with imperial markings if this is your preference as well.
Size and weight
The Irix Cine line is fairly chunky and the 65mm is no different. It measures just under 16cm in length with almost 9cm in width. Our E-mount version of the lens weighs is close to 1.5kg / 3.3LBS.
Rings
The lens has two rings. An aperture ring close to the camera and a focus ring closer to the front of the lens. Both rings are fairly narrow with a 0.8 mm gear pitch. We will discuss both in depth later on in this review.
Irix 65mm T1.5 rings designed for follow-focus work
Buttons and switches
The lens is fully manual and has no buttons or switches on it.
Sealing
According to Irix, the lens is weather-sealed, and recently Irix got Military Grade MIL-STD-810 Certification from the US military for its Cine line.
Mount
The lens comes in different mounting options including Canon EF and RF, Nikon Z, L mount, Fuji X, MFT, PL as well as Sony E-mount that we have been testing.
Hood/Cover
The lens does not come with a hood but has a flat push (friction) style cover.
Aperture
Like the rest of the Irix Cine line, the lens has 11 rounded aperture blades. we will see later on in this review how this affects the Bokeh of the lens.
Filter
The lens has an 86mm front filter thread which is magnetic and works with Irix’s Edge Magnetic Mount System. The lens is compatible with 95mm Matte Boxes.
Foot
The lens comes with a small removable foot with two 1/4” 20 threads that can be mounted on the bottom or the top of the lens for extra stability (we like the idea but are not huge fans of the way Irix implemented it).
The small foot under the lens
Performance
Focus
The Irix 65mm T.15 is a fully manual lens with a focus throw of around 180 degrees (the aperture ring has 75 degrees).
The focus ring has a fair bit of resistance but is very smooth and it seems that Irix improved its manufacturing tolerances over the years. We would not recommend working with this lens manually mostly due to the very shallow nature of the teeth and it seems to be designed primarily to work with follow-focus units.
Irix 65mm on a compact rig with a follow focus
Sharpness
We tested the sharpness of the lens using our special large professional Imatest high-end chart on our Sony A1.
Wide open in the center the lens is not extremely sharp, we see an improvement at T2 with very good sharpness at T2.8.
Sharpness center test: top left – T1.5, Top right T2, Bottom left T2.8, bottom right T4
In the corners we see a similar story but with very good sharpness at T4.
Sharpness corners test: top left – T1.5, Top right T2, Bottom left T2.8, bottom right T4
Close up performance
The official minimum close-up distance of the lens is 60cm and this is what we have found in our test with 1:7 magnification (this is definitely not a macro lens).
Sharpness close-up seems good with a small improvement between T2 and T2.8 in the center.
Close up sharpness center test: top left – T1.5, Top right T2, Bottom left T2.8, bottom right T4
In the corners. Again we see sharpness improving at T2.8 and very good sharpness at T4.
Close up sharpness corners test: top left – T1.5, Top right T2, Bottom left T2.8, bottom right T4
Breathing
The lens certainly demonstrated some breathing in our test throughout its 180-degree focus throw but for minor focus changes it should be pretty minimal (see demo in the video above).
Chromatic aberrations
In our test, we saw no longitudinal chromatic aberrations even wide open, a great surprise as even the Irix 30mm T1.5 that we tested had some visible CA up to around T2.8.
CA test: top left – T1.5, Top right T2, Bottom left T2.8, bottom right T4
Flare
The lens has a green flare with a yellow halo when shooting directly into a bright light source (see demo in the video above).
Vignette
With in-camera corrections turned off we saw some vignette wide open which pretty much cleared at around T2.
Vignette test: top left – T1.5, Top right T2, Bottom left T2.8, bottom right T4
Barrel distortion
The lens didn’t show any barrel or pincushion distortion in our test.
No geometric distoration
Bokeh
As you can see the bokeh is mostly round in the center wide open but has cats-eyes as we moved away from the center of the frame. If you are OK with smaller light circles, you can close down to T2-T-2.8 and get rounder circles across the frame.
Bokeh test: top left – T1.5, Top right T2, Bottom left T2.8, bottom right T4
Video samples
We shot a short video with our A1 in 8K using the lens and we will have a link to it below and in the full review on LensVid.
Our 8K video sample shot with the Irix 65mm using the A1 (in 8K mode and 100p 4K)
Conclusion
The Irix 65mm T1.5 is very similar to the 30mm and 45mm Cine lenses that we tested before from the company. The external design is more or less identical, heavy, robust, and above what you would expect at this price point.
The lens has several other strong points including non-existent CA, low vignette, and no geometric distortion, the focus mechanism is also very smooth, something that Irix had told us was improved throughout its entire line.
Robust design: Irix 65mm T1.5
In terms of drawbacks, it would have been nice to see a sharper image wide open both in the center and the corners, and you will need to close down to between T2.8-T4 for maximum sharpness, there is also a little breathing and the bokeh wide open has more oval than circular points.
On a personal note, we would really like to see Irix getting into the compact lightweight full frame game with a Cine line designed for mirrorless cameras and gimbals.
Will we see a more compact Cine line from Irix?
Pricing
The Irix Cine lens 65mm T1.5 currently sells for $1200 with a sale at the time of writing at a significant dicount (with the PL and MFT versions selling for an extra $100).
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Iddo Genuth 
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