We Applaud the Effort but the 7Artisans Floral Bloom Lens Is Awful

Dec 11, 2025

Jordan Drake

A person adjusts the purple focus ring on a LUMIX camera with an external microphone attached, outdoors on a sunny day.

Earlier this year, 7Artisans announced the Floral Bloom Art Cine Lens series, with the first being a 37mm T2.9 for PL mount only. It sounded interesting, so we agreed to check it out. We appreciate the effort and applaud the company for trying something new, but unfortunately, this lens is terrible.

This isn’t a full review (I’m not sure our eyes could handle any further exposure to the footage captured with this lens), but after seeing the footage and reading the response to it on YouTube, we thought it was at least worth it to briefly explain why we don’t like this lens one bit.

One of the best things about my job is getting the opportunity to spend some time with odd and niche products I would never hear about otherwise. That’s why I jumped at the chance to check out 7Artisans’ new Floral Bloom 37mm T2.9 lens, which promised “explosive bokeh” in the press release. I decided to use this $399 lens to shoot our recent Camp Snap CS-Pro review, as it fit with the theme of gear designed for fun.

But fun was not a word I would use to describe my shooting experience.

The promise on the tin is that the 35mm T2.9 lens offers a fairly versatile 37mm focal length, but the unique optical formula gives a wild stretching effect where there is extreme blurriness across the frame except in the very center.

A man with gray hair and a beard smiles outdoors on a sunny winter day, wearing a dark jacket and a checkered shirt. The background is blurry with snow and bare trees, and sunlight creates a lens flare effect.

A large red sign outdoors reads "Christmas Blowout Sale" in white, yellow, and black letters. Snow is visible on the ground. The background shows another "SALE" sign and a blurred building.

Additionally, the Floral Bloom is designed to flare dramatically when hit directly by light, leading to large, colorful ghosting and defined flare patterns. This is designed as a cinema-first lens, so it is rated a T2.9 for light transmission, features gears on the focus and aperture rings, and is currently only available in PL-Mount.

A man with light brown hair and a beard holds a vintage camera up to his face outdoors, with sunlight and lens flare partially obscuring his face. A street sign and buildings are visible in the blurred background.

The effect of this lens is certainly dramatic. Using full-width 16:9 capture on a full-frame Panasonic Lumix S1 II, I would say only 20% of the frame was useably sharp, with the rest taken up by a jarring streaked blurriness. This meant my composition was limited to sticking my subject (noted YouTuber Chris Niccolls) smack in the middle of the frame every shot. And if he moved slightly outside of that region, the drop in sharpness was immediately distracting.

A man with gray hair and a beard stands outdoors in winter, wearing a dark jacket and holding a phone. The background, including trees, cars, and buildings, is blurred with a zoom effect.

I could see this lens being slightly more usable on an APS-C (Super35) camera, where the in-focus region would take up more of the frame. As well, the flare has such strongly defined shapes that it doesn’t look cinematic; it looks like fake flare added in post.

Frankly, this video looks bad. I’ve heard it described as what it’s like to have cataracts, akin to your vision when getting up after taking a sleep edible, or what someone sees when they’re in the throes of an intense migraine.

A man in a dark jacket and jeans stands on a snowy sidewalk near a street with construction materials, orange barriers, and equipment in the background. The image has a blurred, vignette effect around the edges.

A man with gray hair and a beard stands outside in a snowy parking lot, pointing toward a pawn shop with large "PAWNSHOP $$$" letters on the storefront. Several parked cars and apartment buildings are visible in the background.

So, how would I make this lens more usable? I would take a page from Lensbaby’s book and make the in-focus region adjustable so video shooters were not limited to putting their subjects in the middle of every shot. Alternatively, the ability to adjust the size of the in-focus region would help, so I could use more of the recording area of the full-frame cameras this lens is designed for.

The one saving grace is that this lens is only $399 right now, so if you like the look for the very occasional shot, it’s not a huge investment. But I can’t foresee mounting the 7artisans Floral Bloom to my camera any time soon.