Dom Bower Photo Blog: Samyang 85mm f/1.4mm DSLR lens review

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Samyang 85mm f/1.4mm DSLR lens review

A poor mans 85mm??? Maybe, but a very wise poor man!

OMGOMG OMG! A lens without AUTO-FOCUS!!!!

AAAAAGGGHHHH How will I ever be able to take an in focus photo???

Is it even possible?

Well yes,
Yes I can, and Yes you could to. Its not that difficult.
So lets get away from the initial horror of the thought of a MANUAL focus lens and get reviewing it!

I have just bought the Samyang 85mm f/1.4 lens of a guy in a car park.

but you can buy them from
www.samyang-lens.co.uk

This guy actually:

Top shot is about 30 seconds after I put the lens on my camera (the Fuji S5pro)

Shot at f/1.4 I focused by looking for the little focus conformation spot that you get inside your little eyepiece, in the Nikon and Fuji it is a little green dot to the right of the image that comes on when the subject is in focus

this is a tight crop of the shot above and I am amazed by the sharpness. This was shot at iso 800 so I have added a tiny bit of noise reduction.

After testing it out I bought it on the spot!

The exact details of the lense (as which are written on the lense)

it is the: AE 85mm 1:1.4 AS IF UMC lens

The closest Focusing distance is exactly 1meter, So you aint going to be getting macro shots with this.

on an aps-c sensor camera (ie a cropped sensor camera) being at 1meter away the effect of the shallow depth of field you can get on diagonal images such as this one is not as blow your mind as it will be on the full frame or any macro lens.

What the effect is like on full frame I have yet to see as I only got this lens a few hours ago and I have been in the cinema watching Warrior before coming home. BTW Warrior is an amazing film!

Here is a shot with the Nikon D700 at its closest focusing distance shot inside my office

Its focus ring rotates about 100 degrees clockwise and does so in such a beautiful manor that only true camera geeks can truly appreciate and wet themselves with its loveliness.

It is a 72mm front end so you will need to get a big filter or protective lens for the front

And finally it is made in Korea.

And boy is it well made.

I was really expecting a flimsy plasticy piece of crap with a big bit of glass shoved in side it.

yet the body of the lens feels like hard quality metal, the rubber ring for the focus also feels high quality and is very smooth, the way the aperture ring clicks round feels strong yet smooth.

Having f/1.4 means you get a super blurry background and shallow depth of field,

Here are two examples one shot at f1.4 and the other shot at f8 (it wont take a genius to figure out which one was which)

and that brings on the next point, the quality of the blur or also known as the Bokeh, it is soo fricking smooth and smilky, with no distracting bumps and strange circles in the background, certainly not at f/1.4

Also in this photo below i am shooting on the Nikon D700 and shooting about 5-5 meters away from the subject (Alex) in my work and look at how just a foot in front of his face his computer screen is totally blurred out like it was photoshopped to avoid people seeing what he is looking at!

When you shoot at near its maximum focus distance, shotting at f/1.4 you still need to be careful with your focus

Here I just tapped the lens off of infinity focus to get it to focus on the tower in the background and you can see some aperture blur on the smelly student in the window. Thats how sensitive f/1.4 is!

This is another shot at f1.4 of the same thing the second image is just the central 9th crop

again I am amazed by the quality of the image at f/1.4. it really shouldn't be this good!!!

This is actually a lens where you can walk around all day shooting at f/1.4 and if you are spot on with your focus then you will be getting top quality low chromatic abberation, high sharpness images all day long!

When you get the Focus wrong you really can tell!

What you wont be using this lens for is captureing action.

being that the lens at f1.4 has such a shallow depth of field it will be good for cinematic effect on video but on trying to capture any form of motion or action then you will have to become ~~super~~ Uber human with your focus skill.

Lets look at the price spec for this and in comparison to the competition

Canon does not have a 85 f/1.4 but it has an even more insane f/1.2 but that is

£1799

Nikon has 2 f/1.4s

the new G-type with af-s

£1350

and the older D-type

£900

and then Sigma has entered the game with their version at the discount price of

£700

So as you can see there is a massive price difference between brands and types within brands.

but the price difference just got a whole lot bigger as this lens, the Samyang is

Under £250 (example here)

and lets check the performance specs as well

for that I head over to photozone.de

the link for the samyang is ( Here) and the link for the best Nikon is ( here ) and the best Canon is ( Here )

Have a quick look through those pages. and if you compare or correlate the performance difference with the price difference, the Samyang is the best lens in the world it seems!

Preview review