Samyang AF 85mm F1.4 Autofocus Lens for Sony FE

Product Information

The 85mm f/1.4 lens is a classic focal length, long considered the ideal for portraiture, along with landscapes, close up sports and low light photography. Lenses slightly longer than the standard for a format have also traditionally been the pinnacle of optical quality within a range. Samyang have been building an enviable reputation for quality lenses, first in manual focus, more recently moving successfully into AF and now also encompassing the full frame mirrorless Sony cameras. Let's have a closer look, using the 24MP Sony Alpha A7 III body. Focusing is usefully internal and manual focusing is possible when the MF mode is set on the Sony camera body. Full-time manual focus override is also available if you choose the DMF focusing mode instead. There's no distance and/or depth of field scale available on this lens. Sharpness is good rather than insanely great at f/1.4, while defocused areas look beautifully soft and dreamy (Image credit: Matthew Richards) Rokinon doesn't include f/22 as an option—it's not typically included in f/1.4 lenses. If you're pairing the lens with a sensor with less resolution, like the 42MP a7R III or the 24MP a7 III, we expect you to see less of a drop in clarity at f/11 and f/16. I'd feel comfortable using it down to f/11 on pretty much any camera if I was going for a shot with a wide depth of focus. However, if you thought that all modern 85mm f/1.4 lenses were big, heavy and expensive, this new Samyang will make you think again. As with the company’s Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 autofocus lens, the Samyang AF 85mm f/1.4 is available in Canon EF or Nikon F mount options, and has a different design to Samyang’s earlier 85mm f/1.4 autofocus lens for Sony E-mount cameras.

His expertise with equipment doesn’t end there, though. He is also an encyclopedia when it comes to all manner of cameras, camera holsters and bags, flashguns, tripods and heads, printers, papers and inks, and just about anything imaging-related. Slowly turn the zoom ring to the left (towards the wide-angle end) while using your upper body and arms to move the camera toward your subject. The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column.

Build quality is excellent. The lens has a metal housing and a metal mount too. The optical elements are made of high-grade glass and aspherical lenses have been included to minimise aberration and unnecessary light dispersion. The focusing ring is pleasingly wide and ridged for easier grip. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. I would like to see Samyang continue to refine the autofocus through firmware update (and I believe they will), but for the primary task of shooting portraits, this lens already does great. Eye AF works very well, and, while I don’t believe the autofocus to be fast enough for sports action, it is fast and quiet enough for event work, portraiture, and the kinds of general purpose shooting it was designed for. All in all, I think the AF85 does what it needs to, and I look forward to shooting with it more in the future. Sony shooters now have a reasonable F1.4 alternative to the excellent Sony FE 85mm F1.8 lens!

Lateral chromatic aberration is reasonably well controlled at f/1.4 but can be rather noticeable at narrower apertures. It’s rather worse than in most competing 85mm prime lenses. Distortion: 1.16 The Samyang FE 85mm lens boasts a weather-sealed design and there's a UMC Super multi-layer coating to help reduce flare and ghosting. It has a minimum focusing distance of 0.90m (2.95ft) and a maximum reproduction ratio of 0.11x. I will note that I’ve used the AF85 for a few of my YouTube segments and it did a much better job than the AF 35mm in not pulsing in and out of focus, however. I just selected a zone, and when I was in that zone the autofocus was actually quite stable (basically flawless after the Firmware 3.0 update for the a7R3).

Ease of Use

Visit us and you'll always find a friendly welcome. Our policy is to treat our customers as we would like to be treated ourselves, a simple ideal that we try hard to live up to. The Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN Art is the worst in term of distortion and vignetting , Samyang are in the middle and the best is the Sony GM Milky smooth bokeh at 1.4, the falloff is almost unreal! Feels quite solid, even though it's a bit plastic-y. I really love this lens... it's currently my favourite in my collection. I'm taking fantastic portraits, and stopping the aperture up really brings out the sharpness in the lens. However even at f/1.4 I'm blown away by the results and sharpness, especially in the middle of the frame. It's bulky, but that's acceptable and expected given it's an 85mm 1.4.