Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 Autofocus Lens for Sony FE

Product Information

Matthew Richards is a photographer and journalist who has spent years using and reviewing all manner of photo gear. He is Digital Camera World's principal lens reviewer – and has tested more primes and zooms than most people have had hot dinners! Many awards were received, including the Bronze Tower Industry Medal (1989), and various trade awards from organisations such as the Science Technology Promotion Association (Presidential Award, 1993). What was most relevant for the photographer in the UK was the development of a continuing line of excellent lenses at affordable prices. This has never faltered over the last 50 years.

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 focus ring is pleasingly wide and ridged for easier grip. As this is a relatively wide lens, out-of-focus areas are not as extreme as on a more telephoto optic, so having a widest setting of f/1.4 is very useful. However, the character of out-of-focus areas (bokeh) is still an important consideration for those using this lens for its wider apertures, and here the quality is very good. Resolution chart

Conclusion

While the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 AS UMC is a manual focus lens, it still contains a focus chip on the lens that communicates with the focus system in your camera to assist in acquiring proper focus on your subject. When you look through the viewfinder, you will see that the camera will tell you which way to move focus to get proper focus using left and right arrows. When the camera thinks that focus is correct, it will show a circle instead of left/right arrows. When shooting wide-open, sharpness across the whole frame is very respectable for an f/1.4 lens. Narrowing the aperture by a single stop to f/2 brings superb center-sharpness and the edges and corners follow suit at f/2.8. Sharpness remains excellent right through to the narrowest aperture of f/16, the lens doing well to limit narrow-aperture softening from diffraction. All in all, however, I got precise focus without any drama. Samyang has really done a good job of maturing quality of focus with their lenses. I would suspect that the Sony lens is marginally better for focus, but I would be hard pressed to tell you where. AF35 Image Quality We run a range of lab tests under controlled conditions, using the Imatest Master testing suite. Photos of test charts are taken across the range of apertures and zooms (where available), then analyzed for sharpness, distortion and chromatic aberrations.

Barrel distortion is a little more noticeable than with many 35mm lenses on full-frame cameras but still quite minimal and further reduced when using the lens on a crop-sensor camera. Verdict The Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 FE II is designed for use on Sony’s full-frame mirrorless cameras such as the Alpha A7R IV. Image credit: Andy Westlake We didn't experience too much "hunting", either in good or bad light, with the lens accurately focusing almost all of the time. It has quite a noisy focusing mechanism, though, which makes this lens less well-suited to video recording. I bought this copy used from my own money and used it for several months before writing this review. Features Lens Manager System Recommendations Window Windows 7 ~ Windows 11 · Above RAM 1Gbyte · At least HDD 1Gbyte of disk space · 1024 x 768 or higherWith the lens set to its maximum aperture of f/1.4, there is significant light fall-off in the corners. Stopping-down to f/5.6 virtually eliminates this. The autofocus system lives up to its billing, with an excellent turn of speed and virtually silent operation. For an f/1.4 lens, sharpness is excellent when shooting wide-open. Centre-sharpness becomes scintillating even at f/2 and sharpness across the whole frame is epic from f/2.8 all the way through to the narrowest aperture of f/16. Fast f/1.4 maximum aperture benefits working in low-light conditions and provides greater control over focus placement for shallow depth of field applications.

The Xiaomi 12T Pro offers a whopping 200MP main camera, but how does this perform, and do the other cameras deliver? Joshua Waller puts it through its paces.Samyang has employed their linear motor autofocus system which has served them well in other applications. This focus motor is fast, quiet, and efficient. Video focus pulls are quiet and smooth, without any focus noise and also without any kind of nervousness (settling or pulsing). Focus pull speed is smooth rather than fast. It feels like the motor is nicely damped for this kind of work. Your sample of lens and sample of camera will probably vary; be sure to test it before you go off shooting.

And then there are lenses like the RX1 Sonnar, which, despite being famous for being wider than 35mm has at least as smooth OOF rendering at 2.0 as the Sony 35 1.8 does at 1.8. Another fine performance gained the Samyang AF 50mm f/1.4 FE II lens a Highly Recommended award. At one time the 50mm lens was the ubiquitous standard lens sold with almost all camera bodies. It is slightly longer than the format diagonal, which would actually be 43mm, so is showing us just about the same perspective as the human eye. Distortion is low, so groups of people will not be elongated at the edges. Even more so than the 35mm lens, the 50mm can be abused optically speaking and still deliver the quality needed.If your current firmware version is lower than the version being offered below, please update your firmware now.