Samyang launches the likely last Four Thirds mount lens ever.

15 Responses

1. Well, well. That is going to have an excellent resale value.

   Reply

   1. Especially since it’s manual focus, so there’s no reason to buy it in 4/3 mount anyway instead of Nikon or Canon, which are easily adapted…

      Reply

      1. For an FT camera, it’s always better to have a native mount lens because of optical precision. For a Micro FT camera with an existing FT adapter, I’d prefer the FT mount lens for practical reasons, too.

         Reply

         1. Just put of interest: would you say that the native 4/3 kit lenses are sharper than the native m4/3 counterparts? This seems to be at least my impression…

            Reply

            1. You are correct. 4/3 lenses are generally of much better quality especially the Olympus lenses. The SHG line are some of the sharpest lenses made for any system ever, but their prices reflect that.

            2. No. It really depends on the lens.
               But there are some lenses for example long(expensive!) primes(100mm+) that are excellent but only available at 4/3 mount.
               On the other hand lenses like the Olympus 75mm are sharper then anything seen on 4/3 mount(and 99,9% of the lenses on ANY mount).

            3. “Sharp” and “sukker” are twin words when talking lenses.

            4. The Ollie 75mm is one of the best lenses ever.
               Which is a little strange because Olympus film lenses were once prized for glamour photography because of how soft they were.

            5. Not really because the older 4/3 lenses were originally designed for 35mm film, they are not as good as the M43 digital lenses in that respect, light incident at normal to the sensor.
               The 4/3 and M43 image circle is the same hence optical quality should be the same. Real difference is 4/3 lens has to mount about 20mm further away on a M43 camera. That just requires a suitable adaptor or a 2cm tube a T2/M43 adaptor.
               The Samyang T2 lenses are DX format throwing a marginally larger image circle. The T2 extension tube on M43 is 42mm diameter, relatively narrow, and can cause vignetting, fortunately wider bore adaptors are available.
               The T2 lenses enable them to be used with any camera mount including cine, the reflex lenses work well for astrophotography, especially with M43 due to its better crop factor.

               Like all reflex lenses and indeed all extra-long lenses there is some loss of contrast and sharpness, with extremely shallow DoF close in; this is easily corrected by your camera settings. From experience don’t increase the NR because the camera will sort that out by itself.

         2. Since micro 4/3 reduces its manufacturing costs immensely not just by delivering a tv screen instead of a viewfinder, but also by selling poorly corrected (read much cheaper to manufacture) lenses and correcting them in software, all without passing along any savings to the consumer, I’d be hesitant to assign “optical precision” to a mickey 43 mount.

            Reply

            1. He was talking about 4/3, not m4/3.

            2. The Samyang lenses are manual and they are not corrected by camera software (such lenses have to be recognised by the camera), optical quality is on par with Canon who also make reflex lenses: reflex lenses are simple and hence cheap to manufacture. Existing Samyang reflex are DX format, reducing image circle to 4/3 should improve quality due to less light scatter. However f/6.3 is slow for a 300mm reflex, when f/4 could be easily achieved (cf existing Samyang reflex lenses)

2. Maybe some one accidentally messed up the specs, and it should have been an m43 mount. Or maybe they put the production on hold for too many years. Now it just seems weird to release anything native obsolete (just about).

   Reply

3. I doubt they’ll stop using the Walimex name. At least here in Germany, most of their lenses are sold under this name.

   Reply

4. All their screw-on filters are sold under the Bower brand – wonder if this means those filters will be labelled Samyang/Rokinon or if this means they’ll stop making them?

   Reply