Samyang Europe officially announced the release of five Full Frame E-mount lenses for your A7-A7r camera. These are great lenses but you have to know that these have been designed for DSRL cameras. It means they are bigger than they could be of Samyang would have designed them specifically for the FF E-mount. So nothing has changed between that E-mount version and the other Canon/Nikon Sony A-mount versions. They only made it fit to E-mount by making a longer tube 🙂
These are the lenses (no preorder links available yet):
• Samyang 14mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC
• Samyang 24mm f/1.4 ED AS IF UMC
• Samyang T-S 24mm f/3.5 ED AS UMC
• Samyang 35mm f/1.4 AS UMC
• Samyang 85mm f/1.4 AS IF UMC
59 Responses
really good news 🙂
Bit lazy, but the more lenses the better I guess. Although as an FE E and A mount owner I’d rather just pick up a A-mount Adapter and use the A-mount version of the lenses.. so at least I could use em on a A-mount body… especially as there is no weight/size reduction.
Is there an A-mount to E-mount speed booster? That’d also be advantageous for your APS-C E-mount stuffs.
I don’t really get it cause if you have a a7/r and plan to get or already own a A-mount or canikon etc you can always buy a 10-20 dollar adapter. It would be the same and you can use it in multiple cameras
These lenses are huge. I don’t really see the point of investing so much money on a very compact FF system if you’ll be using giant lenses like these. I would much rather they had released slower lenses if they were compact.
Not everyone is buying the a7 and a7R for the size
im buying the A7 to mount any type of lens, size doesnt matter havent you read? Its how you use it!
+6845136
The combination of the A7/A7r and any of these lenses with the extended mount is still vastly smaller than any DSLR with the same lens for that DSLR’s mount.
Your point is entirely specious and moot anyway.
But even if somehow they negated the smaller body, have you even bothered to consider that the lenses can be changed and that not every lens in one’s kit is magically enlarged to the size of the largest lens in that kit? The biggest boon of an E-mount camera is the freedom of glass selection across the board, tiny, big, fast, slow, old, new, whatever. Huge choices. No other camera offers as broad a selection of photographic options, especially when you realize you can jam this camera behind some seriously long glass and get full high speed pro level AF thanks to the LA-EA4 adapter.
It’s so great to have a single system that can span pocket camera to professional wildlife/sports rig all on one platform.
+1
If I buy these, I rather get the Nikon/Canon models as resale would be easier since they just add a longer tube.
Are these MF or AF?
Also, they don’t look that big. regular length but they look thinner than average lenses.
MF
well, ranger longer than 50mm and tilt/shift lens are doomed to be big. but i agree that i will try to avoid using hugh lens on any mirrorless and rangefinder
i meant range (flange distance) over 50mm, the lenses will be long
While it’s true that they are “Just” mount changes, it’s worth pointing out that nearly every adapter you can buy, including the high end novoflex stuff, have terrible manufacturing tolerances and universally introduce poor side/corner performance. If you’re never using these lenses on anything but an E-mount camera, then this option is superior to an adapter by far.
That’s greatly exaggerated. It’s true that sometimes you can find the lens moving a bit when put on an adapter but you find the same looseness when lenses are also put on DSLRs. If you want a really tight fight, get a flat head screwdriver and widen the pieces in the bayonet that hold things together.
Also, I have a Novoflex adapter (although not for E mount) and it’s perfect compared to a lot of the other adapters I had used in the past.
How on earth can an adapter introduce side/corner issues when they aren’t really much more than an extension tube with the correct mechanical connections (and, sometimes, some electronics too). They don’t actually sit in the optical path. Of course if the mating surfaces aren’t parallel then you would have problems with differential focus across the imaging plane, but that wouldn’t be manifest as corner issues as such. If the adapter was too long, then you might lose the ability to focus at infinity, but such a fault would be obvious (and still nothing to do with corners). Too short, and you’d lose some close focusing abilities and the movable lens group wouldn’t be in exactly the same position when focused for a given distance (but it would be in a position designed to focus, just for a different subject distance). Minor changes like that don’t really cause focus issues for CAF or manual focus – after all, extension tubes are actually designed to do this.
I suppose if a manufacturer actually made an adapter with too small an internal diameter, then it might cause some vignetting on an FF sensor, but that seems unlikely.
In short, then the most likely issues with cheap adapters are likely to be loose mechanical couplings, but none of the likely problems will cause corner issues. machining the mechanical coupling part of an adapter is actually easy and straightforward, and the required tolerances are hardly stretching modern technology. No doubt the cheapest will short cut even this, but I see no reason at all why modest cost mechanical adapters should not perform perfectly well.
A cool nesw indeed!
Thanks Andrea 🙂
Thanks SAMAYANG :):)
Yay! Longer tubez!
Thong and Lube
The 14/2.8 is already out and I have one (under the Rokinon brand) and it’s pretty great, though large.
I’m so confused!!!
What is the difference between Rokinon and Samyang lenses? Or is there any? They look and are priced almost identically and on some B&H listings for Samyang there’s photos of Rokinon lenses. Help.
same thing, they even come in other names such a vivitar and some others I can’t remember. They get made by one company then re branded for others. They do the same thing with certain rechargeable batteries and many other items. If you know what to look for you can save tons of money when you purchase certain items being that they may be the same item just one has a name brand tag on it.
Adorama sells them with the Bower name.
Mirrorless FF bodies can be small or compact, but the problem remains. FF lenses are still big and bulky, espectially f1.4.
Use Sony’s compact 16mm f 2.8 lens in a APS-C mode and you have your compactness and your lightweight package with Close to the same spec performance.
Can’t be serious.
And so says somebody who has apparently not used anything better than the SEL16F28, not to mention the RokiBowYang 14mm f/2.8.
I preferred SEL16.
Exciting news indeed! Regardless of the size, it’s nice that the A7/A7r are being embraced. It probably won’t be anytime soon but if Sony builds the FE E-Mount system out, I will eventually move over to it.
Also, in general, how does the Samyang 14mm rate? And is there an A-Mount?
The 14mm is superb with high resolution, great CA control and low flair for such a wide lens, but has one huge caveat. It has significant geometric distortion. On a scenic its not bad but on anything with straight lines its nasty. Its has moustache barrel distortion which means it isn’t a constant curve. I haven’t found any lens profiles in ACR that totally rectify this but the plug-in/standalone PTLens takes care of it completely…at least what I can see.
I use it on my FF Sony a850.
Note that it appears to come in Regular and Cine (de-clicked)versions for both a-mount and e-mount. All are full frame and COMPLETELY MANUAL lenses but can be used on APS-C as a 21mm lens. I shoot at around 7 feet f5.6 or f8 in aperture priority mode and call it good. Just use the exposure comp if needed and pick an ISO. You’ll need to be critical of focus on the others of course.
FWIW my distance scale is way off on my lens. Its the only unexpected flaw.
Bruce,
Thank you for all of the useful information. I almost bought a used Tameron 14mm but decided to wait and see what the new Samyang is all about.
It has three other caveats: 1) More-often-than-not, the infinity stop is a joke; fortunately, it can be adjusted by the user with a 1mm jeweler’s screwdriver. 2) Significant focus shift (aka RSAs), reducing the functionality of the infinity stop and distance markings to just the one f-stop you adjust it for (presumably wide-open). 3) The screws that attach the mount to the rest of the lens thread into plastic. My friend broke his clean off the mount last year.
That said, this sum of issues has not kept me from buying one myself, and has produced most of my most-printable shots.
Try before you buy. And buy exactly what you tried (and found good enough, for you). It’s written ‘cheap’ all across the lens.
You guys know of a forum that I can go to for advice and help on using the A7? I’d like to join some kind of community for it. 🙂
Just ask some questions on alt board at Fredmiranda.com. They should be able to help you there.
Try Dyxum.com. There is a dedicated FF mirror less sub forum there now
Yes,dyxum.com is a great resource for users of Sony and Minolta users. They have a great forum and a fantastic A-mount lens data base.
Dyxum in itself is a good reason to choose Sony.
I own the A99, and frankly, the Samyang lenses are sometimes a bit too big even for me 🙂
My goodness.. bulky, heavy, and manual focus? No thanks !
I don’t see the point but they look pretty nice.
I couldn’t believe they actually did this. Permanent hollow tube? Really Samyang??? A chip and a motor could be fitted there for automatic aperture control.
And all the extra cost but I would of liked at least a chip for the EXIF data
Yes, please. Besides, E-mount specs are open.
They’re huge, all manual focus only, and some have pretty strong distortion. Not exactly very exciting stuff. Just cheap.
All valid points. But…as far as the 14 mm goes:
1. Its a 14mm FF lens and needs GLASS to perform….lots of glass and far away if its going to perform well on a digital sensor. Its as wide as most people’s peripheral vision. So it has to have mass and it has to stick out more to get the correct flange to sensor distance on all cameras.
2. You don’t need to focus a 14 mm except to plan for depth of field…which you have to do anyway, especially on something this wide. Unlike most lenses where you plan on what is going to be in focus….here you have to plan on what is NOT going to be in focus. At a reasonable f-stop everything from a few feet to infinity is in focus. And even if you do have to focus as in taking advantage of the thin DOF that, say, the 85mm is capable of…you probably want to check focus anyway with peaking. These are not sports lenses but are excellent in deliberate structured settings.
3. I don’t know about the other lenses but you can see my comments on the fair amount of distortion on the 14. But its one-click easily corrected and this lens is super sharp…as in maybe better than just about anything else and certainly any zoom at 14mm. Even the legendary Nikon 14-24. (I can hear the howls rising now:) I would go out on a limb and say its the best deal on a new lens right now of anything I know of in any mount…chip or no chip…and it should have one on them all.
Inexpensive…not cheap. Personally I think the 14 is a bargain at triple the price. Originally I didn’t even desire one but its too good to pass up. I don’t use it a lot but I love the lens.
I personally wouldn’t use it on APS-C as there are other options.
The outrageous thing is I still agree with everything you say (except the cheap part:)
Not very convincing…
Wouldn’t you be better off buying the Canon or Nikon version? You’d have no problems selling it on.
yes, there’s little incentive to get these unless you don’t like adapters.
no adapter means no misalignment, and nikon-f+adapter should be heavier than sony-e version by about 50 grams, in case of 85mm lens it’s 10% reduction so not meaningless
“no adapter means no misalignment”
So, everybody can make perfectly aligned mounts and nobody can make a proper adapter?
Agreed. Samyang could have made their own adapter with excellent build instead!
I just got samyang 85mm for nikon I plan to use on my A7 (when adapter arrives) and I am so damn surprised!!!!
Lens is so much smaller than I expected!
And it is so great build!
I got it for 170e used…
that’s steal.
Bitchin