[shoplink 7453 ebay]
[/shoplink]
If you want to get a good manual lens for a cheap price Samyang is really the best! And the latest test of the new Samyang 35mm f/1.4 lens on Photozone (Click here) confirms that those lenses are very good performers! The lens has been tested on an APS-C Canon camera but the results will not differ when used on your Sony APS-C camera: “Samyang continues to surprise us regarding the quality of their recently released products. The full format Samyang 35mm f/1.4 AS UMC is capable of delivering a very high quality straight from f/1.4“…”It may be a surprising news but this is somewhat superior to the mighty Canon EF 35mm f/1.4 USM L”
So this is definitely a highly recommended lens and it is in Stock for $499 at Amazon (Click here), branded with the name Rokinon on [shoplink 7453 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and branded with the name Samyang on [shoplink 7380 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
The real bargain is the 85mm f/1.4 you can get for $274 on Amazon (Click here), branded with the name Rokinon on [shoplink 7456 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and branded with the name Samyang on [shoplink 7454 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
Kurt Munger (Click here) posted a full review of the Tokina 11-16mm F/2.8 lens: “The Tokina performs superbly at the shorter focal lengths, with sharp centers that nearly match the mid-sections and corners when stopped down. It has some of the sharpest corners of any super wide zoom I’ve ever tested, and that’s saying something!“.
Check the price and availability fo the lens at [shopcountry 7457] (Those are all direct Tokina search links).
28 Responses
Lens!
Lens!!
Lens!!!
Now that you rocked the world Andrea with your a77 pic,
amazed us again with some new top class a-mount lens news. Please start with the upcomig 16-50mm/2.8
Is it a CZ? Or, G?
You won’t get the “thank you” mail yet as Canada Post is on strike!
Working on it 😉
I’ve got the tokina 11-16mm and probably is the lens I have mounted all the time on my a100. I recommend using it from f/8 to f/11 for “ultimate” sharpness (f/16 and above for those landscape shots), at f/2.8 the picture is quite soft on the sides.
Is it really worth owning a 2.8 lens if you’re just going to stop it down that much ? All the other SWA lenses perform well that f8-f16 too.
There are some situations in which the 2.8 is very welcome. And, yes, it is worth it, because the lens costs pretty much nothing.
Compared to most UWA lens this is one of the cheapest and best lenses around. “High brand” UWA lenses most of the times are double the cost of this one and give the same results. The 2.8 is mostly useful on certain situations specially on hand held shots and low light. From what I read on other reviews this one is better than the sigmas and tamrons and other brands in terms of sharpness and distortion.
Are the hyperfocal markings on this lens (Samyang 35mm) only accurate for full frame cameras, or have I read some dud info somewhere?
Depth of field is affected by sensor size, so unless they’ve based the DOF markings on APS size for some reason, then yes they won’t match up to the results on an APS camera.
Of course, those markings shouldn’t be taken as anything more than a guide anyway, as full frame digitals have deeper depth of field than film cameras do.
manual lens with f1.4 will be hard to use to determine the focus in hurry espcially in the tiny lcd screen rather than in computer 24″ lcd screen. so, the price pay for what you get 😀 is good for video shooter 😀
It’d be easier with live view than through an optical viewfinder.
But no one seriously tries to get critically focused shots at f1.4 in a hurry. Certainly not with an SLR or electronic viewfinder camera.
At least with NEX’s firmware 04 these times are gone, since also my Canon FD 85mm 1:1.2 is easier to use with focus peaking now than it has been with an optical viewfinder while the 80’s. Did some portraits while dinner in a restaurant last week with a Canon FD 50mm 1:1.4 and without flash light – just focus until there’s focus peaking in the eyes and you’re done. Fast lenses wide open have never been easier.
admin,
besides takin care camera rumor, possible to get the status in sony a77 production volume detail, i mean sony focast any volume based on current crisis recovery …
It would be nice if Samyang 35mm will be made for E-mount…
Agree! 🙂
Well, it’s already easy to use on E-Mount with an adapter, which isn’t a big deal, since the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 is a massive lens already. I gave the Tokina 11-16mm F/2.8 lens some thoughts to use it this way, but preferring fixed lenses instead of zooms the Voigtländer 12mm would still be my choice so far:
http://www.photozone.de/sony-alpha-aps-c-lens-tests/544-voigtlander12f56nex
http://sonyalphanex.blogspot.com/2011/01/nex-with-voigtlander-12mm-ultrawide.html
Would love to get a really good quality pancake option around 12mm…
is the 11-18mm a Full frame lens?? because i have the 11-18 sony DT and on my a900 its cropped massively…
and its 2.8 which is awesome!!!
the widest non-fisheye lens you can get for full-frame is the 12-24mm Sigma.
Both the Tokina and the Sony 11-18 are DT-Lense, so they do not work properly on full format (heavy vignetting, corner-softness etc)
Manual focusing is *WAY* easier on a film or full frame dslr though
I have an a580 and a850, and the difference is viewfinder size, brightness and clarity is HUGE. Manual focusing with the a850 is fine, but almost impossible with the tiny, dark a580 viewfinder.
I love my 11-16. Also works very well on fullframe on 16mm witout any vigneting!
Tamron 11-18 works on fullframe too, from 14mm, but it is not tack sharp.
Samyang makes great optics at a good price but then goes at screws it all up by omitting native camera mounts with support for <$3 lens ROM chip so the lenses cannot be used with Sony image stabilization and focus confirmation.
I have the 85mm f/1.4 Samyang lens and I hardly use it because I can almost never get the lens in focus when shooting at f/1.4 or anything near wide open.
It also lacks an aperture coupling so you can't focus wide open and have the camera stop down for the actual picture. You have to stop down yourself and get dark viewfinder before you take the shoot. So forget stopped down photos of people in action.
If they are going to insist on not properly supporting the native lens mount they should have just shipped it with a universal M42 mount.
Stupid Koreans!
You can simply glue on a $5 chip to get stabilisation. Only takes a few minutes to do.
Carl, its not as easy as you make it out to be. You have to cut into the mount to do this as there is no space for the chip to sit on. Otherwise when you insert the lens and twist, the chip will be scraped off the mount. Also there are alignment issues to worry about as well and the retail cost of AF confirm chips is much more than $5.
For a mass producer of lenses, purchasing AF confirmation chip in bulk would result in prices under $5 and total cost of this change would be less than $5 to $10 per lens but would make them so much more attractive.
I really don’t understand why Samyang won’t fix this on its lenses. Although they do provide proper mounts (including open aperture metering) for Nikon cameras.
I’m pretty sure Samyang doesn’t pay royalties for using the mount, and would thus have to reverse engineer the protocol. I’d imagine they don’t regard it as worth the effort, when Sony users are the only ones who need a chip to get stabilisation (Pentax allows you to manually enter focus length for non native lenses), and it’s doubtful if Sony users are a big piece of their sales pie.
You’re right about the prices, I clearly haven’t been paying enough attention, having bought all my M42 adaptors years ago. Current prices seem to be in the $35-40 range. I never found them that difficult to attach (although getting just the right amount of glue on them always seemed to allude me).
Carl, you’re wrong again. Samyang lenses have focus confirmation problems with Canon DSLRs as well.
You’re also wrong about just using glue to attach AF confirm chip. That does not work for a native A-Mount lens. the chip needs to be recessed in the mount which requires cutting parts of the metal in the mount
I agree. Why would anyone go so far in making such a nice lens and not include the chip? It’s like BMW making a car and saying, “Hey, have a new 5 series. By the way, we left out the speedometer, gas gauge and rpm gauge to save a few bucks. Have fun.”
In this day and age, I you’re going to make a manual lens then at least add the frickin’ chip. No one is going to appreciate the good old days of blind manual focusing.
Interestingly… the Tokina didn’t do well at all….
Manual lenses should become much more useable with an EVF and magnifier. The EVF could compensate (within limits) for the dimming of the viewfinder as the lens is stopped down. If Sony includes contrast peaking in the EVF (which, at least in principle, should be possible with an SLT camera) then it looks like a very attractive proposition, at least for (fairly) static subjects. Another nice feature for Sony to include would be to be able to set a focal length to enable image stabilisation with manual lenses.
Of course there’s no obvious commercial reason for Sony to make use of manual lenses easier, so I guess I’ll just have to appeal to their better nature.
In this Review the Tokina did great: http://www.lenstip.com/165.1-Lens_review-Tokina_AT-X_116_PRO_DX_AF_11-16_mm_f_2.8-Introduction.html
Could it be a problem of the mount?!?!?!
Cheers!