Right after the end of the Photokina show Samyang announced a new A-mount lens. Price is yet not known but the lens should shipping by end of the year. It’s a manual focusing lens with 72mm diameter and 513g weight. It is a VDSLR version which means it has a silent aperture ring and features focus gearing.
Samyang is know for making high quality manual focusing land low price lenses. I highly recommend them if you don’t need AF! Here is a list of currently available lenses udner different brand names:
8mm f/3.5 fisheye at Amazon, BHphoto,
14mm f/2.8 at Amazon, BHphoto,
24mm f/1.4 at Amazon, BHphoto,
35mm f/1.4 at Amazon, BHphoto,
85mm f/1.4 at Amazon, BHphoto,
37 Responses
looks really small!
If it doesn’t have a $1 AF confirmation chip, I’m not buying. I’ve refused to buy any new Samyang A-mount lenses until they start supporting a simple AF confirmation chip. I have the 85mm f/1.4 lens without AF confirmation chip and it is all but useless when shooting wide open because it is very difficult using standard focusing screen to nail focus. I have very many disappointments with this lens and yet I have half a dozen other manual focus M42 lenses with focus confirmation that I can use wide open even at f/1.4 without any problems.
I don’t understand why Samyang refuses to make lenses in m42 format so at least standard adapters with AF confirmation can be used or at least spend the $1 or so it should cost in quantities to add a programmed AF chip to their mounts. Really they would sell so many more lenses with that small cheap addition.
If you use Nikon though, everything except AF works on that platform which makes me wonder!
why do you need AF confirmation when you have peaking? o_O
Uhm, because I don’t have an A77? I use the A700 and the A850
There are pluses and minus to the confirmation chips at least on the A77. I do not have Samyang lenses but M42 lenses with adaptors. The chips allow for the green focus confirmation, which does work sometimes when I get no focus peaking due to low contrast subject, it also gives the camera the focal length of the lens (if you get that type of chip) which may provide better IS performance. However, if the camera is not set to maximum aperture the exposures get messed up. The camera thinks it can change the aperture when it cannot. The lack of a chip also allows you to use S priority besides the normal A and M modes. You set the aperture on lens, S on the camera and the camera will choose the ISO if in auto ISO mode.
Did I miss the announcement for a NEX e-mount version ?
(troll mode on) given the A99 autofocusing capabilities, those Samyang and Schneider MF lenses may come in handy.
the lols ensue.
Alpha mount lenses are supposed to have infinity on the far right… like Canon, Leica, Contax, Olympus, Sigma. This looks made for Nikon, Pentax, with infinity on far left.
May not matter to some. But I like all my lenses to focus in the same direction… especially with manual focus.
Maybe they have another version for Alpha which focuses in the correct direction.
Lenses like this are more for video right?
we have seen many non AF A-Mount lenses in the last few years and few auto-focus.
I know you can use non AF for stills but why in a non macro lens would you want to?
Price, is that the reason?
Just imagine a classic film sequence: A telephone ringing in front of blurred out background, then the focus switches to the person coming from the behind and follows her until she reaches and picks up the phone all including complex camera movement – how do you want to realise something like that with autofocus?
Got it……….I’m a still photographer, I’ll just keep my Sony Zeiss 85/f1.4
This lens is for you video types, maybe just like the a99 is and Sony is.
I’m a stills shooter as well, but none of my lens is AF. On FredMiranda, we’re known as the alternative lens shooters because we want a certain look/signature (e.g. Contax Zeiss, Leica R…). And it can also be because of the budget reason. Cheap (as in less quality) Samyang is the answer; optically, they can even surpass 1st party lens. But mechanically, there are compromises.
Well, I’m doing more stills than video myself, but have got several FD lenses, since I didn’t switch with Canon to their EF Mount, because autofocus was so damn ugly then – and today I’m simply used to manual lenses, nevertheless autofocus improved a little more than a bit.
lens in the picture says T/1.5…?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number#T-stop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig
wow Colin you know how to cut and paste web addresses from wiki!! congrats on this wonderful achievement! Now go cut and paste the fact that the title of thread says T/1.4 and lens in pix says 1.5…
I wondered if I was the only one who noticed that. More than likely the lens’ aperture is f/1.4, but after light transmission is taken into account its a T1.5.
http://matthewdurrphotography.com
I have samyang 85/1.4 – it’s my favorite lens for portraits and landscapes (i just stitch a bunch of shots afterwards) – i love the way it draws images. But after i went to travel it quickly lost ability to focus on infinity. And i have problems with aperture blades stucking occasionally. And front lens is rotating – i think it sunk inside a little and thats why it lost infinity focus. These problems except for focus has been with this lens from day 1 i bought it. Hope they’ll improve on that it their new model.
The only issue I had with mine was that really tight focus ring. The cheap lens hood kind of irks me too, but for what I paid for it I don’t mind considering it a freebie.
The focus is indeed sharp and has worked wonders for me with my NEX (since that’s the only way I can manually focus something this thin in DOF without being slightly off).
That’s interesting – i like how smooth my focus ring works – it’s on par with really expensive MF lenses i’ve tried. And yes, i use it on nex too and i always use manual focus assist zoom with focus area highlights to get it right.
it really varies from lens to lens. That’s why these lenses are cheap 😉 Build quality is semi-random.
Indeed, with Samyang, it’s like a lottery. So it’s best to buy from a place that you can return.
Video lenses are traditionally described by their Transmission value (hence T), i.e. the light reaching the camera after losses passing through the lens.
I’m unclear how this is different than the current Samyang 85/1.4 (which is also 72mm and is almost same weight at 533g) Is this a replacement for it? Or is there something about this that makes it more for video and unsuited for normal photography?
there are no distinct aperture stops on new lens – it goes smooth all the way. And it has gears on both rings and they probably rotate a bit smoother – so that is a big advantage for shooting video. The downside for taking photos are more distortions/aberrations when aperture is set in between t-stops (it’s only true if this lens was designed to keep distortions to minimum on certain aperture settings.) – other than that it’s the same lens again (if they didn’t change anything inside).
Distortion is independent of aperture settings. And you don’t get more distortions/aberrations when the aperture is set in between t-stops. Please link me to such article. The supposed downside of a smooth aperture ring is that you have to look at the ring when you set it to know the value. Most cine lenses are supposed to have better builds compared to the stills counterpart, though I doubt that Samyang would do that (Zeiss certainly does).
There are no distinct aperture stops in my common cheap samyang 85/1.4 too, once I took away the pesky little ball inside, while I tried to mount it back as I chipped it… and went too far. Though now the aperture is smooth. No focus problems too. See the guide to chip it at dyxum, don’t know why I got the tiny ball off in the first place, but since I couldn’t get it back in place, I’ve decided a stop-less aperture was in order, lol.
It gets my nomination for the Ugliest Lens of the Year. Looks like a toy and cheaply made.
What’s the difference with older 85mm f/1.4 lens?
Seems a bit smaller, perhaps this is built a bit better, and the aperture mechanism is stepless and is said to be calibrated for the actual light transmission capability of the thing. Now, due to their somewhat variable quality control, I’m not so sure the calibration can really be achieved, but at least the scale is in T and not f/. Optically, mechanically… nothing I guess. More cine related than stills, and of course not recognizable by the camera.
Wait, I thought Samyang already has 85mm F1.4 before? here’s the link http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/859127-REG/Samyang_SY85M_S_85mm_f_1_4_IF_MC.html
Hi there! I would like to ask is there any different between Rokinon and Samyang 85mm F1.4?? From what i read, i suppose they are both the same just rebranded under different names. But from What i saw from bhphotovideo.com Rokinon’s weight 635g (69.85 x 82.55 mm) while Samayang’s weight 513g (78 x 74.2 mm). Can someome please clarify? Because I am really interested in this lens. And what is VDSLR? is the old version of this lens a VDSLR? Thanks
@ Pak Foong
They are the same lens from same company – just different names in different countries!
Thanks Kalpurush! But why these two lenses weight are different? Sorry for my ignorance
I do as well, but most of the time all of us just go
about our organization oblivious to what is going on around us.