Exploring the latest offerings in the world of lenses, I recently discovered the impressive Samyang 85mm f/1.4 lens. Many of you may be unfamiliar with the brand “Samyang,” known for producing the 85mm f/1.4 Aspherical lens.
Hailing from South Korea, this company manufactures a diverse range of lenses that are notably budget-friendly, catering to the lower-end market.
Interestingly, these lenses are often rebranded and marketed by other companies like Vivitar, Walimex, Opteka, and potentially a few others.
This is a good-speed portrait lens for Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Sony, both APS-C DSLRs and Samsung NX compact cameras.
Table of Contents
Samyang 85mm f 1.4 Review
This lens is a manual focus model comprising nine lenses organized into seven groups, featuring anti-reflective UMC coatings with multiple layers to minimize ghosting and flare.
The Samyang 85mm F1.4 demonstrates that obtaining a wide-aperture 85mm lens doesn’t require breaking the bank, provided you’re willing to forego autofocus.
In its design philosophy, Samyang embraces a vision that introduces a touch of softness at f/1.4, yet sharpness is achieved when stopped down. The lens provides a tactile and mechanical feel when adjusting focus.
Product Overview
With a length measuring 8 cm and a weight of about 500 g, it is not so balanced when using on a smaller APS-C body – it’s a better match for a professional full-frame camera.
The lens boasts exceptional build quality. Crafted with precision, it features a sturdy metal housing for both the lens and its holder. The optical components of the product are constructed from high-quality glass, incorporating spherical lenses to effectively reduce chromatic aberration and minimize unnecessary light scattering.
The generously wide and ribbed focus ring enhances grip for a more comfortable handling experience.
In addition, the lens is equipped with weather sealing to guard against dust and water, adding a valuable layer of protection. This feature is particularly noteworthy, given the lens’s price point.
Despite Samyang being a relative newcomer in the lens market, the overall build quality is remarkable. The lens exudes a sense of solidity in hand, even though the outer barrel and filter thread are crafted from high-quality plastic.
Looks good, too
The aesthetics of the Samyang 85mm f/1.4 are charming. It features an elegant black finish with very few interruptions other than the manual focus ring and some accent rings. One of those rings is Samyang’s “red ring” which mimics Canon L-series lenses in a slightly more fashionable way.
On the other side of the manual focus ring is another chrome silver ring, which helps to define the manual focus ring pleasantly. The entire lens has a clean and elegant look. The focus ring has a very well-ribbed texture, is nice and wide, and is ideally positioned to grip and focus at the same time.
The ring for focusing is generously wide and has a rubberized, ridged grip band. As being a manual focus lens only, there’s a distance scale that goes from the minimal distance of 1 m to infinity, with no depth of field scale. With a definite clicking action, at the base of the lens, you will find an aperture ring that is adjustable in 1 stop (1 EV).
Despite the lens’s comforts, it is somewhat uncomfortable to use the focus ring, as it becomes slightly vague. All the lenses that have autofocus for mirrorless cameras use a system of “wired focus.” This means that the input into the focus ring is distributed through the focus engine, rather than a true manual movement of the lens elements.
Samyang 85mm f 1.4 provides the right level of resistance to chromatic aberration, being truly constant across the range of apertures.
This lens uses a manual approach, which feels more like an “emulation” of a mechanical approach, but still, some lenses do much better than others.
The manual focus ring rocks
Although the focus ring in previous models may feel uneven, Samyang improved this on the 85mm f 1.4 model, as the manual focus ring has been dramatically improved.
The cushioning and weight are much better, as is the focus ring’s consistency, resulting in a much better manual experience.
The f/1.4 aperture allows a large amount of light in, and its focal length is excellent for capturing distorted facial features. The internal focusing system provides soft, smooth manual focusing, and the iris diaphragm design helps to generate attractive bokeh, which is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus sections of a picture.
The Samyang 85mm 1.4 is a tiny and light lens, with a weight that does not reach 600 grams. The glass is black with a slightly stretched finish and has a gold accent ring near the front. The lens holder is made of metal, and the 72 mm filter threads are made of plastic.
Usually, Samyang, in its previous models, when mounting the lens next to the camera body, will not produce supplemental information to the camera, which means that the camera is better to have in manual use.
Advanced functions, such as image stabilization in the body, do not allow a great possibility to function.
That is why, in this lens model, Samyang integrated into the lens a CPU chip, which would be able to establish communication with the camera and thus be able to use the standard P/A/S/M modes.
This lens shows no distortion. Illumination is excellent even from corner to corner at f2 and smaller apertures. But at f/1.4, we found some dimming at the edges (-1 EV) and the corners (-1.5 EV). This is not a big issue as it can be solved with image processing software.
No locking function, regrettably
Being a low-end lens, this only provides a small set of fundamental features. The lens features an aperture ring with half-stop click marks, but it has no locking function to keep the glass still in its smallest aperture for modern cameras.
Besides, there are no half-stops between the 1.4 and 2 points of life and none between 16 and 22. The lens has a distance scale marked in feet and meters, but there is no depth-of-field scale or infrared index marker.
The center of the image’s quality is a little soft and exhibits some fringing with the aperture wide open. However, it improves a good deal at f4 and at f8 it looks very crisp. Meantime within the corners, the standard appearance is nice even with the aperture wide open, though surprisingly, chromatic aberrations become a lot more visible when the aperture closes.
The wide focus ring is made of rubber and features a series of ribs that run parallel to the lens body. The focus ring provides about 140 degrees of rotation, and the range ends in hard stops at infinity and near the focus ends of the lens.
Chromatic aberration, which is seen as a small layer between blue and purple in the corners of high-contrast surfaces, is easily manageable by some camera configurations, minimizing them significantly.
Good sharpness and bokeh effect
Samyang has successfully struck a commendable equilibrium between sharpness and the bokeh effect with this lens. Achieving an optimal balance is crucial when it comes to portrait lenses. If a lens is overly sharp and high in contrast, it may result in a somewhat artificial appearance to the skin, almost akin to a “plastic” look.
On the other hand, insufficient sharpness and contrast might compel photographers to adjust settings or lower the camera to address haziness or chromatic aberrations.
The remarkable aspect of the Samyang 85mm lens lies in its ability to navigate between these extremes, hitting a sweet spot that enhances sharpness for detailed and defined subjects while maintaining a pleasing bokeh effect, contributing to a natural and visually appealing portrait photography experience.
Samyang 85mm specifications:
- Model – AE 85 mm f/1.4 Aspherical IF
- Lens style – Telephoto
- Focal length – 85 mm
- Maximum aperture – f/1.4
- Angle of view – 28.3
- Minimum focusing distance – 1 m
- Minimum aperture – 22
- Number of diaphragm blades – 8
- Autofocus type – MF
- Lens Construction – 9 elements / 7 groups / 1 aspherical lens
- Filter diameter – 72 mm
- Dimensions – 78 x 72.2 mm
- Weight ~ 516 g
What’s in the box
- Samyang AE Aspherical Lens Ultra Multi-Coating 85 mm F 1.4
- Front Lens Cap
- Rear Lens Cap
- Lens Hood
- Soft Lens Case
Pronouncement
Not the best out there, but this is one of the best choices for the price – if you are looking for an 85 mm lens. For an exceptionally built and excellent image quality, this can be your next trusted companion in your photography journey for less than £250.
Explore the pinnacle of optical excellence with this vertical object lens, meticulously designed for those seeking unparalleled image quality. The lens construction features nine precision-engineered lenses arranged in seven optical groups, incorporating internal focus functionality through a spherical lens.
Every lens element is treated with multilayer anti-glare coatings, ensuring the preservation of high-level light transmission. I highly recommend this lens, considering the noteworthy balance it strikes between price and quality.
In a market abundant with 85mm lenses, Samyang’s strategic move to introduce an affordable manual focus lens is noteworthy. This lens is user-friendly, boasts exceptional craftsmanship, and is budget-friendly.
The reality is that quality lenses often come with a hefty price tag, deterring many photographers. Samyang addresses this gap by providing an economical option without compromising on usability or aesthetics, catering to those who seek a compact lens that seamlessly integrates with their camera without drawing excessive attention.
Conclusion
That is why the Samyang 85mm lens <- Affiliate Link 🙂 is in the right balance between the two, with a quality but reasonable weight construction, and excellent autofocus performance. However, it is still not completely perfect and has an image quality that is almost perfect for portrait work.
I hope you found this general description satisfactory, and please ask in the comments section below if you want more details. Also, please ask if you want a specific product review, and it will be done in a few days.
Thank you for reading to the end!
