Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 Autofocus Lens for Sony FE

Product Information

An aperture control motor and CPU chip is installed within 35mm F1.4 AS UMC Canon AE lens to assist Auto Exposure(AE) for Canon cameras. The aperture can be controlled from camera body thanks to the motor and chip. Also the appropriate focus is guided with indicator light. Fujifilm cameras are engineered to control the aperture according to the minimum exposure value(F-stop), so when the camera controls the aperture, it blinks momentarily to set the proper exposure.

Lens developments were moving forwards swiftly and 2010 brought several items of note. The 85mm f/1.4 DSLR lens was awarded Gear of the Year Best Budget Lens by Digital Photo/Practical Photography (UK). Film Video Foto Award (Poland) went to the 8mm f/3.5 Aspherical IF MC Fisheye. Also introduced in the same year was the excellent ultra-wide DSLR lens, the 14mm f/2.8. With the lens wide open at f/1.4, you can see some noticeable light fall-off in the corners. Stopping down helps, although to completely get rid of this phenomenon, you will need to use an f-stop of f/4 or smaller. Build quality is very good, despite Samyang being a relative newcomer to the lens market. The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC feels very solid in your hand, even if the outer barrel and the filter thread appear to be made from plastic. Unlike crappy Sony lenses that arrive with all sorts of microscopic white specs on them, this Rokinon lens arrived perfectly clean. Even wide open the Samyang shows a very solid performance. It also shows the least vignetting of any competing E-mount 35mm. SharpnessThe Samyang AF 35/1.4 FE delivers surprisingly good optical performance for its very affordable price. Sure, flare resistance is below average and it shows quite a bit of CA and distortion is also a little above average but it can compete with the significantly more expensive Sony ZA 1.4/35 and also the still more expensive Sigma 1.4/35 which aren’t perfect either.

Samyang XP lenses: Samyang also offers a range of ‘Premium Manual Focus’ optics for DSLRs, all of which are full-frame compatible and available in Canon EF-mount. Bearing the ‘XP’ (XPert) name, they currently range from the XP 10mm f/3.5 to the XP 85mm f/1.2. The 14mm lens is also available in Nikon F-mount. Announced last year, the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC is a very fast moderate-wideangle lens for Canon, Nikon, Four-thirds, Pentax and Sony full-frame and APS-C DSLRs and Samsung NX compact system cameras. The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 is a manual focus lens constructed of 12 lenses arranged in 10 groups, with multi-layered and anti-reflexive UMC coatings to help prevent ghosting and flare. The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC is available now priced at 379 EUR. Ease of Use Featuring 8 rounded blades, it adds an artistic touch to your pictures and creates a sense of soft dimension with incredible bokeh, perfect for out-of-focus portraits and night city landscapes. It comes in versions to fit Nikon, Canon EOS and Sony/Maxxum. I'm testing the Nikon version here. You can make the usual extrapolations for other brands.Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc. In the Samyang AF 35mm f/1.4 FE lens, Samyang employed an iris diaphragm with nine rounded blades, which has resulted in very nice bokeh in our view. We do realise, however, that bokeh evaluation is subjective, so we've included several 100% crops for your perusal. Manual focus isn't for everyone, but if you have the patience (and work more with subjects that sit still, like mountains and buildings) they can be highly rewarding and good fun to use. Many of Samyang's manual-focus primes have had no electronics at all, thus requiring the aperture to be set manually via the control ring. While this does limit the modes you can use, and cause a dark viewfinder image at narrow apertures, it can be an enjoyably tactile experience that feels like "pure" photography.