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

Product Information

Video focus pulls are quiet and smooth, without any focus noise and also without any kind of nervousness (settling or pulsing). maximum aperture benefits working in low-light conditions and provides greater control over focus placement for shallow depth of field applications.

The selling point for these third-party optics, available for all contemporary camera systems, is that they're a good deal affordable than most other lenses, especially the manufacturers' own. Focus accuracy and repeatability is critical to consistently produce sharp shots especially with large aperture lenses. The string of letters in the lens’s title signify that it has both ED (Extra-low Dispersion) and AS (Aspherical) elements, along with NCS (Nano Coating System), and is designed for CS (Crop Sensor) cameras. Samyang’s XP 10mm lens is amazingly wide-angle, giving a 130-degree viewing angle on a full-frame camera. But as usual, it pays to choose your backgrounds carefully and not rely on the lens to blur away whatever is behind the subject, no matter how messy.Some of these are by various accidents of fate, some because they fall at just the right sweet spot for

If the 35mm lens should be used on a crop sensor APS-C format camera, then its "35mm format equivalent" field of view is around 52. It allowed one to customize the function of the focus ring (options can be programmed via the Lens Station and Samyang’s Lens Manager software. If you have the dock you can adjust it so that it travels around 180° which makes focusing easier but still no joy. This communication with the lens means that while the lens does not autofocus, it still needs to be accurately calibrated for proper manual focus operation.

Two of these are described as High Refraction (HR), while one is an aspherical element to minimise chromatic aberration. It behaves like the analogous buttons on many Sony lenses, which means its function can be re-assigned from the camera menu if you prefer. Minor barrel distortion is evident in a controlled setting with a test subject, but it is nothing to worry about in real-world situations. I own this lens and found it to be quite a bit wider than the Sigma 35, which in turn seems to be wider (from what I’ve heard/seen online) than the Sony FE 35 1.

Full-time manual focus override is also available, but there's no distance and/or depth of field scale. It’s a bit sharper than Sony’s own option, though the Sony gives you a little better control of aberrations and better close up performance. It is slightly longer than the format diagonal, which would actually be 43mm, so is showing us just about the same perspective as the human eye. After updating the firmware and setting the lens calibration to 0 (it was for some reason set to +4 by default) the af now works just fine and reliable.On the plus side, its use with mirrorless bodies avoids darkening of the viewfinder image at progressively narrower apertures. Meanwhile, the aperture diaphragm employs 9 curved blades to give a near-circular opening at large settings for attractive bokeh. Much of its weight can be attributed to its robust-feeling metal-skinned construction, with the weather sealing and extra controls adding a few extra grams over the original version. Samyang claims to have improved autofocus for video recording compared to the original lens, by minimising vibration and noise. I highly recommend checking manual focus accuracy when you first receive your lens copy, so that you could exchange it for a different one, if needed.