Introduction

I wasn’t a big fan of most of Samyang’s earlier lenses, especially not their early autofocus lenses. Their latest lenses have shown significant improvements over the earlier ones though and this Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF FE even features a unique selling point: it is the lightest 135mm 1.8 lens ever made. And not only that, it is currently also the cheapest option. Do cheap and lightweight go together with good here? Let’s find out in this review.

Sample Images

You can find many of the sample images in full resolution here.

Specifications

The Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF FE has the following specifications:

• • Diameter: 93 mm
  • Field of view: 18.9° (diagonally)
  • Length: 130 mm
  • Weight: 773g (without hood [90g], without caps)
  • Filter Diameter: 82 mm
  • Number of Aperture Blades: 11 (rounded)
  • Elements/Groups: 13/11
    
  • Close Focusing Distance: 0.69 m
  • Maximum Magnification: 1:4.0 (measured)
  • Mount: Sony E

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Disclosure

This Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF FE was kindly provided by our reader Olaf Leismann for review purposes. Thanks a lot!

Handling/Build quality

The Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF features a huge rubberized focus ring. The coupling is not perfectly linear though, if you turn it at “normal” speed it will take 180 to 270° from the minimum focus distance to infinity.

With the help of a Samyang lens station you can change the focus throw, if you set it to “fast” it will take around 90 to 120°.

On the side of the lens with have a button and a lever that can be programmed if you are in posession of a Samyang lens station.

The obvious choice for me would be to programme it as an AF/MF switch, but you can also use it to make the focus ring behave like a clickless aperture ring.

Unlike the Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB and the Sony FE 135mm 1.8 GM this Samyanf does not feature a dedicated aperture ring.

There is also a focus limiter included. Personally I never use those, but if you are only working in a certain distance range they can come in handy to speed up the auto focus.

The outer casing seems to be made from a high quality polycarbonate and all markings on the lens barrel are engraved and filled with paint. Compared to earlier Samyang lens, this one sure looks and feels nicer, especially the focus ring’s texture.

A bayonet style lens hood is also included. It features a rubber bumper at the front but no felt on the inside. It can be mounted reversed for transport.

The Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF FE is the lightest of the modern 135mm 1.8 AF lenses and seeing it next to the bulky Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB the difference is quite obvious. The Sony FE 135mm 1.8 GM sits inbetween the two in terms of size and weight.

I tried this lens with the Megadap ETZ21 adapter as well as the Neewer ETZ adapter on a Nikon Z camera and everything (AF-C, AF-S, aperture setting, stabilisation, Exif) seemed to work fine. I did not try all the AF/camera settings though (as that is near impossible), so you may still encounter something that doesn’t work as intended.

AF performance

I am not shooting sports or fast moving animals/humans so if you want to know if the lens is fast enough for this, or how it compares to other lenses in this segment, you may have to look for a different review with a more detailed assessment of this aspect.

Generally the AF worked well, but it neither felt as fast nor as reliable as that of the latest first party lenses. There has since been a firmware update that might have further improved the AF performance.

Vignetting

light falloff

The vignetting figures are very typical for a fast 135mm lens. At shared apertures they are pretty much the same as those of the Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB, Sony FE 135mm 1.8 GM or the Canon EF 135mm 2.0L USM.

It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.

optical vignetting

Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.

I was curious how the compact and lightweight Samyang compares to the Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB in this category. I was actually expecting this Samyang to show stornger optical vignetting and that is indeed the case. The differences in this category are not nearly as huge, as the differences in terms of size and weight suggest though.

The Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF FE does make use of an aspherical element, but I don’t see any onion ring structures here.

Sharpness

MTF-Graphs

According to these graphs, at infinity we should expect very good performance at f/1.8 with only a small drop in resolution in the corners and absolutely impeccable performance stopped down. Comparing these graphs to those of the Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB, the Samyang should actually perform better at f/1.8 at infinity.

Most MTF-Graphs show calculated values that do not take into account manufacturing tolerances and sample variation. Furthermore they are usually calculated for infinity, so in the field and shooting at different distances a noticeable variation may be visible.

Focus Shift

I do not see any field relevant focus shift here.

infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)

The MTF graphs didn’t lie. Already at f/1.8 this Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF shows a great performance. Center and midframe already look impeccable and the corners really good.

Without a direct comparison I cannot be sure if the Sony FE 135mm 1.8 GM actually performs better than this. The Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB does look a bit worse in the corners at f/1.8.

portrait distance (3.0 m, 42mp Sony A7rII)

For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.

This is what I did here, I refocused for every shot and aperture to get the best possible result at different locations in the frame (center, inner midframe and outer midframe).
Focus distance was roughly 3.0 m and the circle of the dollar bill is more or less the size of a human eye.

f/1.8 <————> f/2.8

A very good performance from Samyang in this important category. It actually looks a bit better than the sample of the Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB I had.

I am not sure if the Sony FE 135mm 1.8 GM performs even better at these distances, but it really starts to be debatable here, if those differences are actually field relevant.

close (0.8 m, 1:4.0, 42mp Sony A7rII)

A maximum magnification of 1:4 is surely nice to have, as it allows for near macro shots. Performance is also good at these close distances, maybe a tiny bit better than what I have seen from the Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB.

Also here it has to be mentioned that most of today’s fast 135mm lenses offer similarly high magnifications.

Flare resistance

As always evaluating flare is a complex matter since you can get any lens to look bad if you push it hard enough and a slight change of scenario can affect results a lot.

What also doesn’t help: fast tele lenses haven’t been exactly great performers in this category.

In this scene, not many artefacts are to be found even though there is a high contrast between the sun and the dark tree branches in the foreground.

Stopped down some tiny ghosts can appear, nothing too worrisome.

The Achilles’ heel of these fast tele lenses is veiling flare though, and that is something I did encounter a few times:

Very rarely I also encountered this rainbow artefact, but in those cases I also wasn’t using the hood.

This is a category, where I think the Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB performs a bit better.

Coma

Samyang’s engineers have a thing for correcting Coma well and that is also what they did here. When it comes to modern fast 135mm lenses, this is not a stand out feature though, they all perform really well in this category.

Distortion

The Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF is almost completely free of distortion.-

Bokeh

The performance in this category is what I was really curious about. Let’s see how it performs at different distances and also compared to its direct competitor, the Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB.

Close distance

Most of the modern fast 135mm lenses offer a maximum magnification of 1:4, which allows for near macro shots. This is something I really like compared to the fast 85mm lenses, that usually top out at 1:8.

This Samyang looks also really good at these distances, I see nothing I could complain about.

Medium distance

Also at mid distances the Samyang 135mm 1.8 AF looks really good to me, as backgrounds are rendered it a pleasing, unobtrusive way – even structured ones.

Long distance

Long focus distances are always where things get interesting. The Viltrox 135mm 1.8 LAB did not convince me 100% here when it came to complex backgrounds (e.g. foliage). It seems to me the Samyang looks a bit better here, but let us double check that in a few direct side-by-side comparisons in the next section.

Compared to: Vitrox 135mm 1.8 LAB

Scene 1: Forest Mid Distance

Scene 2: Forest Long Distance

Scene 3: Forest Long Distance

Scene 4: Forest Close Distance

Observations

Generally, these two lenses create very similar pictures. So similar, looking only at the camera display flicking back and forth, I couldn’t even tell them apart. So we are really talking about nuances here.

The Samyang looks a tiny bit smoother to me in scenes 1 and 3, not a meaningful difference though.

In terms of resolution and contrast its a draw to me. Shot-to-shot variance and sample variation are probably a bigger influence factor than actual differences between the two designs.

From the bokeh crops in scene 3 we can see the Viltrox’ sligthly less optical vignetting, that potential advantage isn’t really visible in the other scenes though.

In scene 2 the Samyang created a big rainbow artefact not present in the Viltrox’ shot. Keep in mind I wasn’t using the hoods for either lens here and if I did that might have benefitted the Samyang.

Let’s be honest here, if it wasn’t for that rainbow artefact in scene 2 which gives away the picture was taken with the Samyang, I wouldn’t be able to tell which picture has been taken with what lens. And if you told me, you would be able to, I surely wouldn’t believe you. I am not sure I ever did a comparison of two lenses that look so similar.

Sunstars

Samyang decided to go for 9 rounded aperture blades with this lens and the aperture diaphragm is old school Samyang, meaning sketchy sunstars with uneven lengths.
This is mainly a portrait lens, so for most people that shouldn’t be much of an issue.
There is one more thing though, at f/1.8 this lens creates strange halos, I have never seen something exactly like that.
If you want to learn more about this topic have a look at this article.

Chromatic aberration

lateral

I did not see any lateral CA that I could show you here. The lens does feature a built-in correction profile which is automatically applied in Lightroom though.

Prior using this lens, I heard a lot of good things about it and for good reason. Samyang’s engineers put together a really compelling lens here, where it is hard to find actually meaningful flaws with.

Bokeh is very nice, sharpness is good, pretty much all aberrations are corrected well. No need for a lengthy conclusion here.

The only thing that caught me by surprise are those weird halos that can appear around point light sources at f/1.8. I also checked with other owners of this lens and their samples show the same behaviour, so it does seem to be caused by this lens’ design rather than sample variation. It isn’t something you will encounter often, so I am pretty sure most owners didn’t even come across it (yet).

Still, considering its very fair price and its low weight this is a very appealing long 135mm lens and I don’t see a lot of reasons to go for one of the pricier alternatives instead.

buy from amazon.com | amazon.de | ebay.com | ebay.de | B&H (affiliate links) for $799

Sample Images

You can find many of the sample images in full resolution here.

Further Reading

• Guide to 85-135mm Portrait lenses
• Review: Samyang 10mm 3.5 XP
• Review: Samyang 24mm 1.8 AF FE
• Bokeh explained
• Reviewing Lenses isn’t really worth it

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BastianK

My name is Bastian and I am your expert here when it comes to ultra wide angle lenses, super fast portrait lenses (ranging from a 50mm f/0.95 to a 200mm f/1.8) and I also have reviewed way too many 35mm lenses. Don't ask me anything about macro or wildlife shooting though.

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