The first generation Samyang AF 50mm 1.4 FE has some fans for its appealing bokeh, but at the same time it showed more of a subpar performance in most other categories. Samyang’s engineers seem to have been aware of that, as this lens had been updated to the Samyang AF 50mm 1.4 FE II a few years later. Let’s see if this has become an appealing yet affordable 50mm 1.4 lens that speaks to a broader audience than its predecessor.
During the SLR era Tokina had a bit of a thing for 17mm 3.5 ultra wide angle lenses, as they made three different iterations of it. This is a review of the latest one and the urban legend says that the older manual focus version is actually the better performer. I always found that hard to believe, so I thought it was a good idea to find out myself. So let’s have a closer look at this Tokina 17mm 3.5 AF AT-X Pro.
While Nikon is somewhat famous for their 28mm 1.4 lenses, when it comes to 24mm lenses as fast as f/1.4, Canon beat them by several decades, as they released their first Canon FD 24mm 1.4 S.C.C. Aspherical in 1975. Canon also kept the fans of the 24mm 1.4 lenses happy with regular updates: a New FD lens in 1979, the original Canon EF 24mm 1.4L USM in 1997 and then this updated Canon EF 24mm 1.4L II USM in 2008. Let’s see in this review how it compares to the Nikon AF-S 24mm 1.4G (released in 2010) and to today’s mirrorless designs like the Sony FE 24mm 1.4 GM.
As fifth lens of the Simera lineup, Thypoch released this Thypoch 21mm 1.4 Simera lens in mid 2025. This is obviously a direct competitor to the Voigtländer VM 21mm 1.4 Nokton, so we will especially check how these two lenses compare.
Lens is being reviewed on Sony A7rII and Leica M10
In 2025 you can find various f/0.95 fullframe lenses from different manufacturers and with different focal lengths – most (or all by now?) of which you can find reviews here. In 2013 that wasn’t the case though, you only had the Canon 50mm 0.95 Dream Lens from the 1960s, the Leica 50mm 0.95 Noctilux-M from 2008 for 10k and then this SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime. Not many people were willing to spend 5k on this lens from a rather unknown manufacturer and production ceased soon, so this is an extremely rare lens. I finally managed to acquire one, so let’s have a look at one of my white whales.
Tests are being done on the Leica M10, samples have been taken with various cameras.
