In 2019 Samyang relesased this Samyang 35mm 1.2 XP. At that time, I honestly didn’t care much about it, because Sigma also released their Sigma 35mm 1.2 Art DG DN mirrorless design, which actually offered AF, making it a more sensible choice. This Samyang 35mm 1.2 XP is one of only two fullframe 35mm 1.2 lenses for EF-mount (or any (D)SLR mount actually) though, reason enough to have a closer look at it.
Many lenses I review these days are simply “more of the same”: Another 35mm 2.0, 50mm 1.8 or 85mm 1.4 with minor differences compared to the competitors. This Samyang Remaster Slim kit is a different story though. It consists of a pancake sized AF module and three optical blocks (21mm 3.5, 28mm 3.5 and 32mm 2.8) that can be interchanged. The E-mount pancake lenses I reviewed so far all came with too many compromises and many didn’t even feature AF. Can this set of three be any good? Let’s find out in this review.
Continue reading Review: Samyang Remaster Slim 21mm 3.5 | 28mm 3.5 | 32mm 2.8
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.
Released at the end of the DSLR era, these Samyang XP lenses had a very bad timing to begin with. And unlike many of Samyang’s other lenses, this Samyang 85mm 1.2 XP was only available for Canon EF-mount, where it faced fierce competition from the Canon EF 85mm 1.2L USM II, which also featured autofocus – and on a DSLR with its subpar focusing aids no one wants to give up on that. Today we have mirrorless cameras that actually work much better with manual lenses, time to find out, if this is an overlooked gem or just an outdated relic from the past.
Continue reading Review: Samyang 85mm 1.2 XP – A true hidden Gem
35mm are the favorite focal length of many reportage, event and wedding photographers. In the last years we saw boundaries being pushed as we can now choose from f/1.2 lenses with autofocus and manual focus lenses that even offer a maximum aperture of f/0.95. I gathered five recent ones of these super fast 35mm lenses with maximum apertures ranging from f/0.95 to f/1.2 and will compare them, to give you an idea which might work best for your needs.
Continue reading Comparison: Super Fast 35mm f/0.95 | f/1.2 Fullframe Lenses