SAMYANG 85mm F/1.4 IF UMC

Preface

The 85mm ƒ/1.4 Aspherical was announced in 2009. Samyang is a Korean lens manufacturer which has taken to producing manual focus lenses in a variety of mounts under both its own name and several others, including Rokinon, Bower and Pro Optic.

Samyang 85mm f/1.4 AS IF UMC is a bright prime lens that has been designed to work with both full-frame and APS-C cameras. The optical construction comprises 9 elements in 7 optical groups, including one aspherical lens. Just like all the other Samyang lenses, this product is also made of the anti-reflective UMC coatings to improve the contrast quality and faithfully reproduce all the colours. The 8-blade aperture brings extremely smooth background blur on the photography. 

Samyang is a Korean company which manufactures a variety of very affordable lenses. Till a few years ago they covered the low-end market but they are slowly moving up the value chain now with highly competitive and unusual lenses such as a 8mm f/3.5 fisheye, a 14mm f/2.8 ultra-wide lens, the already mentioned 85mm f/1.4 and as of the time of this review they're about the ship their brand new 35mm f/1.4. Samyang lenses are also marketed by some other companies such as Vivitar, Walimex, Opteka and probably a couple more. That alone may not be overly special but an ultra-large aperture 85mm f/1.4 lens sold for around 300-300EUR/US$ is almost a sensation. Samyang 85 mm is an extremely popular portrait photography lens. Thanks to its functional construction and high image parameters, the product is perfect for amateur and professional photography. 

Upon first contact you will experience two immediate drawbacks - the lens does not offer AF or any "native" coupling apart from the Canon EF-compatible mount - or in other words: it does not require an adapter but that's it. The product image below shows the back-view of the lens - you may notice the lack of electric contacts here. Consequently you have to focus manually - either by checking the viewfinder image or, probably a better idea with respect to the potentially very shallow depth-of-field, by using Live-View. The aperture is not controlled by the camera but directly on the lens using an aperture ring just like back in the old days. The camera is naturally unable to display the selected aperture so both the viewfinder as well as the EXIF data will only show f/0.0 here. The aperture will also be stopped down immediately as soon as you apply changes to the setting so consequently the optical viewfinder will show you a darker image at smaller aperture settings.

The Rokinon 85mm ƒ/1.4 Aspherical was designed to fit the full-frame 35mm sensors of Nikon, Canon and Sony cameras, as well as having models available in Pentax, Samsung NX and four-thirds mounts. On a APS-C sized sensor, the lens will produce an effective field of view of approximately 136mm (Canon) or 128mm (Nikon, Sony, Samsung or Pentax); on a four-thirds mount, the lens will produce an effective field of view of approximately 170mm. The Rokinon 85mm ƒ/1.4 ships with a round lens hood and is available new from between $300-400.

Now apart from these shortcomings - what are you getting for so few bucks ? Well, surprisingly ... quite a bit! The build quality is nothing short of excellent thanks to a combination of metal and good quality plastic parts - the lens puts many of the genuine manufacturer products to shame here actually. There's no wobbling whatsoever. The focus ring operates as smooth as silk (dampened) and the aperture ring has distinctive clicks in 1/2EV steps (except at f/1.4->f/2 and f/16->f/22). The lens features an internal focusing (IF) mechanism so the physical size remains constant during focusing and the big front element does not rotate.

Autofocus Operation

The Rokinon 85mm ƒ/1.4 is not equipped with autofocus.

Sharpness

The lens provides decently sharp performance when used wide open at ƒ/1.4; stopping down to ƒ/2 improves overall sharpness very slightly. Stopping down to ƒ/2.8 provides excellent results for sharpness, and at ƒ/4 we see tack-sharp results across the frame. This stays true through to ƒ/11, where diffraction limiting begins to set it, but is for all practical purposes still tack-sharp. At ƒ/16 diffraction limiting begins to rob the image of sharpness, and it is fairly apparent at ƒ/22.

Shading (''Vignetting'')

Corner shading isn't really a problem on the sub-frame Canon 7D, with the only noteworthy results being extreme corners that are 1/3EV darker than the center, when set to ƒ/1.4. At any other setting, light falloff is insignificant.

On the full-frame 1Ds mkIII however, it's somewhat more significant: at ƒ/1.4 light falls off to make the extreme corners around 3/4 EV darker than the center; at ƒ/2, this falloff lowers to around 2/3EV. At ƒ/2.8 and smaller apertures, falloff results are a quarter-stop or less, which isn't really significant.

Distortion

The 85mm ƒ/1.4 is very well designed, providing no significant distortion.

Chromatic Aberation

The Rokinon 85mm ƒ/1.4 Aspherical provides a very good level of resistance to chromatic aberration, and it's fairly constant across the range of apertures (if you see it, you'll see it in the corners in areas of high contrast).

The 85mm ƒ/1.4 suffers, as do most ''fast'' lenses, from problems with longitudinal chromatic aberration, where fringes of red and green are found near the plane of focus when the lens is used at wider apertures. This is easily viewed on the sample images taken with this lens, as magenta fringing when used at the ƒ/1.4 aperture setting.

Macro

The lens isn't designed as a macro lens, providing only 0.08x magnification when used at its minimum close-focusing distance of just over three feet.

Build Quality and Handling

The Rokinon 85mm ƒ/1.4 Aspherical is a small optic, weighing 559 grams (19.7 oz). The lens is black with a slightly stipled finish and has a gold accent ring near the front. The lens mount is metal and the 72mm filter threads are plastic.

Generally, the Rokinon 85mm ƒ/1.4, when mounted on the camera body, will provide absolutely no information to the camera, meaning the camera will generally only work in Manual mode. Advanced features like in-body image stabilization may not work. Rokinon does produce a Nikon version of the lens with a CPU chip that allows the lens to communicate with the camera, and use the standard P/A/S/M modes.

The lens provides only a very basic feature set. The lens has an aperture ring with half-stop click marks, however there is no locking feature to keep the lens locked at its smallest aperture for modern cameras. Also, there are no half-stops between ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/2, and none between ƒ/16 and ƒ/22. The lens has a distance scale marked in feet and meters, but no depth-of-field scale, or infrared index marker.

The inch-wide focus ring is rubber, a series of ribs running parallel to the body of the lens. The focusing ring provides around 140 degrees of turn, and the range ends in hard stops at the infinity and close-focusing ends of the lens. There is no lens extension during focusing, and the front element does not rotate. The lens uses eight diaphragm blades to make up the aperture.

The round lens hood is around 1 1/2 inches in depth. The hood is a bayonet-mount that reverses onto the lens for easy storage.

Verdict

The Samyang 85mm f/1.4 Aspherical may be a very affordable lens but it's a very decent performer nevertheless. It is capable of delivering a very good center performance at f/1.4 although it's fairly soft in the image corners at this setting. The contrast level could be a tad better here as well. The global quality is pretty good at f/2.8 and impressive from f/4 onwards. At f/5.6 it is as good as the very best lenses out there. Lateral CAs are very well controlled which contributes to the very high sharpness perception at medium apertures. You may spot a little light falloff at f/1.4 but it's a non-issue beyond. The level of distortion is minimal as well. The bokeh is surprisingly smooth although strong bokeh fringing (LoCA) can be an issue at times. However, this is rather typical for such ultra-large aperture lenses regardless of the manufacturer.

The Samyang 85mm f/1.4 Aspherical started a new era for the company a few years ago. It was the beginning of a path away from an exotic niche manufacturer towards the mainstream. Samyang may not be there yet - primarily due to the lack of AF - but this simply takes a while. If you can live with the manual aperture and manual focus the Samyang 85mm f/1.4 (as well as is cousins) is certainly worth a serious consideration. After all it costs just a fraction of a "conventional" AF 85mm f/1.4 so it's also within reach of more budget-oriented users. Remember also that the "native" Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM may be a tad "slower" but it resides in the same price league.