Samyang lenses

[Pavel]

You guys may already know that, but Samyang is beating big boys in the art of lensmaking. It is not a fluke with just one lens. It is their whole line. Their lenses are very well built and they are optically superb. The only downside is - no electronics. For those of you salivating over Zeiss, that should not be an issue. The price is bargain basement for top notch lenses. I would certainly consider this company before buying any new stuff. Check them out on Photozone. Most are reviewed with Cannon mount, some with Nikon. I love their fisheye - the only lens of theirs I actually own.

[enviroguy]

I hope to see some fish photos taken with your fisheye lens from your latest maritime adventure.

.....Dennis

[Toad]

I have also heard positive reviews of their lenses - and the fisheye gets called out frequently as being particularly good. With the DOF a fisheye, auto-focus isn't really an issue anyway...

[Pavel]

@ Dennis - not fish but boats. It was cruel what I did to them with a fisheye
@Robert - focus is not much of an issue either - everything from about 10 cm on is sharp

[Zig]

Take your point, and I agree they're getting well-deserved plaudits, but to be fair "beating big boys" and "salivating over Zeiss".... are perhaps a wee bit hyperbolic Pavel..?

That said, they've been helpful enough to provide a depth of field scale with their 35/1.4..and even though it's a plastic stop-down only job, it makes darn good sense to those on a budget who would weigh up the £320 for that against 3 times that for the Canon. I personally at this price point would edge up to the Voigtlander 40...a bit slower, but metal and with focus-confirm, both of which(hypothetically) would justify for the the extra £60 for the latter.

[matthew]

Looking at the reviews – I've always liked photozone – I have to say that I'd be interested in the fisheye, if fisheyes were something I was interested in, but not any of their others. The 85/1.4 seems decent, but I wouldn't trade my 85/1.8D for it, even if the /1.4 had autofocus.

If I'm looking for ultimate lens quality, I'm still reaching for my Zeiss lenses – five of them in two different mounts – or the Nikkor 85PC-E. They'll all manual focus, so it's not that I'm an AF snob, but on the other hand the 105VR and 85/1.8D are also excellent lenses. For that matter, when the 50/1.8s of the world are stopped down to f/4, they also produce excellent results… just like the Samyang 85/1.4.