I’ve praised Yongnuo over the past few years for being innovative rather than derivative. My first exposure to Yongnuo is when they started making cheap versions of Canon optical designs (very derivative), but more recently they’ve found their footing in making their own lenses with some of their own innovations. That leaves me a little disappointed in their most recent naming convention (not the lens itself). Their new lens is the Yongnuo 35mm F1.8S DA ART, which is very derivative of Sigma’s branding using the ART moniker that debuted in 2012. Sigma’s ART series really revolutionized its brand perception in the world, not because of the name, but because of the optical quality, and I’m not a fan of Yongnuo essentially trying to borrow that brand success. Perhaps the argument will be that the ART designation (for Sigma) has been reserved for full frame lenses, while Yongnuo will use them for APS-C. Still, it doesn’t sit well with me, so I’ll have to try to separate that negative impression from the actual performance of the lens, as this is a lot of lens for $129 USD! You can find out my full thoughts by watching the video review below…or reading on in the text review.

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Thanks to Yongnuo for sending me a review sample of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the APS-C mode (26MP) of my Sony a7RV camera. You can find the product listing page here.

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I praised Yongnuo’s series of unique wireless enabled lenses (the Commander Series) in each of these reviews.

• YN 11mm F1.8 DA DSM Pro WL
• YN 23mm F1.4 DA DSM Pro WL
• YN 33mm F1.4 DA DSM Pro WL
• YN 56mm F1.4 DA DSM Pro WL

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The new “ART” series is all about the image quality (hmmm, where have I heard that before?) Rather than focusing on features, Yongnuo will be emphasizing the optical performance of the YN 35ART that we’re reviewing today. Yongnuo has confirmed to me that the 35mm is the first in a new series for APS-C that they are releasing, all of which will bear the ART designation. The lens is definitely capable of producing sharp photos even at F1.8.

The challenge, of course, is a very saturated market. I’m reviewing this lens on Sony E-mount (it will also come to Fuji X and Nikon Z), and there are a lot of options available in and around this focal length. The most obvious competitor on price and performance will be the Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 AIR, a very good (and very affordable) lens that I reviewed here (on X-mount, but I got in an E-mount version to use for comparison in this review.) It’s an interesting turn of events that there are now enough of the Chinese brands on the market that they are directly competing with each other. The question will be how the YN 35ART will manage to distinguish itself from the crowd.

One answer may be in build quality, as the Yongnuo has a simple but more upscale build, including a metal body and even a weather sealing gasket at the lens mount.

It will probably take more than that, however, so let’s see if this Yongnuo lens lives up to the “ART” name.

Build and Handling

If you don’t speak Yongnuo, let me break down what those letters mean in the 35mm F1.8S DA ART lens designation. In many ways this follows the Fuji naming convention which puts a list of features right in the name.

• S = Sony, or Sony E-mount
• DA = APS-C
• ART = Higher level of optical performance

35mm (along with 33mm) are popular focal lengths on APS-C cameras because the APS-C crop factor (1.5x on these cameras) causes the focal length to behave like a “normal” lens on full frame. The effective focal length is 52.5mm (33mm is closer to 49.5mm), which makes for a field of view considered “normal” because it is close to what the human eye sees. That makes for images that are easily relatable.

You may have noticed that the shape of the new Yongnuo lens is quite different from the Viltrox. The Viltrox lens has a more squat shape. The diameter (64mm) is bigger than the length (54.3mm). The script is flipped with the YN 35ART, which is 63.5mm (2.53″) in diameter (almost as wide as the Viltrox), but considerably longer at 79.9mm (3.14″). That makes the Yongnuo a full 25mm longer, which is very significant.

The weight is also a fair bit heavier, at 265g (9.34oz) to just 170g for the Viltrox. Part of that is due to the extra size, but part is also due to the more robust build quality, which is more metals than plastics.

The greatest point of similarity is from the front of the lenses, where both look similar in diameter and share a 52mm front filter size.

I don’t often discuss minimum focus distance this early in a review, but this is the first lens that I can recall giving not only the minimum focus distance (35cm) but also the maximum magnification information (0.12x) right on the lens facade.

It’s an interesting inclusion, and I guess it makes my job easier! Here’s what that maximum magnification looks like:

The Viltrox can focus 2cm closer (33cm), and achieves a very slightly higher 0.13x magnification for reference. Not enough to look significantly different, as you can see below.

Whereas Yongnuo’s previous lens series (the Commander series) had an above average amount of features for the class, Yongnuo has a much more stripped down aesthetic here. There are no features outside of the manual focus ring on the barrel.

I’m not sure why we didn’t even get an AF | MF switch, and the Fuji crowd, in particular, will clamor over the lack of an aperture ring.

Unfortunately the one thing there (the manual focus ring) isn’t particularly well executed. I found the focus action fairly rough. The focus ring feels like it rubs a bit, and the focus action is distinctly non-linear. I found it to be extremely speed sensitive, with even minor changes to rotation speed dramatically impacting the focus throw. That made it very difficult to achieve consistent pulls from one object to another.

As has been the case with recent Yongnuo lenses, there is a USB-C port on the barrel of the lens near the lens mount. It is covered by a small rubber gasket that keeps moisture and dust out of the port. You’ll want to be careful with this gasket, as it comes completely out and will be easy to lose if you aren’t careful.

There is a tulip-shaped lens hood included. It is plastic, but nice plastics, and it feels tough and durable. It bayonets on with good precision and clicks definitely into place.

The aperture iris itself has 9 rounded blades to help ensure circular specular highlights when stopped down. This works okay, though the specular highlights have a bit of an odd signature to them, with a little scoop out of the bottom side. Here’s a look at F1.8, F2, and F2.8:

The lens barrel is made of metal, and it has a nice, anodized black satin finish. The materials are good, but I do feel like the longer length of the lens makes the section before the manual focus ring feel a little empty and unfinished – almost like an extension tube is attached to the lens. Even some branding in that section would have helped fill in the space.

There is a metal lens mount with a weather sealing gasket attached. Yongnuo also claims a fluorine coating on the front element to resist fingerprints and moisture.

The build quality is nice enough here, though I wouldn’t say that Yognuo has really done much to separate itself from the competition in this area.

Autofocus for Stills

Interestingly Yongnuo has not included the DSM in the lens name that I’ve seen with a number of their other lenses. DSM stands for “Digital Stepping Motor”. I had to go searching in the included user manual for any information about the focus motor, and found that it is an STM (Stepping Motor). As per usual, my question regarding what is different between a “DSM” and an “STM” goes unanswered. Focus works pretty well for stills, however, though with some caveats.

You can see the precision of focus in this shot.

Initially I had some hesitations about focus because I saw some unexpected hesitations during the focus process. After reporting those to Yongnuo, however, I received a firmware update that seems to have ironed out the quirks and gave more expected focus results.

I found that real world precision was good regardless of what subject I was working with. Here Nala was moving a bit, and focus still nailed her with precision.

Likewise here she was walking towards me and her face was in shadow, and yet focus is nailed on the eye.

Eye tracking worked fine for human or animal subjects, so overall I think it did fine even if focus speed isn’t top tier.

As with most third party lenses, if your goal is tracking fast action, you might want to go with a Sony lens, but for most people in most situations, autofocus for stills was pretty great.

Video AF

As with stills, the firmware update dramatically improved autofocus performance for stills. Focus became smooth and confident, giving me the kind of results during focus pulls that I expect on Sony.

There is a mild amount of focus breathing, but nothing extreme.

My hand test where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face and then remove it went fine. Focus moved with good confidence from my hand and back to my face.

A clip of Nala rolling around on the ground also went fine, with focus adjusting as she rolled and writhed in the sun.

Focus in general was fine post firmware update on the lens.

Yongnuo 35mm F1.8 (ART) Image Quality Breakdown

The YN 35ART has an optical design of 10 elements in 9 groups. I haven’t yet seen a breakdown of the optical design, though the box does have “ASPH” on it, indicating there is one or more aspherical elements. There is some risk in using the “ART” moniker, however, as while there is a marketing benefit, it also opens up the lens to additional scrutiny. Sigma made the word “ART” synonymous with extremely high optical performance and invited comparison with the top lenses in the class that the ART lenses would go up against. If Yongnuo wants to borrow that reputation, it is going to have to (at the least) back it up with excellent optical performance. The MTF chart does look very strong.

Yongnuo gets a good positive start when it comes to vignette and distortion.

Distortion is negligible, with just a +1 needed to correct the smallest amount of barrel distortion. Vignette isn’t bad, either, with a +55 (about two stops) of shading correction needed at F1.8 to get the result above.

The biggest weakness of the Commander series was fringing, but that is much better here, with only the tinies amount visible Longitudinal Chromatic Aberrations (LoCA) visible:

To put that in context, look at how bad the fringing was on the 33mm F1.4 compared to the newer 35mm F1.8:

That’s a pretty huge difference.

Lateral chromatic aberrations (LaCA) are a little more of an issue, with a bit of fringing on either side of transition areas in the edges of the frame.

Often people are interested in the amount of coverage APS-C lenses provide on full frame cameras. This is not some kind of “stealth full frame lens”, as most of the additional full frame image circle is obscured by the “mechanical vignette” of the lens not covering the full frame portion of the lens.

There’s not enough additional coverage available to warrant using it on full frame and cropping. You can probably get a few extra millimeters of coverage with some tweaking, but not enough to be genuinely useful. This is an APS-C lens, period. As is almost always the case, you would be better served by buying a full frame lens if you want full frame coverage.

So how about resolution and contrast? My tests have been done on a 26MP APS-C mode of my Sony a7RV. Here’s the test chart:

Here are F1.8 crops at roughly 200% from across the frame (center, mid-frame, and lower right corner).

That’s good sharpness, though not exceptional. The Viltrox is about the same in the middle, slightly better in the mid-frame, and better in the corners.

The Viltrox manages this while being slightly brighter (F1.7 vs F1.8, thus a slightly faster shutter speed of 1/500th vs 1/400th), smaller, lighter, and cheaper.

That’s less of an indictment of the YN 35ART and more of a praise for the Viltrox, however, as in real world shooting the Yongnuo is actually quite impressive. Even at F1.8 results are crisp and detailed, with good contrast and no “blooming” on fine textures.

And, unlike some other Yongnuo lenses, I thought that sharpness and contrast held up pretty well in either high contrast situations or when shooting at a distance. This F1.8 landscape shoot isn’t losing details in a deep crop or showing any fringing in this very bright image.

Here’s another closer shot in extremely bright conditions, and with the high contrast addition of snow on the moss. This is a shot that could have looked terrible, but the YN 35ART does a surprisingly good job of holding contrast and detail.

At F2 I don’t see much of a difference in sharpness and contrast anywhere but the corners, which have a little more pop.

You’ll see a bit more improvement as you stop down into the prime landscape apertures like F5.6-F8:

If you shoot between F4 and F8, you’ll find a very nice landscape lens, with good contrast and detail.

Diffraction will start to soften the image after that, with a mild amount at F11 but a more obvious amount by F22. Diffraction isn’t as obvious at the 26MP level on Sony, but expect this to be more pronounced if you are using a Fuji 40MP sensor.

Bokeh is a subjective measure, but I do think that the bokeh quality in many situations is fairly good.

In reasonably advantageous situations, the bokeh quality looks fairly soft. That’s true here, as well.

Where a lens like this stumbles, however, is with more complex backgrounds.

There’s a lot of hard edges in the transition zone here, and you can see that the lens shows a lot of busyness and jitteryness in those areas.

When I compared it head to head with the Viltrox, I found that there really wasn’t much to distinguish the two with an ordinary scene. The rendering looked equally soft, and the two lenses even metered the same despite one being F1.7 and the other being F1.8:

In other situations I did find that the Viltrox metered very slightly brighter. What also stood out here is that despite having a near identical white balance (temperature + tint), the Yongnuo produced a much warmer image.

Flare resistance was a pretty mixed bag. Directly on I saw minimal veiling (loss of contrast) and just a bit of ghosting, but there are certain points near the corners or right out of frame where you can get some flashing and much stronger flare damage.

You can avoid flare through careful composition, but it isn’t a flawless performance, to be sure.

I do feel like the optical glass is better in the YN 35ART than in the Commander series. The combination of color/contrast produces nicer results than what I’ve seen from previous Yongnuo lenses, so that’s a step in the right direction.

So overall I would conclude that this is an optically strong budget lens…though not really more so than a lens like the Viltrox. If you’d like to see more image samples, check out the image gallery here.

Conclusion

I’m not thrilled with Yongnuo’s choice to use the “ART” moniker. It feels far too much like a return to the time when they were selling rebranded Canon optical designs. I feel like the company is capable of much more at this point. While I applaud the decision to produce a lineup of lenses focused on optical performance, I feel like they could have (should have) come up with a unique way to market that lineup rather than depend on stolen valor from Sigma.

The YN 35ART comes to market at a difficult season. If it had arrived a few years ago, it would have made a splash as an optically excellent, well priced prime. But the past few years have seen the market saturated with options in and around this focal length, most of them from other Chinese lensmakers.

So, the question will remain if the Yongnuo 35mm F1.8S DA ART does enough to set itself apart from the competition. Ultimately you’ll have to decide that for yourself. This is a sharp lens with good autofocus and a nice (if simple) build…but is that enough in 2025?

Pros:

• Nice looking lens with nice build
• USB-C port for firmware updates
• Has a weather sealing gasket
• Autofocus motor is quiet
• Excellent sharpness across the frame
• Low distortion and vignette
• Good control of longitudinal chromatic aberrations
• Good contrast
• Fairly good bokeh
• Better optical glass than previous Yongnuo lenses
• Great price to performance ratio

Cons:

• Appropriates Sigma’s “ART” label
• Some lateral fringing issues
• Gasket for USB-C is hard to remove and easy to lose
• Can be flare prone

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Yonguo 35mm F1.8 ART @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Yongnuo

Purchase the Yonguno 56mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Yonguno 23mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Yongnuo 33mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony a6600 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

Purchase the Sony a6400 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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