It was just a few months ago that I happily gave the Schneider-Kreuznach x LK Samyang 14-24mm F2.8 FE a positive review. It had been two full years since I had done a Samyang review. That was long enough that Samyang was no longer Samyang but now LK Samyang. I’ve always had a soft spot for Samyang, as they were in many ways the first newer lens maker during my career to break into doing serious autofocus lenses that were competitive with both the first party brands and established third party experts like Sigma and Tamron. The last five years have seen newer Chinese lensmakers really elbow into that space (led by Viltrox), but I’m still rooting for the South Korean LK Samyang to continue to carve out a space in the market. The collaboration with Schneider-Kreuznach was a big deal, resulting in a more upscale lens at a higher price, but the lens being reviewed today falls into more familiar Samyang territory. The LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 P FE is a compact prime lens with solid optics, good autofocus, and a reasonable price tag. It doesn’t have any German collaboration but rather feels like a slightly larger, slightly more upscale lens in the spirit of Samyang’s Tiny series. And that’s okay, as I found the Tiny series a sweet spot for Samyang’s lenses. In many ways the Viltrox AIR series (which has been even more successful) follows a similar blueprint. So is this new wide angle compact prime worth right under $400 USD? You can find my full thoughts in the video review linked below or by reading on.

https://youtu.be/vWHj1D7dF_Q

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*This product provided by LK Samyang under license from Jos. Schneider Optische Werke GmbH. 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 Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses. You can visit the product listing for the LK Samyang 16mm F2.8 P here.

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AI Summary: The LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 P FE offers an attractive combination of compact size, solid build quality, and excellent optical performance, making it a compelling choice for travel and wide-angle photography on Sony FE cameras. Its high sharpness, minimal fringing, and reliable autofocus enhance its appeal, especially considering its high magnification capabilities for close-up work. However, significant distortion and vignette corrections are necessary, and some focus warping can occur during video use, which may require additional post-processing or adjustments. At approximately $475 USD, it faces stiff competition from similarly priced or slightly cheaper 16mm primes like Viltrox, though its lightweight and weather-sealed design provide a notable edge for portable, versatile shooting; thus, its price remains fairly competitive within the market segment.

Strengths:

• Compact and lightweight design
• Excellent build quality with weather sealing
• Fast, silent autofocus with good precision
• High optical performance, sharpness, and contrast
• High magnification capability for close-up photography
• Minimal fringing and excellent flare resistance

Weaknesses:

• Heavy vignetting and significant distortion needing correction
• Occasional warping and focus shifts during video
• Competition from other brands offering similar features at comparable prices

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The “P” in the lens name stands for “Prima”, which is a Latin word meaning “first” in the sense of importance. LK Samyang envisions the Prima series being potentially a person’s “first lens” or be the “first lens” that a person reaches for. The compact nature of the lenses (in theory) helps achieve this…though that leads us to a bit of an oddity in this marketing plan. The first Prima lens (which came during the time that I was out of touch with Samyang) was the 35mm F1.4 P FE, an F1.4 prime that seemed to be a slightly smaller and lighter than their earlier 35mm F1.4 AF lens (which I did review here), but was still 100mm long and weighed 470g (still slightly bigger than the Sony 35mm F1.4 GM, though a bit lighter). It felt like a new design direction for what had been their “Series II” lenses, including the 50mm F1.4 II, 85mm F1.4 II, and 135mm F1.8 lenses. I did a video about the Series II lenses as a series here.

The new 16mm F2.8 Prima and 85mm F1.8 Prime (both of which I’m reviewing at the same time) are very different types of lenses: smaller, lighter, and with smaller maximum apertures. The 16mm and 85mm lenses are nearly perfectly matched in size and are clearly part of a series. Both of these lenses put together weigh about as much as the 35mm F1.4. It’s just odd that these three lenses are being marketed together. It feels like LK Samyang switched direction during their design strategy for this series, and the the Prima 16mm feels a lot like an update on the Tiny series with some influence from the V-AF series. Here’s a look at the 75mm T1.9 (left) and the 45mm F1.8 (an early Tiny Series lens) on the right bracketing the two new Prima lenses.

You can see that the Prima lenses are similar in size (but not design) to the V-AF lenses (which were all mostly the same size). Both of these first two lenses in this more compact Prima series are focal lengths never covered by the Tiny or V-AF series. The Prima 16mm weighs just 207g and provides serious portability for a full frame wide angle prime. No, it isn’t as compact as a lens like the Canon 16mm F2.8 (my review here), but it is a better made, optically superior lens. No, it isn’t as bright as lenses like the Sony 16mm F1.8 G or the Viltrox 16mm F1.8, but it is significantly lighter and cheaper than either of those lenses. I would say that the Prima is the choice for those who want the focal length but don’t want to spend a lot of money or carry around a lot of weight…but still want serious performance.

The Prima 16mm has one other trick up its tiny sleeve – the ability to produce up to 0.33x magnification and all the way up to 0.50x if used on an APS-C camera. You can get very, very close to subjects and get high magnification (higher still than the image below).

I love when lenses have that kind of versatility, as it makes them even more useful as walkaround lenses. There are both strengths and weaknesses in these Prima lenses, and we’ll break it down in greater detail here in the review.

Build and Handling

The Prima lenses seem to be somewhere between the Tiny and V-AF series in terms of quality, though skewed more towards the latter. The V-AF series have some uniquely video-centric features, but the Prima lenses also feel a little more upscale than the Tiny series. They have a few features, some weather sealing, and nicer build materials. In many ways they feel like premium versions of Viltrox’s AIR series, and I consider that a compliment.

You can see from their promotional materials that LK Samyang is touting a new engineered plastic for the housing of the Prima lenses, and the claim that it is tougher, more durable, and has a nice finish. That feels accurate to me, as the plastics feel very tough and I don’t see any visible seems anywhere in the way I sometimes do with cheaper lenses (like the aforementioned Canon RF 16mm F2.8). The finish is very lightly flocked and seems very resistant to fingerprints. It should be easy to keep looking clean.

I also want to give some love to the focus ring, which has a more premium feeling diamond texture pattern that looks good from a distance and even better up close.

That ring moves smoothly with roughly 135° of rotation. The damping is on the light side, but there is good precision and the focus motor is highly responsive, allowing for a good manual focus simulation (all mirrorless autofocus lenses have focus-by-wire manual focus).

An AF | MF switch on the side makes for easy on-the-fly switches between auto and manual focus.

There is no custom/Fn button on these lenses, unfortunately.

In a new feature for LK Samyang, the Prima lenses have a USB-C port on the lens mount (like Viltrox), which allows for easier firmware updates without needing the Samyang Lens Station.

This is a welcome change.

You might also notice the weather sealing gasket there, which is one of four seals in the lens. There’s also one at the switch, near the focus ring, and to seal the front element.

LK Samyang claims internally to have tested up to an IP-5 rating for dust resistance.

Also included in the package is the lens hood, which bayonets on with very good precision. It’s made of similar plastics to the barrel and is a nice match to the lens.

That’s not an advanced feature set, by any stretch, but is definitely a notch above what we’ve seen from Viltrox’s AIR series (no switch or weather sealing) or Sigma’s Contemporary lenses (ditto).

The lens is nice and compact, with a diameter of 69.8mm (2.75″) and a length of 70.5mm (2.77″).

The front filter size is 62mm, which isn’t incredibly common but becoming more so. The 85mm Prima shares this filter size.

The weight, as mentioned is just 207g (7.3oz). This will be a very easy lens to bring along.

As noted, the Prima 16mm has a very high magnification level, though as is commonly the case with wide angle lenses, accessing that magnification comes with some challenges. You can focus as closely as 12cm, which sounds great until you realize that the measurement from the sensor to the front of the lens hood is 11cm. If you leave that hood on, you basically have to move up until hood is nearly touching the subject. That means in many cases you will need to remove the hood to get at least 3-4cm of working distance and not block all the light from your subject. Assuming you can do all of that, here’s the magnification you can get on full frame (0.33x)

You’ll see that there is some field curvature this close, so there’s definitely a fairly small sweet spot of focus. On the plus side, however, contrast and detail are good, though there is some fringing that is evident at this distance.

Switch to APS-C and you can get even higher magnification…up to 0.50x, or 1:2 macro.

That’s useful, though not quite as useful as having a bit more working distance would provide!

There are seven aperture blades in the aperture iris, though no manual aperture ring is provided. The resulting 14 bladed sunstar looks nice enough but not exceptional.

In summation, there is nothing groundbreaking about the build or design here, but I do think these are clean, attractive lenses that stand out as being nicely compact. There aren’t really a ton of 16mm lenses on Sony FE, so the Prima 16mm is welcome.

Autofocus for Stills

LK Samyang utilizes a Linear STM motor in this lens, and my experience with this focus motor in a few applications has been very positive. Focus is fast, quiet, and accurate. I shot facing up on the ivy growing on an old barn, and the crisp focus (and amazing detail and contrast) is pretty amazing.

Precision proved good, too, with good focus results in a wide variety of situations…including up close.

I had just a split second to pull up the camera and catch the shot below, and the shutter speed was too low for the lighting conditions. Still, autofocus was great, and grabbed the right target.

My formal autofocus test showed near instant focus transitions from close to distant. I could feel a bit of thrust through my hands during those quick focus changes, but no sound. It isn’t perfectly damped, but the focus motor has plenty of thrust.

Focus for stills seems pretty excellent to me. I have zero complaints.

Video AF

Great news on the video AF front, too. Focus pulls are smooth and confident, with no visible steps, no pulsing, and confident focus lock. Focus breathing is very low as well, so focus changes are nice and subtle.

As we will see in the next section, there is a fair bit of distortion and vignette, but fortunately on Sony the lens does seem to have in camera corrections available, and those seem to do a good job of cleaning things up. Those corrections aren’t always perfectly seamless when focusing in and out, however. I noticed a bit of warping if I manually focused back and forth.

My hand test went fine, with smooth transitions from my hand to my face.

Natural focus changes while moving are smoothly damped, though the focus motor isn’t always as reactive as what I would like. There are moments where nothing is really in focus because focus hasn’t adjusted to the next natural subject yet.

I’ll also note that this focal length is a very compelling option to shoot on APS-C or Super35 as well, giving a 24mm angle of view. That’s very useful for a lot of things.

In general, video focus is good, but there are a few quirks.

Image Quality Breakdown

While this is not one the lenses to come out of the partnership with Schneider-Kreuznach, the LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 P is still a serious performer.

The optical design of the Prima 16mm is fairly simple, with just 8 elements in 7 groups. This includes 1 HR (High Refractive), 3 ED (Extra Low Dispersion), and 1 Aspherical element, leaving just 3 ordinary elements in the design.

The MTF charts shows both F2.8 (top) and F8 (bottom), and it’s a bit of an odd MTF. At F2.8 the center and mid-frame are extremely sharp, but there is a strong slide to the corners, which should be considerably softer than the center. What’s interesting is that wide open the sagittal plane drops hard in the corners, while at F8 the sagittal plane is super sharp in the corners, but the meridional plane is pretty much the same on both charts. Bottom line is that this lens should be ridiculously sharp at small apertures.

And it’s true that at F5.6 in this shot the detail and contrast is amazing all over the frame even shot on a 61MP Sony a7RV.

This is a very, very sharp lens. It reminds me of the Sigma 17mm F4 (my review here). Like that lens, the Prima 16mm doesn’t have any amazingly bright maximum aperture (though F2.8 is more useful than F4), but both lenses have very high magnification, great contrast, heavy vignette, and a lot of detail wide open.

Let’s dive into the details.

The biggest optical liabilities are the distortion and vignette.

There is both a lot of distortion (a +33 to correct) and it also fairly complex with a mustache type pattern that doesn’t allow for a simple, linear correction. Vignette is also fairly heavy, requiring a +76 to correct. This is disappointing, but frankly it is almost identical to what I saw on the recent Sony 16mm F1.8 G. The Canon RF 16mm F2.8 is almost a fisheye lens before correcting the barrel distortion, requiring a +70 to correct (perhaps the worst that I’ve seen on a rectilinear lens).

While I haven’t gotten my hands on a RAW correction profile yet, there is in-camera corrections for JPEGs and Video, and you can see that the correction profile does a nice job with the distortion (I’m not sure the vignette is being addressed, however).

This isn’t great, obviously, but unfortunately the competition isn’t really any better. The Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 isn’t bad, but it is a considerably bigger and heavier lens.

While you can focus closely enough to create a shallow depth of field at 24mm, F2.8, I didn’t see any issue with longitudinal style chromatic aberrations (LoCA). Everything looked nice and clean.

A far more common problem for wide angle lenses is lateral style chromatic aberrations (LaCA) which show up along the edges of the frame in the transitions from black to white. Fortunately the LK Samyang 16mm Prima is well corrected for LaCA.

The distortion and vignette isn’t great, but the corrections for fringing are.

How about sharpness?

I’m using the 61MP Sony a7RV for these tests, which represents the highest resolution currently available on any full frame platform. I show the results at 200% magnification to really highlight any flaws.

At 14mm, there aren’t many to see.

The center is fantastically sharp at F2.8, as is the midframe. There is definitely a drop in the corners, particularly the last 5-8% of the frame. Centering seems solid on the copy I tested, with roughly equal performance in all four corners.

At F4 there is a bit more contrast, but the biggest improvement is some vignette lift that allows for brighter results.

Peak corner results are found at F8, where they are starting to look very good.

Real world landscapes at F5.6 to F8 are perfectly sharp all across the frame.

Contrast is intensely good, giving images a lot of pop.

You’ll start to see softening from diffraction by F11. F22 is minimum aperture, and it looks fairly soft.

Flare resistance is excellent. I could pan around bright sources and get relatively little ghosting and no issues with loss of contrast.

No issue there, which is great in a wide angle lens.

You don’t buy a wide angle lens for the bokeh performance, but overall the Prima 16mm isn’t bad. There’s some outlining around some defocused areas (the lens has intense contrast), but backgrounds still look reasonable nice.

Here’s another sample.

I certainly wouldn’t use this as a deciding factor for a lens like this, but it’s not really a negative, either.

Outside of the distortion and vignette, the optical performance of this compact lens is nothing short of excellent.

Conclusion

It’s great to see some new products from LK Samyang, and I’m rooting for their ongoing success. There are a lot of new players on the market, but Samyang was one of the original disruptors, and I want to see them continue to compete in this space. The Prima series is interesting, as I think there is a real sweet spot for compact, high performing lenses on Sony FE…particularly because cameras like the a7C series exist. While there are a few very good 16mm F1.8 options available now, there are few compact wide angle primes this wide available on Sony FE, so I certainly think there is a place for the Prima 16mm.

I remain confused by the connection between the 35mm F1.8 Prima and these newer, more compact options, but that’s up to LK Samyang to sort. I welcome the fact that both the 16mm and 85mm focal lengths have not been done in the Tiny or V-AF series before, and this takes their compact lineup wider than ever before.

LK Samyang has one final challenge, and that is over the past few years brands like Viltrox, TTArtisan, and 7Artisans have really increased their profile. Their products are very aggressively priced, and the roughly $400 USD does sit in a higher price range than lenses like that. It’s also a nicer lens, however, so the price point is probably warranted. LK Samyang does to invest in some improvements to marketing and distribution if they want to increase their market share, but their recent products have shown some continued maturation. The LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 Prima is an interesting option if you want to go wide and still travel light…which I suspect a lot of people will be interested in.

Pros:

• Nicely compact and lightweight
• Nice build quality complete with weather sealing
• Fast, silent autofocus
• Good focus precision
• Low focus breathing
• Extremely sharp lens with high contrast
• Very high magnification levels
• Next to no fringing
• Excellent flare resistance

Cons:

• Heavy vignette and distortion
• There can be some warping and focus adjustments during video capture
• Is the price competitive?

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the LK Samyang 16mm F2.8 P @ B&H Photo | Adorama | 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 a7IV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada |  Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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