Samyang V-AF 35mm T1.9 Definitive Review | Cinematic Bliss?

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here to give you my second review in the series of the Samyang V-A-F lenses
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So at this point, there are three lenses that have been released with the promise of two more to come in the series
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Previously released lenses are the 24-millimeter, 35-millimeter, and 75-millimeter T-1.9 lenses. And you can see my overview video that covers the shared features and design in this video here
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Still to come are a 45 millimeter, along with a 20 millimeter T1.9 lenses
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Today we're looking at the 35 millimeter T1.9. Now, if you're not familiar with the concept of the Sam Yang VAAF series
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these lenses are hybrid lenses that recognize that many modern photographers are hybrid shooters
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and that most modern mirrorless cameras are almost equally as adept as video recording devices as they are for capturing stills or photos
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And so as a recognition of that, the Samying VAAF series allows you to have a lot of Sini lens type features
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in lenses that also have autofocus and can behave pretty much like normal photo lenses as well
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And so they are really, really handy for a lot of different things. And the more that I have used this series, the more that I appreciate some of the subtle aspects that I'm discovering of design
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And so we're going to be doing that second review in this series where we're going to look deeply at the 35 millimeter T1.9 right after a word from our sponsor
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So you may have noticed my reference to T1.9, and that is one of the aspects of a Sini lens that is incorporated here
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As while photo lenses are typically designated by their maximum F-stop or aperture size
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which would correspond to F-1.8 in the tiny series that these lenses are based off of
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But in the case of Sini lenses, it is looking at the light transmission. And so while you might have a physical aperture of F1.8, which we do here, it measures the amount of light that actually reaches the sensor
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And typically by the time you get through the optical path, the various glass elements and make up that optical design
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there's a little bit of loss of light in the process. In this case, it's not all that significant
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And so an F1.8 lens has a T-stop of T1.9, which is quite efficient by lens design standards
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But what's important here is that we have a consistency of T1.9 across all of the lens
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lenses, which means that as you switch hot swap one lens for another, your settings are able to
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stay the exact same because the same amount of light is going to reach the sensor. This is all
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about standardization in this lineup. And so we see that all of them are the exact same size
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They have the exact same feature set. They're designed to handle, even when it comes down to
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the focus frame to where the field is going to be identical across the series. So to look at those
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dimensions. This lens, all of these lenses, are 72.2 millimeters or 2.84 inches in diameter
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They are 72.1 millimeters or 2.84 inches long. And they all have a 58 millimeter front filter thread
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They all weigh exactly 280 grams or 9.6 ounces. All of them share common design of all the features
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here. And so that includes this metal front of the lens. It includes a metal bayonet style style
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ring at the front of the lens, it allows you to mount on accessories, like this manual
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focus accessory that we'll get to in just a moment. What's interesting is there's not just a bayonet
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mount, but much like the mount at the rear of the lens, there's also electronic contacts that
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is going to allow pass through of information. And so when you have an accessory like this mounted
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on there, you continue to have electronic communication throughout, which is really unique in
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its overall design. As a part of the design, we have tally lamps
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at both the front of the lens and the side of the lens, and so that allows you to evaluate recording either from the front or from the side
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You can control and tweak the behavior of how the tally lamps function
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by using the Samyang lens station. That runs you anywhere between $30 and $50, depending upon the sale price
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but I highly recommend getting it because it allows you to do firmware updates
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It allows you to tweak the behavior of the lens in more ways than ever before
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with these VAAF lenses, so it's certainly worth having. I do have a video on how that all works
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and how to do firmware updates if you want to check that out here. Also included in the design
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is that we have a focus hold button, and then we have a custom switch, custom switch with
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two positions, and it allows you to tweak the behavior of the ring here, depending upon
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what position you're in. So for me, I like to put, have the first custom position to function as
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an aperture ring, which is useful not only for stills, but also for aperture
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racking when doing video. In the second custom position, I like to have that set up to where you
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automatically go right into manual focus mode and so you can use the ring for manual focus at that
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point. All of these share a six weather sealing points throughout the lens, so starting at the rear
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gasket and then seal points throughout, giving you a nice thoroughly sealed design, which can be
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useful when the weather turns inclement. Now, because of that front bayonet mount, all of these lenses are
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not designed to be used with a lens hood. And so fortunately the front element is a little bit recessed in all of them And so far I found as we going to see in this review that the flare resistance is really quite good even without that lens hood incorporated
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We also have an aperture iris that is made of nine aperture blades
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and as you can see here, it does a reasonably good job of retaining a circular shape
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We also see that there is a kind of a hybrid approach to the aperture control
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and that when you are in stills mode, as you can see, there are some visible steps, approximating F stops as you go down
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However, if you switch into video mode, you get a smoother racking experience
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It functions more like a clickless experience and allows you to get better aperture racks
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than what you would if the lens or the aperture was designed otherwise
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It's one of those subtle touches that I picked up on after a while that just shows the thought
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that's gone into making this a true hybrid experience. There is a linear focus motor that drives autophobic
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more on autofocus in just a moment. And we have a minimum focus distance of 0.29 meters, 29 centimeters
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and that gives us a maximum magnification of 0.17 times. Certainly not class leading, but right there in the hunt
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for being about the average of what you're going to see for a 35 millimeter lens
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And so while this is a little bit larger than what its tiny series, the 35 millimeter F1.8 was
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this lens is just, they're, there's, so nicely made. The build quality is so much nicer. And that standardized feature set, of course
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is what is going to make these really work. Now, a quick word on the first accessory that has
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been released for these lenses. Samming is promising others in the future. But this is a manual
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focus adapter. And so you might ask, why do we need a manual focus adapter when we already
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have a good manual focus ring? The short answer to that is really in two different areas
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First of all, when you have any kind of mirrorless lens, because it is designed to wear input on
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focus ring runs through the focus motor, there are no hard stops at either minimum or infinity
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focus. And also, because of that same issue, you have no distance markings, no distance scale
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So while this is a linear manual focus ring with a full 300 degrees of rotation built onto the
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lens itself, you have no distance markings. Somehow, I'm not even quite sure how they pulled it off
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but with this manual focus accessory, you get a few things. First of all, you get distance markings there
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so giving you even higher, more repeatable results. Those distance markings come in both metric and imperial
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You also get hard stops at both infinity and minimum focus, which is going to be incredibly useful
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You're also getting a standardized matte box for this typical 95 millimeter
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And the way that this design is it's really easy to lock into place and to remove
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It's just, it's a quality design and it really works. And so already we have a really nice manual focus experience
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but it just goes up to a higher degree for repeatability and also just having all of that visual precision right there
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I really, really enjoy using that manual focus accessory. It's one of these things that really does help to set this series of lenses apart
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from the run-of-the-mill lenses that I typically review. So let's talk about autofocus
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As noted, we do have that linear focus motor as a part of the design. And what we have got is a focus motor that's tuned really for, again
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two different hybrid functions. So when it comes to stills capturing, focus is quick
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snappy back and forth with very, very little lag and autofocus. So zero problems there
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I found that when I was shooting, for example, the shot of my son at Niagara Falls
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even shooting at very, very narrow depth of field and putting a lot of stuff in the foreground
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I was able to nail focus on his eye. And I just found in general that I had zero problems with
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autofocus. Here's a series that follows Ferrari as he moves around and you can see that it
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stays nice and sticky on the eye as I do that. But when you switch over into video mode
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as we saw here, instead of being fast or abrupt, we have a really cinematic tuning. And so in
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the focus pools, for example, here you can see that they're not rushed, but they're nice
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and cinematic. But where that really plays out nicely is say this shot where I'm going along
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this icy branch. And rather than abrupt focus jumps that are going to drop, you're going to
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your eye. You can see that there's really smooth transitions there that allow the damping
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the damping of the focus pools to look more like they're manually done, manual focus pools
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And so it's just much more artistic. You can see that in some of these other clips here
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And so I really, really appreciate what they have done as far as the tuning of the focus motor
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when it comes to its work for video, because you are getting a more cinematic feel than what
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I see with most of the autofocus lenses that I typically review
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Obviously, this whole series is going to work really well on a gimbal because you've got a great
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balance of size and weight and obviously the ability to hot swap because they're the exact same
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size and weight and the balance point is the exact same. So you're not going to have to do any kind of retuning in between
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So that obviously is going to be an additional thing that makes this really, really useful. And so in general, I have very, very little to complain about when it comes to that
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auto focus. I feel like they've just done the various things that they needed to do to make this
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lens work on both levels. And it does just that. It works great as a photography lens. It works
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great as a video lens as well. Now talking about the optics, in each one of the things that is
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standardized across these lenses is that they are making sure that there is a standardization of the
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actual color, color temperature and color rendering coming off the optical glass. Now that's a huge thing
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And as you look across this series, you can see that as I switch between the three lenses that I have right now
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that I set a manual white balance. You can see that it's rendering each one of these in an identical way
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So that's really, really important for getting consistent color at various focal links
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And it makes them even more useful as a series, which, by the way, as you're going to see
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my feeling is that these lenses make most sense as a series if you're going to use them in conjunction with other lenses in the series
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So some of the strengths, and we'll dive more, kind of do a deep, dive in just a moment Some of the strengths here are obviously that great color and great color accuracy There is a good cinematic look to both footage and to photography with great color rendition Bocquet is quite nice for a lens like this
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And there's good sharpness, not mind-blowing sharpness, but good sharpness wide open
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that gets much better as you stop it down. There's minimal amounts of distortion, a manageable amount of vignette, and the weakness tends
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to be focused on chromatic aberrations. Let's dive in and let's take a look at how that breaks down in my typical optical test
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So we'll start by taking a look at vignette and distortion here
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So as you can see, there is next to no distortion there, and certainly there is some vignette
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but very little to see as far as the distortion front. I was able to get a nice clean correction by just dialing in a plus one, and then you
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can see as far as the vignette goes. There is a plus 65 that I dialed in
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So somewhere between two and two and a half stops of vignette in the corners, so nothing
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severe here. and everything corrected just fine. We can see here with a lot of straight lines in the shot
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that even though this is an uncorrected image, you can see that there's no distortion
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that's really messing things up. And so an easy lens to use where you have straight lines in the scene
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The most significant optical flaw that I can find with this 35 millimeter lens
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is the fact that it does suffer from some longitudinal chromatic aberrations
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So you can see in these very dirty glasses. you can see some purple fringing there
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and the most noticeable that you're going to see is the green fringing. So if we look at the video clip of this
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you can see some of that fringing show up as we pan throughout this scene
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Likewise, if I run back and forth over my test chart and over straight vertical black lines
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you can definitely see that there is some fringing that will show up. It's not out of control or anything
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but it will show up in some of your video clips where it is harder to correct. In other scenes, however, with bright lines
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situations like here. This is a situation where a lot of times lenses will show a lot of fringing
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You can see that there is a very mild amount of fringing there, but there's nothing that is overly strong here
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And as we look towards these bright areas in the background, that is actually handled fairly well
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So we have a reasonably balanced result here. Even though it does have some fringing
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it's reserved to certain situations. You're going to most see it in bocaf fringing
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Now the other form of chromatic aberration, which is lateral chromatic aberrations that show up along the edges of the frame
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there is very, very minimal amounts of that, as you can see here, without any kind of correction
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So that's not going to be a significant problem. So here's a look at my test chart where we're going to be using the 50 megapixel Sony Alpha-1 sensor
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This is at a 200% magnification I'm showing you here. So you can see in the center of the frame that we have good detail and good contrast
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Images are going to have good punch from wide open there. in the center of the frame. The mid frame also looks good. Contrast is dropped a little bit, but still
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looks quite good there in the mid frame. And if we pop down into the corner, we can see that on the
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you know, this left hand side of the bill, it actually still looks very good. And as we get towards
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the very edge, there is a drop off to where contrast is diminishing, and the ability to render those
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fine details is diminished as well. So for some real world perspective, here is an image at F1
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And we can see here in the center of the frame as we pan across detail is really, really good
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So even wide open, you can get some really great looking shots. And again, it's only at the very edge of the frame where the image quality starts to degrade
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Throughout the majority of the frame, it is very sharp even at F1.8
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Another example here, F1.8 once again, and we can see, again, throughout most of the frame, that detail looks really, really strong
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and again, it's only at the very edge of the frame. And in this case, you know, it's not really the depth of field is not the same
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So we'll look down here in this corner. You can see that we're starting to lose some of that detail
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Throughout a lot of the frame, even on a high-resolution body, though, there is plenty of information
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One final shot here, and this is purposely shot to throw a lot out of focus
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But you can see that in the area that is in focus, that it is very nice and crisp
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And I've shown this previously to show accuracy of autofocus, but it just shows
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how that the optics also keep up with that as well. Now if we go from F1.8 to F2 on the right
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you can see there is a mild uptick in contrast. Image looks a little bit better there
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Mid-frame, a little bit better. Corner looks a little bit better in terms of contrast
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The big jump here, however, comes between F2 and F2.8, where you can see that there is a lot more contrast on tap there
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We can see it in the mid-frame, which is looking much crisper. And then in the center of the frame
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which looks really, really sharp now. At this stage, we'll take a look also at the other side of the frame
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to see how our centering is showing up. So here on the left side, particularly if you look at the F2.8
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where the contrast is already boosted, it's looking really strong there. We move on further here, also looking very, very good
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And then we'll pan up to the top of the frame, and you can see that at the top as well
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that detail is looking good. And so we have a nice amount of centering in the lens
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as well. So we've already got a lot of resolution as we've seen at F2.8. Stopping on down to F4 just allows a
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little bit more contrast. We can see that we've got great punch here. Everywhere that we look now
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detail is starting to look really good and we can see we're now starting to resolve well
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into the corner of the frame as well. Jumping on down to F5.6 gives us another boost there as well
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to where things are looking really, really sharp. So for a real world shot here, we can see that at
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100% magnification, which is the way you're actually going to look at things. Right down to the
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trash down there at the edge, everything looks really crisp. Our subjects here, the detail looks
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really nice. And we can see rendering into the background. Though depth of field is limiting it a little
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bit, we can see that the lens is resolving really nicely everywhere that we look in the scene
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So our minimum aperture here is F-22. And as is typical on, particularly on high-resolution bodies
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diffraction is limiting the image quite a bit It actually not not as extreme as what I see in many situations but obviously wide open you getting a better result than what you are at F So I would recommend here
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as usual, about F-11 as a limit. You might be able to venture as far as F-16, a lot of bodies
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but I wouldn't go any further beyond that. Now, we've already taken a look at minimum focus distance
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I thought you might like a look at how the actual detail holds up up close. I do think that this
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lens doesn't work quite as well at its minimum focus distance or up close. You can see that contrast
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is just a little bit lower. It's been reduced. And you're going to find stopping down to F2 and in
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particular F2.8 is going to increase that resolution as some of the spherical aberrations start to
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correct. Now the tradeoff for both the fringing and also the lower contrast in some situations is that
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you really can get very nice creamy bouquet. That is better than what I see from a lot of 35 millimeter
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1.8 lenses. Now the fringing obviously is here and as we've already noted detail up close isn't off the charts
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So that's probably a usable amount on a high resolution body. But what you can see is your tradeoff is that the bouquet really fades off in a very nice and creamy way
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We can see as we look at go back to the geometry here for a moment. You can definitely see that fringing and that is the optical weakness here
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And you can see that lemon shape towards the edges of the frame. Stopping down things start to correct here
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and then as we move on, you can get more of a circular shape
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but you are starting to see the aperture blades there. But it's in the real world situations where I find that the bouquet is nicer
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and creamier than what I see from many lenses with a maximum aperture of F1.8
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that are around this area. And so in this situation here, you know
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you can see the negatives in terms of that kind of cat eye shape, but you can also see that the transition to defocus
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is actually quite cinematic, and that's what stood out to me as a video kind of focused lens
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is that a lot of the footage looks really cinematic to me. Here's another shot that shows it even if you stop down the aperture
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The boca is still quite nice in this situation. The other thing that stood out to me is that colors are really fantastic
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and that's true of this whole series, but you can see here my son against this mural in a restaurant
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just how the colors just really pop, and look really fantastic. Here is obviously a moodyer winter scene here with less vibrant colors
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but you can see that all the detail throughout the frame, it looks really, really nice
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and the colors that are captured here in this winter palette are very, very pleasing
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Another shot here where just the color rendition is really fantastic, and you can see a little bit of the sunburst effect from the rising sun here in this image
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This is the worst as far as flare artifacts that I got, and as you can see, it's not with the sun right in the frame, but rather right out of the frame
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In fact, if I move to this shot where the sun is right in the frame, there are fewer ghosting artifacts, and you can see that the nine-bladed aperture does produce a nice-looking sunburst effect
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So for the most part, even without having a lens hood, flare resistance is fairly good
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There's just a few spots in the frame with the sun or the bright light right out of the frame that you might see a little
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little bit of flare artifacts. So in conclusion, this is a lens that is, it's a little bit of an
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interesting dichotomy for me because I don't love the amount of chromatic aberration there. And I do
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find that it's more troubling in video shots because it's harder to correct for. But at the
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same time, for a lot of other applications, I really love the overall cinematic look of this lens
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In some ways, of the three lenses I have right now, it is the most cinematic of the three
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and there's something about the overall footage that I just, it really draws my eye and I really appreciate
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And so I wish that it had less CA, but I also recognize as a part of optical design that that may be part of what gives it the footage the look that I enjoy so much
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But like the rest of this series, I think that it does a great job of balancing sharpness where you have certainly enough sharpness for just about any kind of application with also that nice rendering
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And it also does a great job of straddling both worlds. It's great for photos. It's great for video
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And if you look at the series that is designed just for photos in the tiny series
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we see that in the VAF series, basically everything is better. We've got a better build. We've got better feature
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We've got more mature auto-focus. We've got the consistent color standardized sizes
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You've got all of these little video-centric tweaks that just end up being useful in real life
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And so I do appreciate all of these upgrades. And so at the same time, I think the biggest question for many users is going to be
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is it worth the extra money over the tiny equivalent? And so in this case, we're looking at, you know, nearly $300 more to go to the VF, VAAF version
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And I think the answer to that really comes down to two questions. Number one, how much video do you actually do
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If you don't do much video, then while you're getting some things that are certainly nicer in the VAA series
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they are focused more for those that also want to capture video. And so maybe you can stick with the tiny series
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if you primarily or exclusively do photography. If you do video, however, it's well worth the money
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And the second thing I would say it's well worth the money is if you plan on getting more than one of these lenses in the series
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because the ability to have that standardization, to do the hot swapping, all these various things that come as a series
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that really is designed to function as a series. That's where the Samyang VAAF series makes a lot of sense
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And so the VAA 35 millimeter T1.9, it does have a few flaws, the most exceptional being the chromatic aberration
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But at the same time, it has a ton of strengths, and it's a lens that I find that I'm just reaching for more and more despite the flaws
24:51
I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review, also to my image gallery
24:57
There's also buying links there if you'd like to purchase one for yourself
25:01
And beyond that, links to follow myself or Craig on social media to become a patron, to get channel merchandise
25:06
If you haven't already, please like and subscribe. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

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Samyang V-AF 35mm T1.9 Definitive Review | Cinematic Bliss?

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