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LK Samyang AF 85mm F1.8 P FE Review - Did We Need Another 85mm?
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Jul 28, 2025
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the LK Samyang AF 85mm F1.8 P FE. Does this lens make sense with so many other 85mm options on Sony? | Read the Text Review: | Purchase the LK Samyang 85mm F1.8 P @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany Get the lens profile here: https://tinyurl.com/LKSamyangProfile Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.link/nt4zdz1goa7ql Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Fioboc Clothing: https://tinyurl.com/FiobocDA20 and us code DUSTIN20 for 20% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents:
View Video Transcript
0:00
[Music]
0:10
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the second in the Prima series from LK Samyang that is
0:18
releasing here at the same time. Now, last week I gave you a review of the 16mm f2.8 8. And that's a lens that I
0:25
consider to be quite attractive because of its compact size and strong optical
0:30
performance. Today, I'm back with a lens that on paper doesn't seem maybe as useful because it's yet another
0:37
autofocusing 85mm lens. And it seems like we've got a ton of those now on Sony E-mount. But I do think that this
0:44
lens might be intriguing for a certain customer for the simple reason that this is the most competent, compact,
0:52
lightweight 85 millimeter lens that I've seen on Sony E-mount so far. And I think
0:57
it provides a pretty strong alternative to a lens like Sony's own 85mm f1.8 at a
1:04
price tag that is hundreds of dollars cheaper. One clarification I want to make about last week's review is that at
1:10
the time the information I had before release was that these lenses would be retailing at about $475.
1:17
It turns out that the actual MSRP is going to be lower at about $399
1:22
which does change the math a little bit because I think it makes this lens more interesting. I'm actually filming on it
1:28
at the moment and any of the outdoor segments you see in this video, I will be filming on it and so you have a sense
1:33
of the overall rendering and how it does in autofocus in these various conditions. This is a lens that has a
1:39
great optical performance, strong autofocus performance and is really compact and lightweight, only 270 g,
1:47
very easy lens to bring along. And for that reason, I think it could be a compelling option if that is what you're
1:54
in the market for. We'll break it all down together as we dive into the details. So stay tuned. Let's jump in.
2:00
Now, in full disclosure, this lens was sent to me from LK Samyang for testing. They have had no input in the review
2:07
itself, nor have they seen it before. You are seeing it today. This is a completely independent review as always.
2:14
So, let's dive in and let's take a look at the build and handling here. As mentioned in the intro, this lens
2:20
retails at right under $400. So that's a few hundred dollars cheaper than the Sony. It's within a ballpark of
2:28
lenses like the Viltrox 85mimeter f1.8 and even the Mike 85 millimeter f1.8.
2:34
All of these lenses they're roughly similar in price. This lens however though is appreciably smaller than any
2:42
of those and it's definitely the lightest of the options giving you in most cases at least 100 grams less
2:47
weight. In the case of a lens like the Viltrox a couple hundred grams. So, it's a significant difference there. The size
2:54
is 69.8 mm in diameter or 2.75 in. It is
2:59
just over 71 in in or excuse me, 70 not 71 in 71 millime in length. That's 2.8
3:07
in in length. It is roughly the size of the VAF 75mm T1.9. It's just a little
3:15
bit narrower, a little bit shorter, and a little bit lighter. But that if you're familiar at all with the VAF lenses, it
3:22
gives you a rough size for the lens. This lens weighs in at 272 gram or 9.59
3:29
O. It is a 62mm front filter thread up front, which is shared with the 16 mm.
3:36
Nice quality lens hood here, which is a cut above of the way that their lens hoods used to be. And beyond that, I
3:43
also find that it bayonets into place with just more precision. It's just a nicer product than say the Tiny series
3:50
got in the past. Likewise with the body, they have a new newly designed
3:56
engineered plastic that is just feels tougher. Definitely there's no flex to
4:01
it. It feels a lot like the plastics on the Viltrox Air series which I feel I think are actually really nicely made.
4:07
Even though they are plastic, you can tell it's high-grade tough plastic. I wouldn't recommend dropping any of these
4:13
lenses, but they definitely could take a bit of bumps and bruises and I think hold up just fine. A little bit more
4:19
upscale than the Air series, however, is things like the focus ring. It has this
4:25
diamond uh pattern that I actually really like to it. It has a fairly nice
4:30
level of damping and good precision. The focus motor is fairly reactive for making focus changes. it. The focus ring
4:37
is about 170 degrees of rotation and it does feel to be linear. I'm not, don't
4:43
quote me on that, but as far as I tried going at varying speeds and it seemed like focus distances were roughly the
4:50
same of that. It does have an AFMF switch on the side which moves with nice
4:55
precision. It's not one of those sloppy switches. And then also it does have weather sealing and that's about five
5:02
seals that I see throughout this. So, at the front element, around the ring, at the switch itself, and then a gasket at
5:09
the rear lens mount. Also present on the rear mount is a USB C port. This is to
5:14
me the most logical place to put these ports, and I think it's great because it gets rid of having to use something like
5:21
the Samyang lens station to do any kind of firmware updates. So, great to have a
5:26
direct connection on the lens itself. You can focus as closely as 80 cmters,
5:32
which is not super close, but it is average. Almost all of these lenses I looked at, they all focus down to an
5:38
equal distance. Likewise, you get a kind of equal magnification of about 0.12
5:44
times. Up close performance isn't great at f1.8. It's a little bit lower
5:49
contrast. You can tell that the lens is not really optimized at that focus distance. It's better a little bit
5:55
further out. So you might want to stop down a bit if you're shooting close up. Depth of field is going to be quite small anyway with an 85mm lens at f1.8.
6:03
So there's some room to stop down to uh up your contrast level up close there.
6:09
Inside the aperture Iris there are nine blades. The idea here is they're rounded
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blades are going to keep a circular aperture shape. I find however stopping down the geometry isn't really great.
6:21
And so here at f1.8 and then at f2.8 at f2.8 8. You can see that it's not really
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getting necessarily all that rounder. By f4, it's better, but you are starting to see a little bit of the aperture blade
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shapes at that point. So, not necessarily the strength of the lens, but the aperture Iris does get the job
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done. Nine blades is kind of the standard for the class. The real standout, I think, to me here is how
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compact this lens is for a full-frame 85mm f1.8. It's a very easy lens to
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bring along and it is somewhat heavier than the 16 millimeter because the glass elements are a lot bigger inside.
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However, it is still lightweight and it takes up a pretty small footprint inside a camera bag. So, that part is
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fantastic. So, let's talk autofocus. LK Saming has chosen to equip this lens with what they call a linear STM focus
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motor. Now, emphasis here being on the linear because I've used, for example, their tiny series lenses that use just
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an SDM focus motor. And this is a definitely a better focus motor that's smoother in operation and it has more
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thrust compared to lenses equipped with just the STM focus motor. So this is the better of their focus motors and you can
7:30
definitely tell there's an improvement. While this lens isn't as instant in focus as the 16mm f2.8 that stands to
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reason it's the same focus motor in both applications and the 16mm is pushing far smaller elements. So, in this case, it
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is not quite instant, but as you can see in my formal test, it goes back and forth with good speed. Not much of a
7:51
hesitation at all going from one subject to another. And in fact, in real world use, I had no problem getting the shots
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that I wanted. I was able to, for example, with this shot of a rooster, I quickly reacted to get the rooster cuz
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he was posed in the right place. I got perfectly focused results. I did a couple I did another of another rooster
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as well. Got great results there. I was out visiting a farm with the lens. In another case, in my own backyard, I was
8:15
trying to sneak up on some wild turkeys that were there. And so, I quickly snapped this shot here because uh I they
8:21
were starting to get spooked and getting ready to run and I wanted to make sure I got something for my trouble. Likewise,
8:27
when I had my wife shoot a few just quick, casual available light portraits,
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uh every one of them is perfectly focused, even though she's far from a professional photographer. uh whether I
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was facing the camera or very heroically looking off into the middle distance, uh everything was perfectly focused in
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that. What's more, I found that as I have been doing with these LK Samyang lenses, I threw it via the Mega Dap
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adapter onto my Nikon Z8 body and found just like the 14 to 24 millimeter that
8:58
it worked pretty close to that of a native lens. I was able to get great autofocus, zero issues and actually
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using it and even with Nala rolling around like this. I, you know, shot quickly on the fly and it nailed her eye
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and so great focus even on that platform as well. So for stills, I think that this lens does great. You're probably
9:19
going to be happy with it. And of all the lenses that I've tested that are 85mm f1.8s, eights. The only one I would
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say that might best this in autofocus performance is Sony's own 85mm f1.8.
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It comes with two linear focus motors, so it stands to reason that it's probably going to focus a little bit
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faster. So, how about video AF? I'm shooting in the middle of, as you can see, very windy, stormy conditions out
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here. There's some kind of summer storm that's coming through at the moment. And so lots of things are moving around, but
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as you can see, focus is locking on me just fine using the lens and it's current mounted on a Sony A7R Mark II.
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Now, in my more kind of formal test, I found when doing my focus pull test back and forth that the pulls themselves are
10:04
fine. Uh they are a little bit slower, but there's no visible steps, no pulsing, no settling. But as you can
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see, focus breathing is big and obvious. So, that's going to be the main downside if you're actually looking for uh for
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doing any kind of major focus changes during your video work. And in fact, when I formally tested for uh focus
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breathing, you can see that as I focus in and out, things pretty radically change shape there. When it came to my
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hand test, it mostly did okay. But what I found is that I would want to tune the
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reactiveness in my actual camera. turn that speed up because it was a little sluggish in transitioning from my hand
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to my eye and back. And that's using pretty much the standard settings in camera. So, it's something if you own
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the lens, you might want to make it a little bit more reactive. I found out in real world shots that if I transitioned
10:57
from one subject to another, uh, focus actual natural pulls where I'm not forcing it, they're pretty well damped
11:04
and move with, I think, a good pace. Uh, you will still notice that focus breathing as a part of the equation.
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However, so just something to watch out for there. Overall, I found like the Focus did good. I've used it for a few
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of my segments that I haven't been advertising, but just utilizing it and it does a nice job. Footage looks really
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nice from the lens. And so, I think it certainly has its strengths, but the focus breathing is an issue. And of
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course, because it is a third party lens, it's not going to get any focus breathing compensation in Sony bodies.
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So, that's unfortunate. So, let's talk image quality. This is a design of nine
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elements in eight groups. One of those is a high refractive index element. The there are three that are extra low
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dispersion elements. The MTF chart, as you can see here, they've got a chart that shows both the um the wide open
11:54
f1.8 and then a stop down to f8. And you can see that wide open at f1.8. It's
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good and sharp in the center and very strong. actually a little bit better in the mid-frame in kind of the rule of third zone with definitely some drop
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into the corners. At f8, the corners do get sharper. However, you'll see more of
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a divide between the sagittal and meridian planes. And so, there's going to be some aigmatism that shows up
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there. I threw up a comparison to the uh tiny series 75mm f1.8, a lens that I
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actually think is is quite great optically. And you can see that this lens, the two lenses are similar. this
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lens is maybe a hair better, but it's it's it's all within the margins there.
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Now, as far as the actual optical characteristics of the lens, I'll kind of detail them here, and then if you
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want a deeper dive into the optics, that will be at the end of the video. So, when I tested for vignette and
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distortion, I found just a very mild amount of pin cushion distortion, about a minus4 to correct, very linear, easy
12:56
to correct for, no big deal. Likewise, vignette, it was a plus 48, which is
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under two stops and not hard to correct at all. In fact, I would say if you're shooting portraits, you don't want to
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mess with either one of those things. I would leave it uncorrected. A little bit of pin cushion distortion is flattering to models makes them just a little bit
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slimmer. And of course, a little bit of vignette in the edges, particularly if it's nicely linear, as it is here, will
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just kind of draw the attention towards the subject. And so, uh, no big deal on those metrics. When it comes to
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chromatic aberrations, it's slightly mixed bag. On my actual test chart, I
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didn't really see any kind of longitudinal style chromatic aberrations before and after the plane of focus.
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When I shot my SLR, which I used to test similarly, I got similar results. Very, very low levels, not hardly any fringing
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there at all. However, in a few shots where I was shooting in a church setting where I had a bright window beyond the
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subject, I did see some fringing show up in the window pane in those transitions near the edge. That can be corrected,
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but it takes a little bit more work. It's not any kind of one-click type correction. So, certainly there is some
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potential for fringing, but in a very kind of specific type setting. When it comes to lateral style chromatic
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aberrations near the edge of the frame, no problem there at all. Now, on the resolution and contrast side of things,
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I tested on a Sony A7R Mark II, so that's a 61 megapixel sensor. I show crops at 200% magnification. In the
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center of the frame, the lens looks good. Contrast is good, but it's not like the best contrast that I've seen.
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Mid-frame also looks very good. And yes, corners are a bit softer. Samyang does
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say that this lens was optimized for portrait distances. And so somewhere around the 2 to 3 meter range, you know,
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let's say 7 to 11 or 12 feet, somewhere in that zone. And I found certainly when
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I had my wife just shoot some casual shots of me just using available light,
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very, very high contrast, very great detail, no problem there. Likewise, I shot at about that distance. Some shots
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of a rooster. And when I zoomed into those images, even on 61 megapixels, they look fantastic as you can see here.
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And so for its actual intended purpose, I think it's going to work great. Even in this landscape setting, shooting a
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very distant subject. When I crop into what's actually in focus, it actually is
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really nice and crisp at f1.8. So all of that is good. Now, obviously, you are going to see some difference with the
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lens stop down. So, for example, and again, these real world shots at f1.8 um and f5.6 the center performance, you
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can tell it's better contrast, a little bit better detail at f5.6 six doesn't look all that different though. If I
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move over towards the edge of the frame, that's where the difference shows up. Much softer at f1.8 than it is at f5.6.
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One other quirk that mostly showed up for me, well, really only showed up for me when shooting my test chart was that
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what I do in that setting is that I focus wide open and then I just stop the lens down. I click to manual focus or I
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actually, you know, and then I I verify that it's properly focused with manual focus. then I actually don't refocus in
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between shots as I stop it down. I did notice a bit of focus shift there and so on my chart test it doesn't necessarily
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look sharper as the lens is stopped down because there is a little bit of focus shift taking place under normal
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circumstances you are focusing for each shot. So, it's not going to be a problem even if you're changing aperture. And
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so, but anyway, just something to be aware of when it comes to that. Uh, this shot here at f6.3, real world
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shot, you can see that it's very even across the frame. Great detail uh left
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side of the frame, detail on the right side of the frame, great contrast. It just looks good generally. As per usual,
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starting at about f11, you'll see some defraction. Minimum aperture is f-22. definitely softer by f-22 on a high
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resolution body. So, I would only go down to those small apertures if absolutely necessary. When it comes to
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the flare side of things, it's it's interesting performance. It is definitely not a perfectly corrected
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lens for flare wide open. However, as you can see in these various shots, I actually quite like a lot of the flare
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artifacts are there. I find them to be very artistic and definitely not destructive. I think they could be used
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in very very to very positive effect by a portrait photographer for example. I'm
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not really put off by that stop down. However, I feel like there's a little bit more ghosting showing up and it's
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just not as aesthetically pleasing to my eye and so I like the flare resistance
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okay because I'm not losing contrast necessarily and it's it's stylish in the shots but I don't love it when the lens
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is stopped down. The bokeh rendering for an F1.8 eight lens is in my opinion really quite nice. I didn't love the
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geometry as mentioned previously. However, in a lot of shots, even at a variety of distances, I fel felt the
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backgrounds were really quite soft from the lens. Uh not harsh, not outlined,
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and so I find found it to be quite pleasing in a variety of situations. And you can see from these images, you can
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kind of judge for yourself because bokeh is a little bit more of a subjective uh category. Saman colors tend to be just a
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bit on the warm side and so in a lot of situations I think that that's pleasing. However, just know that it can sometimes
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be a little bit of an issue with matching with other brand lenses like a native Sony lens for example. Overall,
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however, I would say that the optics for such a compact little lens are really quite nice and I can't think of a small
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85mm lens like this that I have liked better. So my conclusion on the lens is
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this. Yes, there are a lot of 85 millimeter lenses available on Sony E-mount and frankly there are a lot of
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very good ones out there. I would say that as I mentioned in my intro that this lens while it is a good performer
18:51
as we've seen already in pretty much all the categories, I don't know that that in and of itself would sell me on the
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lens. I think what's more likely to sell me and maybe you on LK Samyang's 85mm
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f1.8 8 Prima lens is the fact that it is so compact and lightweight. The thing is
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is that I've actually at the moment I own four different 85mm lenses. All of
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them are f1.4 options. I'm still trying to debate which one or two that I'm
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going to keep around cuz they are for a couple of different mounts. But the reality is is that in certain
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situations, say if I was traveling, I'm not going to reach for one of my big heavy 85mm f1.4 four lenses for the
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simple reason that maybe I'm not intending to do portraits on that particular trip and so it's unlikely
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that I'm going to pull it out regularly as my walkound type lens. Whereas this
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lens I would be for far more inclined to bring it along. What if I decide to do do portraits? Well, the fact that I'm
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only pulling along 270 g instead of 6 to 800 g is a pretty radical difference.
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Not to mention the compact size it's going to take in one of the small bags that I'm going to use for walking around
20:03
while while vacationing or just, you know, maybe even going out for a trek in the woods to have a longer focal length
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to supplement a 35mm lens or wider. And I think if that potentially describes
20:15
you, you're the one that really should consider this particular Prima 85mm lens. It's a pretty sweet little package
20:22
with strong enough image quality within it that I don't feel like you're ever going to walk away saying, "Wow, I wish
20:28
I had brought a bigger, heavier lens and so I could get good quality images." The images do look great out of it. And I
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think it does have a really nice rendering to it. And so for that reason, I think for that particular customer,
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it's probably worth the 400 bucks, even though there are a lot of great there are a lot of great options out there
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already. Now, if you want more information, you've got a couple of options. You can check out my full text
20:50
review that's linked in the description down below which does have more images associated with it in a gallery there or
20:57
you can stay tuned with me right now and we're going to jump into a deep dive of the optical performance and so that you
21:03
can maybe get the nuance of how it performs decide if it's for you or not. That sounds interesting. Let's jump into
21:08
it together. All right, let's start by taking a look at vignette and distortion. You can see a mild amount of
21:14
pin cushion distortion here on the left side. and vignette. You can see it's not
21:19
really concentrated in the corner. It's fairly linear moving into the frame. So, very easy to correct on both metrics.
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It's a minus4 to correct for the pin cushion distortion. In the vignette, I used a plus 48 to get pretty much a
21:32
perfect correction there. Now, obviously, there is a profile that will correct in camera or for video, but as I
21:39
noted previously, you might, at least when you're shooting portraits, not want to have corrections on or apply that
21:45
profile. A little bit of pin cushion distortion is flattering, as is a bit of vignette, which naturally draws the eye.
21:52
Neither one of these metrics is bad, particularly in such a compact lens. Now, when it comes to fringing, there is
21:59
it's kind of a a mixed bag here. You can see that when it comes to my chart test, there's a little bit of longitudinal
22:05
style chromatic aberration before and after the plane of focus, but not very noticeable there. Likewise, when it
22:12
comes to a test, like looking at the face of the SLR, it actually does great
22:17
on that. You can see that there's very minimal amounts of fringing in the out of focus areas on these specular
22:23
highlights or edges on the on the camera. Even right here where I see it very strongly, there's only just a very
22:30
mild amount. Likewise around bokecast circles here, specular highlights, you
22:36
can see that there's really not much there as far as the fringing. And while we're here, just take a look at the
22:41
bokecast circles. Pretty clean inside. There is some inner outlining, but overall, I would say that those look
22:47
pretty good. So, all of that to this point is good. But here is a crop from a
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shot in a church setting where there's really bright lights behind, you know, dark areas of contrast, including the
22:59
window frame here. You can see it on the edges of this decoration on the pulpit
23:05
there. Just a little bit of fringing showing up and most prominently here this green fringing. So that is a
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situational type fringing that is going to be a problem. You can see a darker green here. So, when it comes to
23:16
correcting that, I did this in Lightroom just by moving some sliders for fringing. It's not perfect, but you can
23:22
see if I toggle back and forth, I was able to clean it up fairly easily, but just note that that is a potential
23:29
problem in certain situations. Looking over here on the right, which there's just part of the area of focus. You can
23:34
see that even at f1.8, detail and contrast look great, as we'll get to in just a moment. Lateral style chromatic
23:41
aberrations near the edge of the frame in high contrast areas. Not a problem at all here. Very, very clean between black
23:47
and white transitions with no additional false color on there. So, let's take a look at resolution and contrast. This is
23:54
on a 61 megapixel sensor from an A7R Mark I, and we're going to look at 200% magnification to really highlight any
24:01
flaws in the center of the frame. Not a lot of flaws to see. It's not the highest contrast that I've seen, but
24:06
contrast is good. Detail is excellent. It looks really fantastic. nice pop to
24:12
that mid-frame. Also looking really, really solid. You can even see some of that moir that shows up when contrast is
24:18
good. And in this case, remember that the MTF suggests that in this zone, it may even be a bit sharper than in the
24:24
center. And looking at it here, I could certainly see that being true. Looking down in this area, we can see that there
24:31
is some loss of contrast from this point here and then the lower right point as we move towards the edge of the frame.
24:37
Still not bad in this zone, but contrast definitely lower. As we pop down here to the corner, it's not terrible. Um, but
24:45
it's not amazing either. Detail is definitely dropped somewhat. Contrast is still not bad, but the detail has
24:52
definitely dropped relative to the center of the frame. According to Samyang, that is not the distance that
24:57
the lens is optimized for. It's optimized for portrait type distances. So, they say 2 to 3 meters. And so, in
25:04
this zone here at f1.8, You can see that there's lots and lots of detail there. Um, I don't think that too many people
25:10
that you're going to be taking pictures of would want more of their skin textures showing up uh than that and uh
25:18
I certainly approaching 50. I certainly don't want to see more than that on myself and so certainly very sharp in
25:25
that situation. Now, just out of interest sake, let's compare f1.8 with a smaller aperture at f5.6.
25:32
And so here we can see that if we look more towards the center area of the frame, it already looks really great at
25:38
f1.8. It's probably a little bit better in terms of contrast and detail. Darks look a little bit darker here. And so it
25:45
details pop a little bit more at f5.6, but it's really more if we pan over and
25:50
get towards the edge of the frame. You can just see looking at this area, the contrast difference is much more
25:56
noticeable. Now, I would also point out that even at f5.6, six. I don't think the corner performance is fabulous from
26:03
the lens. It gets a lot better, but it's still not fabulous in my opinion, but overall, you can see that even at f1.8,
26:11
uh, there's still a very, very usable amount of detail and contrast there. Even in a land landscape type setting,
26:17
this f1.8 8 image where I just wanted to shoot through the layers and then kind of isolate a distant layer. You can see
26:24
that if we zoom into that in the area that's, you know, within the plane of focus, obviously the edges are kind of
26:30
masked off by foreground objects. But in this zone, it actually looks really fantastic. Great detail and contrast uh
26:37
for the conditions. Obviously, very usable again, even at 61 megapixels. Now, as alluded to previously, I do
26:43
think that there is a bit of focus shift that takes place as you stop the lens down. In this case, I didn't refocus in
26:49
between shots. And so, it was perfectly focused at f1.8. We can you can definitely tell the contrast is
26:56
increasing um as you stop the lens down to f2.8, but what we're not seeing is more detail. And I think it's because
27:02
the focus is slightly shifting away from the, you know, proper plane of focus.
27:07
And so, it's not really getting sharper. And down here in the corners again, you can see that they're brighter. You can see the contrast is better, but detail
27:14
is not improving. If anything, it's a hair worse. And I think it's because of the focus shift. Case in point is here
27:20
from f2.8 to f5.6. You can definitely tell that focus has shifted away because
27:26
the image uh at this stage it should be getting better. And if anything on the chart test, it's actually getting a bit
27:32
worse. And um so I mean focus shift is definitely a factor with that. the
27:37
corners never looked really sharp on my chart. But if I go out into a real world image like this, this is f6.3, so a
27:44
little bit more distant. And obviously I'm focusing as I should. I mean, there's tons of detail. There's a lot of different textures in that. But as I pan
27:51
off towards the side, there's actually relatively little drop in detail and contrast there. And if I look over here
27:58
on the right side, it looks fantastic as well. And so I think that in real world
28:04
shooting that focus shift is probably not going to be a problem unless you're trying to do something like focus
28:09
stacking and then you're going to have to be careful to look for that. So I don't want to get you too worked up over
28:14
something that's probably just a more of a reviewing issue than it is a real world issue. Minimum focus distance as
28:21
noted was 80 cmters and that gives you this level of magnification which is 0.12 times. up close performance is
28:30
really not bad. I mean, contrast and detail aren't popping off the page, but it really doesn't look too bad. Plane of
28:36
focus looks fairly flat. You can see it still looks pretty good over here. Again, as we've talked about, this is
28:42
not really where the lens is optimized. However, it still works fairly good up close. You can see at this shot, there's
28:49
lots of detail and contrast that's there at f1.8. More importantly to me, you can
28:54
see just how nice, soft, and creamy the out of focus area is. So, let's take a look at that. This image here, I think,
29:02
is just uh it's probably my standout image I felt like I took during my review period here at f1.8. You can see
29:08
that the detail on the rooster is amazing. But then, as I look at that background, it almost looks like a
29:15
impressionist painting or something. It's just really, really pleasing. I think it may have got a little bit of an
29:20
environmental boost because there's a little bit of haze on this day that just makes everything look all that more
29:26
soft. But, uh, this image I think is really gorgeous. But in other conditions where the haze wasn't a factor, um, you
29:32
know, and here's things that are closer to the transition zone, I think that that rendering is really, really nice
29:38
here, you know, just about. So, I'm focused obviously on the black berries that are ripening up there. And so, my
29:44
friend who is picking, this is on his farm. He's maybe um 2 meters beyond the
29:49
blackberries, but you can see already he's very nicely out of focus and no hard edges that look rough in the image.
29:56
It's just that little hint of detail that kind of lets you know what's going on in the background.
30:03
Then when you combine bokeh and then the flare and as we've talked about already
30:08
a bit, we'll look at it a bit more. I mean, flare resistance is definitely not perfect from this lens. However, at
30:14
large apertures, I think it's very, very beautiful. Like, I really like this kind
30:20
of flare because I feel like it's very, very useful. And so, if you're primarily shooting portraits at large apertures, I feel like this is going to be an asset
30:26
rather than a liability because a lot of these type effects are ones that I would intentionally add in post if I was
30:33
really trying to work at a portrait image to make it pop. And so, I don't consider these to be a liability. I
30:39
think that that's actually really stylish. And rather than it kind of lowering the value of the image,
30:46
I would say to me it actually improves it. That's not the case when you're stopped down, however, and the flare
30:52
artifacts just get more distracting. And and so I'm not nearly as much of a fan of this with the lens stopped down to,
30:59
let's say, f8 and smaller. All these flare artifacts just get really obvious
31:04
and so I don't like them. So, thanks for sticking around to the very end. I hope that the image quality breakdown has
31:10
helped you to decide whether or not this is a lens for you. And as always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let
31:16
the light in. [Music]