Samyang AF 50mm f/1.4: Final Review | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you the final of this series of 50mm reviews
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that I've kind of broken out from after doing some direct head-to-head comparisons
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But I also wanted to present individualized reviews of these lenses because they all kind
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of stand on their own merits and are worth consideration there. And so today we're looking at the least expensive of the Trio
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This is the only non-Sony lens that's been a part of this comparison
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And it is a Samyang autofocusing 50mm f1.4 lens. And so, as noted, this is the least expensive of the Trio
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In fact, it comes in, right now the retail in the U.S. market is $599
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I've heard some people say that on different promotions they've been able to see it at even right around the $500 price point
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And so it's hard to argue against the value on a lot of levels for this lens
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And I'll detail some of those reasons why. First of all, we're going to take a look at just a few of the details of the build quality here
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And if you would like more information on that, a closer look at it
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I would encourage you that you look at the build and handling episode, which you can see here
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Now, first thing to note is that this is actually a beautifully constructed lens
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And Samyang lenses have come a long way from when I first started to review them
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where they were kind of bargain optics in, you know, kind of cheapish type shells
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This is definitely a premium filling lens. It's got lots of metal in the construction
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I mean, everything really looks as good, you know, particularly compared to the Sonar 55mm f1.8
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I don't see anything about the Samyang that is inferior to that lens in design
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From the quality of the materials, to the feel of everything, to the handling of the lens
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it's all really rather premium here. And this is a very, it's a great looking lens and it handles nicely
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The one kind of thing that I will note is that the manual focus ring and all three of
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these lenses are focused by wire, which means that the input from the focus ring is input
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through the focus motor and thus focus begins to move after that
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And so in that focus kind of refining process, when you begin to turn the ring, of course
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you have to be in the correct mode for this to happen. And so right now I've got it in DMF mode, direct manual focus
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And so as a result, then you can begin to refine focus once you turn the ring
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Just note that the ring action is a little bit lighter than the other two
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particularly when compared to the 50mm planar. And so as a result, I just find that maybe there's a little less refinement in that focus
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It's a little bit light to my touch. but certainly very usable in that sense. No major issues there. We'll talk a little bit more about
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the autofocus in just a moment. Let's just continue looking here at the build for a second though
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Like the Sonar lens, but unlike the Planar lens, this lens has no weather sealing. And so if that
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is a priority for you, just note that this lens is not sealed neither at the gasket nor in any
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kind of internal seals. It terminates in a 67 millimeter front filter thread, which is in metal
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Very nice there. This lens kind of takes the medium path in terms of size and weight
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It weighs in at a moderate 585 grams. That's just a little over one and a quarter pounds
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And it's under four inches long, 3.85 inches or 97.7 millimeters. So certainly on an A7R Mark III
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that I'm doing the primary review on. It's a moderately sized but nicely balanced lens here
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that's not stressing anything. And so I don't think that there should be anybody
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that has any serious complaints about that. Included pedal-shaped lens hood is plastic
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as are the other two, and it doesn feel particularly amazing but in some ways it actually feels a hair more premium than does both of the Sony lens hoods in that the construction materials the plastics here are just a little
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bit thicker and heavy duty. It clicks into place, nice and precisely, no issues there
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Now there are no switches on the Samyang and so if you're going to switch into manual focus
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for example, you're going to have to do that in camera or shoot in DMF mode
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to allow you to manual override at any point. And so no, no switches there for anything. And
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there is no optical steady shot built into the lens. And so you're going to have to rely on
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the in-camera, a steady shot, assuming that you're shooting with a camera that offers that feature
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But if you are, as it's both the a6500 that I've done a review on and the a7R Mark III
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Of course, there's no issues with that. It will automatically detect the actual steady shot
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It will actually detect the focal length here, and it will automatically adjust for it
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And so, no issues when it comes to that. Now, moving on to looking at the autofocus
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Of course, Samyang traditionally has been a manual focus only company. And really, it's these early lenses, a 14mm and a 50mm for Sony FE, that were their very first autofocusing lenses
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And since that point, they have wet their feet a little bit further with more Sony-based AF lenses
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and then also their first Canon EF mount autofocusing lens that's just coming to market at the time of this review
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So byproduct, of course, of that is that they are not seasoned professionals
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at producing autofocus systems. And in some ways, the somewhat primitive stage of development
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shows up in this lens, in that when compared to the other two, it's definitely the most primitive
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autofocus system, both in the noises that it makes, which tend to be quite loud
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with kind of a somewhat scratchy sound, but also kind of a little bit of a high-pitched
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whirring that's taking place. In some ways, it kind of reminds me of the noises made by
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you know, kind of earlier generation lenses with micro motors where they were just kind of buzzy
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sounding. And so as a result, all aspects of autofocus, you know, are kind of magnified by
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that. So for example, if I am manually focusing, the lens is constantly making noises that kind of
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reminds me of things going on, almost like it's struggling to keep up, which I don't think is
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actually the case. It's just that it's loud. And so that shows up. Obviously for video, this is
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the worst choice by a wide margin of the three lenses for video capture for a couple of reasons
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Number one, with all three of these lenses, I have shot one of these video segments like I'm
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doing right now. With the two Sony lenses, the face tracking was essentially perfect and they're
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both quiet enough that while I don't use on-camera audio, particularly with the sonar lens, I would
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have no hesitation about doing so. It is perfectly quiet, and the planar makes some very quiet sounds
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but it certainly would be fine for that application as well. The Samyang makes enough
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noise pretty much constantly that's going to be picked up by on-camera microphones, and beyond
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that, it also was just, it was not particularly confident in face tracking. It would do a fair
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bit of hunting. It would lose face, kind of go in and out of focus some. As a part of this series
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including the Sony FE 50 millimeter f1.4, and this is the planar design with some... And so the
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autofocus system is just, it's just not as good. And so similarly, when you're shooting in stills
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mode, IAF doesn't work quite as well as it does with the native Sony lenses, probably as you might
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expect. But at the same time, focus, there's a little bit more hunting. It takes a little bit
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longer to acquire focus. At the end of the day, I think the focus system works. For stills
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photography it gets the job done And my focus consistency while not quite at the level of the Sony lenses in an absolute sense has not been bad And so I think that you know and you can shoot portraits with IAF and you can get nice results
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But this, just note that this is the least sophisticated focus system of the three
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Now, there is a firmware update and I can't verify whether or not the lens copy I have
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has it or not because there is an auto there's a dock for samyang lenses now for applying firmware
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updates that i don't have yet at this point as this is the very first autofocus lens from them
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that i've had anything that would require something like this and so but at the same time you have to
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understand the limitations of firmware firmware i think can improve the focus algorithms and get a
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little bit smoother results the autofocus but it can't change the sounds that the autofocus
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system makes and it can't change the fundamental nature of that focus system and so uh but at the
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same time if you do purchase this lens or if you have purchased this lens you might want to look
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into getting that dock and applying that firmware update because it may improve your absolute
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performance and again i can't verify at this moment whether or not this lens has that firmware
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update or if it doesn't. It's obviously, it's a brand new lens, only a few weeks old. I got it
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you know, retail copy for this review from B&H Photo. And so, you know, maybe it hasn't
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maybe it doesn't. I just, I can't say for certain, but it's worth looking into if you're considering
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this lens. Now, moving on to the image quality results. First, looking at it on APS-C, I tested
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it on a Sony A6500 24 megapixel camera. And in those results, I found that of the three lenses
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it was the least sharp. It suffers with some chromatic aberrations, axial or longitudinal
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chromatic aberrations, and so that exhibits as green fringing after the plane of focus and purple
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fringing before the plane of focus. And unfortunately, it shows fairly pronounced amounts of both
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Purple fringing, you know, kind of trending to more almost like a red type color
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And so the byproduct of that is that wide open contrast and contrast at wide apertures
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is quite reduced. And so it has a softer, you can call it a dreamy type look if you're kind of
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looking at it in a critically sharp kind of way. The corners at wide apertures are quite soft
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Center sharpness is not bad. Center contrast is low, but edge sharpness is also quite weak
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And the same bears true. There is some improvement at f2, some improvement at f2.8. It's really
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though in the jump between f2.8 and f4 that the aberrations are eliminated and contrast takes a
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jump forward. And then by about f5.6, really the resolution performance across the frame is fairly
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similar to that of the Sony lenses. You know, for someone like myself, however, I primarily shoot
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these wide aperture lenses at wide apertures. I mean, it's kind of the point. And so if your
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priority is resolution, there are better options for you out there. Now, taking a look at it on
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full frame, and you can take a look at this episode here where I covered that, but just note that my
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end results were really quite similar on either APS-C or on full frame. And so what I've detailed
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in terms of resolution remains true for that. However, one thing that I do want to point out
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as kind of a defense of this lens is that when you look kind of beyond
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the lower contrast and lower resolution and you look at kind of the complete rendering
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from the lens, the rendering from the lens in a lot of situations
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is actually quite beautiful. And it has the softest bokeh quality of the three lenses
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even more so than the very, very expensive, you know, two and a half times
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nearly three times more expensive of planar f1.4 from Sony Zeiss. Bokeh quality is very, very soft. Really, if you are someone
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that's more about artistic rendering and maybe even shooting portraiture where you value
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you don really want a lot of micro contrast on pores and skin you would prefer just a look of images where it has a very soft very pleasing out background This lens I think does have a lot of artistic merit because
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it does have the most beautiful bouquet of the bunch in a noticeable way. I noted that even though
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it shares the same theoretical maximum aperture with the Sony Planar, the light transmission on
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the Samyang is clearly the best of the bun. And I had to use lower shutter speeds to get comparative
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exposure with the planar lens to match up with the Samyang. Beyond that, I also noted that even
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at the exact same distance, exact same aperture, and while the subject magnification was the same
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so it's not about focal length, but I noticed that in defocused areas that bokeh circles
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for example, were larger and softer, noticeably so, which tells me that this lens actually has
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a larger maximum aperture. It has better light transmission than what the Sony Zeiss planar does
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And again, you know, recognize that all of these things, be it focal length or aperture value
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et cetera, they're always, it's not an exact science in that there's rounding up or rounding
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down. And so I think in this case, you're actually getting a great T-stop rating with the Samyang
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lens. It has great light transmission, and as a byproduct of that, it also produces the softest
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nicest, out-of-focus rendering. And so this really comes down to a different strokes for different
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folks kind of people. If you're all about contrast and resolution, this is not the lens for you
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But if you're into kind of beautifully rendered portraits where it's not so much about pixel
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peeping, more about the general feel of the images, in some ways it's akin to a lens like, say
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Canon's 50mm F1.2 L series lens in that it's not fantastically sharp or has fantastic contrast
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at wide apertures, but it has beautiful rendering. Now one final thing that I will note about this
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lens is that it does trend towards a warmer rendering. The planar lens kind of produces
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the most neutral kind of Zeiss-like color rendition. The sonar lens 55mm F1.8, it trends
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a little bit cooler. The Samyang trends a little bit warmer, even a little bit maybe slightly
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yellowish shift I find compared to the other lenses, you know, all other settings being equalized
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And so I find that that's either a good thing or a bad thing depending on the subject matter
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When shooting landscapes, I found that it almost provided a little bit of a filter type look that
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I wasn't crazy about. But in shooting portraits or shooting kind of artful, you know, wide aperture
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kind of shots, it can actually be a benefit is that it gives a slightly kind of og warmer
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feel that kind of reminds me of some of my vintage glass that, you know, sometimes some of the
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elements become very slightly yellowed. And so there's just a little slight bias of yellow in
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there. And, and so for some subjects, it produces a really beautiful warm result that you, you may
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like. Just note that that's a taste specific thing, but it's certainly a character of this
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lens that I did want to point out. Now, if you will look in the description down below, number one
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I will have linkage to the full written review for this. Also an image gallery where you can go and
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look at photos from it. And then also there, of course, there's buying links if you'd like to
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purchase one for yourself. And also, if you will look, I will try to pin into the top of, I'm
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filming this video in advance. Okay. And so, um, the contest for the lens cases has not yet fully
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run its course. And so if you're wanting to get into that giveaway, it should be wrapping up
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somewhere about the time I am releasing this video. And so I'm not going to be announced the
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winner, but what I will do is if you'll look in the comment section down below, I'll pin to the
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top of the comments, um, the announcement of the winner. And then of course, I'll also notify them
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via email, those that won the actual competition there. So, I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you haven't already, you can follow me on social media
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and links down below, sign up for my newsletter, and of course, if you haven't already
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please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a great day

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