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Yongnuo YN 50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro Review | Good Mid-tier Option?
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Sep 8, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the Yongnuo 11mm F1.8 S DA DSM WL wide angle prime lens for Sony E-mount APS-C cameras. Is its unique wireless functionality more than a gimmick? | Read the Text Review: https://tinyurl.com/YN11review | Visit the Image Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/YN11pics | Purchase the Yongnuo 11mm F1.8 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3ULQ7ZB | Amazon https://amzn.to/4dtNbYT | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/4a4EJfE | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/4aXqFFY | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3Qyb4oi 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.me/cjU0LKdp3LN 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 Cloting: 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: ============================= 0:00 - Intro
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott
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Earlier this year, I reviewed the Yon 11mm F1.8 lens for Sony E-mount, and I found it to be
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both interesting and innovative. I'm back with another YN review, but this time it is on Fuji's X mount
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This is the Y N-R-N-50-millimeter. millimeter F1.8X D-A-D-S-M Pro. And it's an interesting lens
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with a nice blend of performance features and a surprisingly upscale build, all
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for a reasonable price of less than $300. Now there are some
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of those typical X-mount frustrations that I run into with basically every Fuji X-Mount review that I do
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and I will detail all of that as a part of this, but overall, this is
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a nicely upscale alternative to lenses like the Viltrox 56mm F1.7 or the T.T. Artisan 56mm F.1.8. Both lenses that I reviewed
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earlier this year and, of course, much cheaper alternatives to some of the first-party offerings
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from Fuji. Now, Yongno likes to make some rather wordy names here, and so I'm going to break down
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what that means. This is the F1.8X. The X stands for Fuji X mount. DA does not stand for
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Dustin Abbott, disappointingly, but it does stand. It is their dead. designation for APSC. A DSM refers to a digital stepping motor and pro is really key to this
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lens because somewhat confusingly they have another 50 millimeter F1.8X DA DSM lens. It is actually a
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completely different lens than this pro series lens. The pro series lens is larger, heavier
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It's a different optical formula. It is sharper. It has more features on and on the list goes
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It's a completely different lens, but it really, it's only that pro designation that sets them apart
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and they're using pro here to designate a higher-end build, feature set, and performance in this case
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And so just understand you need a difference between those two. This new lens is about twice as expensive, twice as heavy, and twice as good
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Now, this lens in size, it's a little bit bigger than, say, the Viltrox or TTI artist in 50
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millimeter lenses. It's 68 millimeters in diameter or 2.67 inches, 85 millimeters in length. So a fairly
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long little lens. And so it's 3.34 inches. And the weight is 387 grams or 13.65 ounces. So it's
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definitely a, you know, it's still small and, you know, overall it is lightweight. But there is
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definitely some heft to it. And part of it is because this has such a high build grade. I keep an open
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note going on my phone for just kind of field observations when I'm doing reviews. And one of the
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things that I noted in my notes is that this lens really reminded me a lot of a Zeiss baddest lens
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in that it has a more upscale build, but it also has a top-mounted LCD screen. And that's part of
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what kind of led me to that. So in this case, it is definitely upscale materials here. The housing
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of the lens is actually made out of an aircraft aluminum alloy. It has that black satin
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Anodyce finish. It looks really fantastic, modern and sleek. So it makes the lens look and feel
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really premium. And then it does have a small top-mounted LCD screen. That LCD screen has some
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limited functionality, and that is accessed largely because there is a custom switch on the side
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of the lens. And if you are in the mode one position, this will allow the ring to actually
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function as an aperture ring. And so this will allow you to see real-time aperture changes
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And then also it'll allow you to also move into an auto position where you can, if you want to just control it from within the camera, you can then control it from within the camera
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Now in mode number two, it has the ring function as a manual focus ring
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Though I will note, you still have to enter manual focus mode from the camera body
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That's just the way that Fuji cameras are designed and so that it's not really like an AFMF switch
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It just allows you to, you're just designating what the function of the ring is going to be
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Now, one change that I would have liked to have seen implemented here is it like on the Zeiss baddest lenses
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The baddest lenses, you can see Aptor, yes, but it will also function as a distant scale when you are actually using it for manual focus
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I would have liked to see that to give you some kind of on-screen distance scale because it would be useful when manually focusing, but unfortunately that functionality is not here
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Now, on the manual focus mode itself, the focus ring. is nice, wide, but it's very lightly damp, so it doesn't have a ton of feel. And as is often the
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case here on Fuji, you have to make many, many rotations if you want to make a large focus change
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So it's not really useful for big focus pools. It's basically only useful for making small adjustments
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if you want to do it with any kind of urgency. So I don't love that, but that's pretty common on
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Fuji, one of my Fuji frustrations. Up front, we have a 58 millimeter front filter thread
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A lens hood is included. It is just a basic plastic lens hood
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It is quite deep and it's definitely needed because this is a somewhat flare prone lens
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As a part of the upscale build here, we do have weather sealing
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That's a gasket back at the lens mount. I'm not sure about internal seals. I haven't seen a diagram, but there is definitely a gasket there
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a flooring type coating on the front element to help with fingerprints and moisture on the front
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And then also there is a covered USB C port down here on the lens barrel Now to access that you have to take off a little rubber gasket And unfortunately it quite hard to get it out
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You either need to have a long fingernail or some small bladed tool like a screwdriver to kind of pry that out
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But you have to be careful because it's small and you could easily lose it. And if you lose that, of course, you are creating a place where water could get into your lens theoretically through that USBC
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port. So just be careful with that. USB C port is to allow you to do firmware
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updates and it definitely was warranted here on my XH2 body. There was some compatibility issues initially
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and that firmware update solved all of those and so the lens is fully
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compatible and works flawlessly now. There are nine rounded aperture blades inside
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that again is one area of differentiating between the cheaper lens. It has only seven blades. This has
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a higher blade count and thus a little bit more circular aperture. Minimum
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focus distance is 45 centimeters and you have about an average 0.15 times magnification and up
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coast close performance is fairly decent. So overall it is a really really nice build. The lens
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feels really nice in hand. It fuels very quality. So nice bang for the buck for a little under
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$300. Now on the autofocus side of things as noted we have a DSM or digital stepping motor. Now it is
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here where most of my Fuji frustrations come into play because the state of auto focus on
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Fuji is unfortunately years behind what basically all the other platforms that I test are. And so as a
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byproduct, it tends to drag down the performance of all the lenses that I test on there. So some of the
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good is that the DSM motor, it is very quiet in operation. You basically need to put your ear right up
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next to it to hear any kind of focus noise. Focus speed is generally fairly fast. And you
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Though, as you can see here, there is sometimes some obvious steps there
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And again, that's a Fuji-related thing. I've fired to take the same lens and put it on a Sony camera
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If I had a Sony mount, I can guarantee you would see none of that stepping performance
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It's more of a Fuji thing, but it does slow down autofocus just a little bit
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However, in real-world use, with ordinary subjects, auto-focus was quick enough that I didn't really think about it at all
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So no genuine complaints there. I also found that AF accuracy was good in most applications
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I found, for example, taking people pictures. I got good detection on the eye
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You can see in this shot of a Ferrari, for example, that focus is just nailed
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And of course, the lens is also very sharp, but we'll get to in just a moment
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But where things will fall apart is if there is any kind of persistent action
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So in this sequence here, where Nala is moving towards the camera, there's definitely some drops to back focus that take place
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And so you can't really trust autofocus in persistent movement. Now I was able to nail shots at a dog show of dogs jumping over a kind of a bar
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But what I did was I pre-focused into that area and then only started to focus on the dog when they got close
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And I was able to thus get decently focused results in that situation
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Now when you switch over to the video side of things, that's where everything really falls apart on Fuji when it comes to autofocus
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And it's a combination of a few things. Again, auto focus is just not as sophisticated for one
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But then also the touch screens are really disappointing, just not very responsive
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And so if I'm trying to do focus changes via touch to focus, the auto focus, there's just such a huge lag and sometimes just a reluctance to change focus altogether
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And so you can see on my focus pool test, I had to kind of set focus and then just sit there for several seconds until eventually the body decided to focus and then coming back
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exercise and frustration. And in some real world shots where I was trying to create focus change in that way
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I would tap and tap on the screen and just basically nothing would happen
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So somewhere in between the lens and the camera itself, the issue lies
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It's not unusual with third-party lenses, but unfortunately it's not all that unusual
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first-party lenses either. So it's just a bit of a frustration of mine in that regard
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So that didn't go particularly well. Likewise with my hand tests were ultimately blocking the
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and remove the view of my face with my hand, there's such lag and a lack of responsiveness
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that you can see it misses the majority of the time. So not great in that regard. Now, where I
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found things a little bit better is if I was just trying to track some kind of smaller action
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So, for example, in this shot of cone flowers that are blowing around in the wind
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autofocus seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping up with those subtle movements
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Likewise in the shot of a slow-moving sailboat coming into scene and a cross-frame
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no problems there. Auto-focus was stable for that. And so it's a bit of a mixed bag
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I did note some focus breathing and any kind of significant focus change
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And so really this is a lens that probably works best with just trying to track ordinary focus
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and don't try to use it for actions, for stills, and don't try to use it for big focus swings
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when it comes to video work either. Now, on the image quality side of things
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we swing to a much more positive performance. This, even though we're testing on the 40 megapixel
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Fuji sensor, which is easily the most demanding platform I have ever tested lenses are it has made more lenses look bad
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in terms of their inability to resolve this very high pixel density
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than any other camera platform that I've used before. But this lens, fortunately, is very capable of keeping
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up. It is an optical design of 11 elements and eight groups. Six of those are exotic elements
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of three different varieties You can see from the MTF chart that it shows a very good consistency across the frame There a bit of a divergence of the two tangents there so it shows a little bit of loss of contrasts in the corners a little less acuity maybe there
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but overall, performance is really quite good. And I found in real world results
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that the performance is strong even on this body. So that's a big plus there
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Very good performance when it comes to vignette and distortion. On the distortion front, there's just a tiny bit of pincushion distortion
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that's not worth correcting. If you want to correct it all, I used a minus two for correction
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There's a moderate amount of vignette, but on the low side of moderate. I used a plus 41 to correct, and that is about a stop and a half
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So, again, not bad at all on that. And so definitely better than some alternatives when it comes to those metrics
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I found that there is some uncorrected longitudinal chromatic aberration. A little bit of fringing before and after, particularly after the plane of focus
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Though that is going to have a positive side effect that I'll de-rector. detail in just a moment. The lateral style chromatic aberrations are basically non-existent
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so no issue with that. So all of this leads to very good sharpness results. So I'm showing you
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results at 200% magnification, and again on this most demanding sensor, and the fact that it looks
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good is impressive. And so there's good sharpness across the frame, even at F1.8. Yes, the
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corners are a little softer, but comparatively, they're still relatively strong. I found that there's a little more
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contrast available if you stop down to F2, just that minor stop down, and then if you stop down to
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F2.8, it's a little bit more significant. By landscape aptors of F5.6, we're razor sharp all across
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the frame, even into the deep corners. And so that gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes
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to cropping, for example, on a high-resolution body. I was able to change up framing without any
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kind of issue there. By the time you hit F-11, again on a highly pixel-dense sensor like
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this, you're definitely going to see the effects of diffraction. And by F-16, which is minimum
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aperture, it is much more obvious there. Now, I noted some trade-off for leaving a little bit
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of the fringing uncorrected. And that pays off in having softer, more beautiful bocah. And there
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is definitely a correlation between those two things. So in this case, it haven't over-corrected
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to the degree that the lens has lost all of its character and becomes sterile. And that is
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advantageous here and that the bouquet is really quite pleasing from this lens, and I would say that
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it's a cut above what I saw from either TT. Artisan or Viltrox. So very nice bouquet, and thus overall
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very nice rendering of most images. Where this lens is not great is when it comes to flare resistance
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It is very flare-prone, and it's particularly susceptible to flare patterns if the bright light
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source is just right out of the frame in the upper corners. And so you can see that it can look
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really bad here. At the same time, I could mitigate a lot of that by just composing a little more
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carefully. So word to the wise is if you don't want flare artifacts, just kind of watch your viewfinder
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and get to an angle in a framing that works a little bit better and you'll avoid some of the greatest
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frustrations there. Overall, however, for a lens of this type, that optical performance is very
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solid. So my conclusion is this. This is a beautifully made little lens that feels premium
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and I would say it produces premium-looking images. I feel like it still has some character to it
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and often those lenses can produce the more artistic, generally beautiful-looking images
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Obviously, autofocus is the area of my greatest frustration. There's definitely some frustrations
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near the edges, but again, a lot of that is on the Fuji platform. So I would say that this
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lens is neither better nor worse than most third-party lenses on the Fuji X-mount platform
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There's definitely room for improvement, but I suspect that a lot of the improvement needs to come
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from the Fuji side of things. But again, you need to just keep those limitations in mind
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depending on what your case use for the lens will be. So it's a pretty good bang for the buck
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lens. If you're looking for a nicer tier of lens than the Viltrach slash TT Artisan level
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or you're more interested in the 50 millimeter, which is a 75 millimeter full frame equivalent
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rather than an 85 millimeter full frame equivalent that you get from 56 millimeters
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And so just definitely something to bear in mind there. Now, if you want more information, you have some options
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You can check out my full text review that's linked in the description down below
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There's also an image gallery and buying links that are linked in the description. Or you can stay with me right now as we go into the deep dive into the optical performance
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So we'll start by taking a look at vignette and distortion. As you can see here on the left in the uncorrected raw
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not a whole lot going on here, a tiny bit of pincushion distortion, but a vignette mostly that is concentrated towards the corners
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Here on the right, a manual correction you can see even doing the manual correction
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I can clear things up really nicely. Everything's pretty minuscule here, a minus 2 to correct for that bit of pincushion distortion
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vignette at plus 41. In most images, you could probably leave both of those things uncorrected
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and be perfectly happy. Now, as noted in our overview of the optics
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you can see that there is some uncorrected longitudinal chromatic aberrations here
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mostly fringing that comes after the plane of focus. You can also see that the contrast is still holding up well
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and so this actually has relatively little impact in real-world shots. Also, lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame are well-controlled here
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There's no correction going on here, but you can see that transitions from black to white look quite good
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So how about resolution and contrast here at F1.8? I'm going to show your results at 200% magnification
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This is on the 40 megapixel sensor of the XH2. So you can see then in the center of the frame, good detail, good contrast
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Contrast is not exactly top tier but very very good and allow able to show a lot of detail A good strong mid performance there and you can see lots of details holding up
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One thing I like to look at is this bill, typically when lenses are going to fall apart
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this side will look okay, this side's already starting to fade. You can see it's really consistently good, and there's a lot of detail showing there
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And you can see why, when we look down here, the resolution is holding up pretty nicely
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right into the corner of the frame. Now, if we stop down from F1.8 to F2
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and we can see that there is a little bit of an uptick in contrast
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that was missing wide open. You can see it looks a little bit better
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a little bit darker here. And so stop down to F2 if you want a little extra punch to your images
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Here's a real-world shot at F2 of Ferrari, and you can see that the detail and contrast looks really fantastic
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Lots of fine details that are all nicely delineated here in the first
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fur. So this is a lens that's able to handle those kind of the microcontrast and fine details
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pretty well. In some ways the rendering actually reminds me of Fuji's own 33mm F1.4
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There's a bit more of a boost from if you go down to F2.8, you can see contrast is picked up a little
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bit further. We'll look at a few other spots. You can see it's just more consistently nice contrast
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there. If we go over here to the left side, again, good detail holding up there into the
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the corner, likewise up here and finally upper right corner, showing a pretty decent centering
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performance, maybe just a little softer here in the upper right corner, but overall a pretty
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strong performance. If we stop on down to F5.6 into kind of the landscape aperture territory, you can see that
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we've got intense contrast now, great detail here in the midframe, looking really, really
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fantastic, and right down into the corners, corners are now looking pretty pin sharp, and so you can
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see how much different it looks even from F2.8 to F5.6. So this translates into really good detail
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in landscape type shots. And so this is obviously a big scene with a lot on the frame. But you can
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see everywhere we look. Again, the lens has good ability to delineate all those fine details
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You can see this island out here in the bay. You can see that it just looks really fantastic
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out there. And if we look a little bit closer here on the golf course, you can see a golfer
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walking down there. Remember, that's a little dot there on the full frame and punching in there to that
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100% magnification. You can see that it's got all those fine details. You can also see that that is holding up
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right towards the corner. Really, really good when stopped down. Here's another landscape image
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And once again, you can see that there's just good detail and contrast. In this case, we can kind of look
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from edge to edge. Looks really good on the right side. If I pan across here over to the left side
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it also looks good right off to the left side. Now on a high-resolution body like the XH2, diffraction arrives quite early
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so by F-11, you're going to start to see softening effect. It's going to be less on the 26 megapixel or 24-migixel sensors
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You can see by F-16, which is minimum aperture, the image is really starting to soften due to diffraction
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Now, as mentioned previously, maximum magnification is 0.15 times, which is useful
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It's not insanely useful, but it's definitely useful. You can see that the detail and contrast is still holding up pretty well here up close
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A contrast, again, isn't like intense, but the amount of detail being resolved is really quite good
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And in good lighting conditions like here, you can see that it does a really quite a good and very nice job
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There's lots of detail. Edges are nice and clean without any kind of bleeding off of them
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And overall, the colors look good. The image, I think, in general, looks good. Now, as noted previously, there is a little bit of uncorrected longitudinal chromatic aberration
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but that often pays dividends when it comes to the softness of the defocus region
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So in this case, if I kind of just pan around in the areas from focus to defocus
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I don't really see a lot of fringing showing up here in the real world, but what I do see is that the background doesn't have a lot of outlining
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even though it's not far away, it looks fairly soft. In this image, I think the bouquet rendering is really quite beautiful
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very kind of artistic and almost like a watercolor painting, very, very nice. Here's a shot more indoors, more of a photography-related subject. You can see
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again, that just the more simple lines here are really nicely blurred out. I also found that overall
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color and contrast images looked good. And so here, you know, there's good levels of saturation without
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anything looking extreme. Here, more muted pastel colors at sunset. Image looks really great here as well
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Another shot here, obviously it was a little bit of a moodyer day as far as the weather
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And so there's definitely some chop here on the bay. But you can see that in the general colors and the detail, I mean, look all the detail up on here
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It looks really, really impressively good. Now here is some dew and morning grass bocah here
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And so you can see it, is able to get nice and creamy. Now here, in this case, I think that's artistic
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And so composing in the right way, it works here. but as noted, this is a lens that does suffer from some flare-related issues
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In this case, when I'm composing with the sun more at the mid-frame, you can see it's not too bad
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I mean, there's some mild ghosting artifacts, not bad, but if it's up towards the corner
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you start to get this very, I think, disruptive flare pattern, particularly when you're stopped down
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This is F-11 here. And so just something to be very careful for when you're composing
23:24
So there you have it. I hope the deep dive into the optics has helped you to make a more informed decision
23:30
as to whether or not this is a lens that could work for you. As always, thanks for watching
23:34
Have a great day and let the light in
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