SAMYANG 85 mm T1, Five Stars

January 07, 2020

SAMYANG 85 mm T1, Five Stars

Great kit for a good price, want them all. Real nice results with a 5dmkiii.

This lens is superb – smooth action, decent optics and really nice bokeh. Well worth investing in for indie film makers and those shooting on a budget.

Overall a great lens but got some downside: i purchased the lens because the fast aperture for videos with an nd filter. The lens have a great performance in the middle of the image from around f2~f2. 8 but to have great results you need to stop down around f3-f4. 4 (the reason i got it) the lens had a crazy amount of chromatic aberration where the clip was unusable. My copy had a small flow where the lens hood have been hit before, wasn’t broken only deformed, but for sure the package was open before.

I bought it for the panasonic gh4 6 months ago so didn’t want to write a review until i had a good chance to place with it. For the price it’s fantastic. I already had the 12mm version so knew what to expect with samyang lenses – they’re completely manual. If you’re going to shoot video with it, you’re going to need a tripod or at least carry a gorillapod for stabilisation. For this reason i only take it out when i know i’m going to use it. If you’re tossing up whether to get this or the photography version (which is a bit cheeper) the big differences i noticed were the focus ring pull range is a lot longer and the aperture ring is smooth rather than indented. Also the markings are on the side of the lens rather than on top which i actually found to be handy.

Can’t tell the difference between this and canon l series lenses – apart from the fact that it doesn’t do the autofocus thing that they do. But not so crucial for video anyway.

Love this lens, good colour rendition and super sharp. This still is from my ursa 4.

I thought long and hard before purchasing this lens for my canon c100 mk 2 cine camera. It has no electronics in it and the focusing barrel is very smooth. No click stops so you can change the aperture smoothly by using the aperture ring if the light level changes. I filmed some pieces to camera yesterday on f2 and the footage is crispy. 5 wide aperture, great for achieving shallow depth of field. However, if you use this lens on canon 5d mk 3 or a similar body you will not get a focus confirmation, hence i’ve given this lens only 4 stars. Also, the lens hood doesn’t click into position and can easily get detached. Will i recommend it, yes, go for it and you won’t be disappointed.

Comments from buyers

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very good portrait lens stopped down to f2.8 and above

Fantastic lens and a very good value for money

want to write a review until I had a good chance to place with it

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