Transcription
We've got a really, really exciting episode for you today. We're looking at the Samyang 35 to 150 for Almount cameras. Now, this is also available on E-mount as well, um, but there's also Tamron available on those cameras. There is nothing like this available on the R-mount cameras, which is why I'm so excited to try it out.
Now, this also replaces five prime lenses: a 35, a 50, 85, 100, and a 150, all in one lens. Not only that, it's an F2 to F2.8, meaning it's really, really fast throughout the focal range. Now, in this episode, we're doing some technical testing and, more importantly, we're taking it out into the field, and I'm going to show you the results. I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty excited. However, it's not all been smooth sailing, so stick around to find out why in this video.
Okay, so let's start with the technical tests. So, firstly, let's start with sharpness. So, wide open, we get a very sharp image in the middle, and then towards the outer of the lens, we start to see a bit of softness and vignetting as well. As you stop down, the vignetting will start to disappear, and the sharpness will increase. Now, this is a trend you're going to see with this lens: it's always going to be sharper in the center than it is on the outside. Yes, this is typical for lenses, but comparing this to my previous Sigma 24 to 70 Art lens, that is a much more clinical lens. However, as I'm going to talk about later, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it's not a bad thing at all. As I zoom in to 150, again, sharp in the middle, softer at the outsides. We stop down a bit, we get rid of that vignetting, and we get an even sharper image all the way across the frame. Now, considering this is a 35 to 150, which is a huge focal range, especially at the f-stop numbers of 2 and F2.8, I would say this is really, really impressive.
Okay, so onto chromatic aberration. This is when you shoot a subject against a bright object, and you'll get like purple or green sort of lines around the edges of it. Now, I'm happy to say this lens does control the chroma very, very well. But as is typical with this lens, as you move closer towards the edges, that chroma will start to creep in. However, considering the huge focal range of this lens, I think it's very, very respectable.
Now, onto my favorite aspect of this lens, and that is the bokeh. Now, for comparison, if you were to shoot portraits on an 85 F1.8 lens, then essentially, if you zoom into 150 on this lens, you're going to get 1.7 times more compression and bokeh and background blur. That's incredible. The bokeh in this lens is fantastic because it's not clinical. It essentially gives it character, and I do value character over being overly clinical. The bokeh balls are clean, but as we move to the outside of the image, they will start to sort of become slightly misshapen, but it does sort of draw the eye directly to the center of the image. I've also found it really useful for product photography. Now, you can't focus in very, very close with this lens, so it's probably limited as a product photography lens, but for certain products, I've been able to get incredible background compression, which creates such an amazing amount of separation that the product just stands out incredibly. So the bokeh on this is just incredible, and I'm really, really happy with that aspect.
And next, we're going to look at autofocus speed. So, the autofocus speed, this is something I was worried about. It's, it's really, really fast, but it does suffer from one problem, and that is if you're going to focus on something very, very close to the lens and then something very far away, it can hunt a bit and it can get lost. However, don't panic. This is something that I'm used to, and a lot of people who shoot wildlife photography will be used to when shooting such vast focal distances. My 150 to 600 Sigma has the same problem. The way around this is to simply focus on something big next to your subject, and then you're going to be able to grab focus on your subject very quickly. It's, it's that simple. And there's one thing that this lens could actually benefit from massively, and that is a focus limiter. And a focus limiter just means you could say set a distance of 1 to 10 meters, and it will focus only on things in 1 to 10 meters, or 10 meters and beyond, and it will do the, it will do the opposite. This can massively increase the speed of your focus. So if they do another iteration of this lens, that would be a nice welcome addition. But yes, I'm shooting with the lens right now, and it works very, very well.
So it goes without saying, the zoom range is huge. But if you're going to use this lens for video, you're not going to be zooming in or out because it does have a weird quirk where it, it's, it's not, it's not stepping down. Now, let's just be clear here, if you've got your F-stop open all the way, it will step down all the way to F2.8. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about it does a strange little jolt as you zoom all the way in and all the way out. It's not really a big deal. I, so I absolutely do not zoom in or out on my camera when I'm filming. You'd want a lens that's better built for doing that specific task, like a power zoom lens, but it is something to be aware of.
Now, talking of that stepping down effect in regards to focal length, then yes, because this isn't a constant aperture lens, it's a, it's a variable aperture lens. As you zoom in, then the f-stop will close down from an F2 to an F2.8. Now, you don't get to F2.8 until you get to about 90mm. I'm, I'm going to put a graphic on screen to show exactly where these stops are. I've not seen a more impressive variable aperture lens, and I would never usually go for a variable aperture lens, but I do think this is a worthy addition to a lens kit if you don't mind that.
And on to my favorite part of testing, and that is taking it out into the actual field and using it in the real world. I've had it a short time, I've managed to shoot corporate events, videos, landscape, architecture, wildlife, and it's really, really impressive. Um, because of that amazing background separation for wildlife, if I can get anything close, you get this gorgeous bokeh, which is great. It just really creates separation and a really unique look that is just full of character.
Now, in terms of landscape, because it doesn't zoom all the way out to say a 24mm, I thought it wouldn't be as useful. But I've looked at a lot of my old photos, and not very many of them I shot at 24mm. I don't even really like shooting landscape in anything wider than a 20mm. It's just not for me. I find it kind of pushes everything in the landscape out. I like to use typically a 24 to 105 because you can carve that landscape up and look for areas of interest. And surprisingly, I found that this lens was really, really useful. Now, going back to the tests earlier, we know that the lens is very sharp in the middle and softer at the outside. So you might think, well, is that going to affect my landscape? Well, no, because as I said in those tests, once you start stepping down, everything becomes very sharp, the vignetting disappears, and the frame just becomes very, very sharp. And if you're shooting landscape, you're probably going to be shooting at F8 and above, which is exactly how I got these shots.
For architecture, I took it to this really cool, small, local church. It's a tiny church, but I was able to get really creative shots. I didn't really find 35mm hindrance at all. It did a really, really cracking job here. And I took the lens to a pride event for work, and it performed really, really, really well. I was able to sort of really zoom in and lock in on really cool, small, and personal sort of details, but I've got the versatility to come out and to capture the event at large crowd shots, different detail shots. It's a really useful lens. It didn't let me down at all in terms of how fast the focus speed was.
But it does bring me on to one problem, and that is we desperately need a firmware update because I have encountered the lens coming up with an "it won't connect to the camera" type issue. Hi Luke from the future here. So we actually got this in a firmware upgrade, and it is no longer an issue. So awesome. I've had this happen about four times so far, and I don't think the lens is broken. I just think they need a firmware update, and this is nothing new in the world of cameras. So hopefully Samyang will sort that out soon enough.
Okay, but like I said at the start of the video, not everything has been completely smooth sailing. You need to understand that when you buy any piece of equipment, and you're spending this much money on it, you want to look at the piece of equipment that you're buying, and that extends to customer service, customer experience. My first iteration of this lens, unfortunately, was decentered. Now, decentered means there's a lot of elements in the lens, and if just one of them is misaligned, you're going to have really strange artifacting on your lens, in your photos. So this manifested as having really poor performance towards the outer edges of the lens, and as we've established, this lens already gets softer as you get out towards the edges. So it actually was so bad, I couldn't really focus on anything properly. Look at the detail in this flower, it's just completely devoid of detail. I could barely read the writing on these bottles. It was just a pain in the butt, and I thought, is this the quality of this lens? It doesn't seem to match up with what I've been seeing online. Now, in my sort of endless rabbit hole of looking at this lens and looking at this versus the Tamron lens, I discovered that somebody had a 40 Tamron lens, and it was decentered. And I came to discover that's what this lens had. It wasn't also clear that Samyang don't deal with these lenses in the UK. A company called Holden does. And then, as I dealt with Holden, I actually discovered that these lenses have a free warranty in the UK. That's according to Holden, that's what they told me on the phone, but they're not clear about this, and it's not mentioned anywhere, which is just completely baffling because that is a great thing to know. It's a great peace of mind. In comparison, I've had to send a couple of lenses back to Sigma before, and they have always been fantastic. Sigma also offers the ability to register your lens on their website. Again, this is another point of comfort as a customer. So in terms of like customer service, Samyang, you need to do a little bit better.
Okay, so with that out of the way, let's get back to the good stuff: the build quality and the ergonomics. So it goes without saying, this is a huge lens. If you shot with a Sigma Art lens like the 24 to 70, it's bigger than that and it's heavier than that as well. And that's to be expected, to be honest. There's a lot of glass elements and moving parts inside this. However, it's very well built. It really is built like a tank, but you do not want to treat it like a tank. There's so many moving parts in this that you do not want to risk sort of throwing it around. So just treat it well, and it should be okay. Now, the plastic is very premium feeling, although it is sort of prone to fingerprint. Feature look here again. So the very base of this lens, I brought a circular sort of stand for the lens because it's so big, so that I can put my camera on a tripod and have it sort of balanced on the lens instead. And I have noticed that this plastic is a little bit creaky. So I don't think it's as well built as like my Sigma or my Panasonic lenses, but I think it will be okay. It's got two rings on there, one for focus, one for zoom. Both are very smooth, both are very well dampened. It's a very, very premium feeling lens all around. It's got some cool custom modes on there as well. It's got a switch for three different options. One of those switches controls just standard settings, so you don't have to worry about anything too much on that one. The next one down, when you combine it with the custom buttons on there, of which there are two, you can do kind of like a parfocal effect, which seems to work. I'm going to have to do more testing on that. And the other one can actually kind of key point in focus positions. So you can key point in two focus positions, press the custom button, and it will change positions. I've heard people say they've not been able to get this to work, but it was literally just there in the manual. So if that's what people were talking about, I can make a video about how to do that if people are confused about it. Overall, I think it's a very, very well-built lens. As previously mentioned, I do think they could have fitted in a focus limiter on here. And very, very nice touch, there is space for a lens foot as well. Now, on Samyang's website, they point you towards a SmallRig one, which costs £70, I think. However, I went onto AliExpress and found this one by, it says Foxer, but then it's got this other little brand on that cost me £21. It's very sturdy, and I'm using it right now, and it does the job really well. Overall, it's very well built. There's a lot of consideration been put into it, and it's a very pleasurable lens to use. To be honest with you, I quite like the size and weight, which is kind of weird. But if you prefer a smaller lens, nothing wrong with that, then it might not be the lens for you.
So let's start summing this up a little bit. Let's first look at the pros. The pros are: it's got a huge focal range, 35 to 150, covering five main prime lenses, and it's a very fast lens. I really think, even though they've kind of possibly copied another company here, it's set a feat of engineering, and it's great to see a lens like this on a Lumix camera, and for any L-mount camera, to be fair as well. Not only that, I think the price is reasonable. Considering Canon do a 24 to 105 F2.8, and that is a £3,000 lens, I would much rather this than that. It's also worth mentioning, um, it's got an 82mm lens thread, it's weather sealed, and, um, both of those are pros as well, because it's quite easy to get a hold of an 82mm lens thread, and obviously weather sealing means you're going to be protected in the elements. I'm going to be using it out on my wildlife adventures, so that's really, really good to know as well. I also like the characteristics of this lens. It's definitely not as clinical as an Art lens, and I like that. And you'll probably find this from a lot of filmmakers in particular, they look for lenses that are going to give character and don't take character as being bad, or somehow defunct. It's not. It's a very sharp, very well-controlled lens across all focal ranges, and it performs very, very well. But having that little bit of character, having those small flaws, means that the images are ultimately more striking, and I really can't explain it. It's something you kind of have to see. Hopefully, you can see it in the photos. I also think the ability to use some of the custom modes may seem nervous to some people, but I actually think they're really useful. There's a setting in the Lumix camera itself which allows you to sort of keyframe shots together. I could see possibly combining that with the keyframing you can do in the lens, courtesy of those custom buttons, to create some really cool and funky effects. I think this is a really great lens, but it's not without its cons either. Cons being: again, if you want a lens that does look more clinical, depending on what line of work you're getting into, then you might be better with a Sigma Art lens or a Lumix Pro lens. If you want a lens that is a lighter lens, then this isn't going to be the lens for you. It is big and it is heavy. However, if you're shooting events, bear in mind that a 70 to 200 is also quite a big lens as well, and you can't come out as wide as this. If you're looking for a lens that can compete with the quality of a prime lens, again, this isn't going to compete with that type of quality, because a prime lens will typically open up to 1.8 or even 1.4, and in some cases, F1.2. However, if like me, you prefer the versatility of a zoom lens, then this is about as good as it gets. I also think it definitely needs some sort of focus limiter to put in there. I don't know if they could do that on another iteration of this lens. Extending towards the company as well, as previously mentioned, they need to step their game up in terms of their customer service and how clear they are with instructing you on where to go and what things are on their website. I would like to be able to register my lens on the website as well, because I think that is a really useful thing to be able to do.
So who is this lens for? I think it's going to be super useful in particular for anyone doing events, anyone doing weddings, and to a lesser extent, people like me who are probably going to be doing wildlife. It fits a gap for me personally of a 35 to 150, and then my Sigma 150 to 600 obviously continues that focus lens life. This means I could bring two lenses out with me for an entire day and have everything covered. Where I'm starting to fall in love with this lens is that unique image quality and look and characteristic. So overall, I think it is a fantastic lens, especially, especially for weddings and events. But when I was getting this lens, I was getting it because I had too many lenses. I was freelance, I needed two cameras with lenses that covered similar focal ranges. I traded in my Sigma 24 to 70 Art lens for this, and I was going to trade in another lens as well, and that was my 24 to 105 F4. But much like Frodo at the end of Lord of the Rings, just couldn't let it go, and that is because that lens is just too good. Now, everybody is caught up on having really fast lenses that can go all the way down to F0.95 and crazy stuff. It's so hard to avoid people that an F4 lens is the GOAT, but that's for a future video. Are you going to be getting this 35 to 150? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to know your thoughts. Hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, and I'll catch you all next time. See you.