Samyang 16mm f/2.0 ED AS UMC CS Lens Review

Samyang 16mm f/2 ED AS UMC CS Performance

At f/2, sharpness in the centre of the frame is already excellent, with good clarity being achieved towards the edges of the frame at this aperture. Stopping down the aperture improves sharpness across the frame, with clarity in the centre of the frame peaking with outstanding levels at f/4 and clarity approaching excellent levels towards the edges of the frame at f/8.

Resolution at 16mm

How to read our charts The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. For this review, the lens was tested on a Canon EOS 600D using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are kept well under control, remaining under half a pixel width in size at all apertures. These low levels of fringing should be barely visible in images, even with high contrast areas towards the edges of the frame.

Chromatic aberration at 16mm

How to read our charts Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc. to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. For this review, the lens was tested on Canon EOS 600D using Imatest.

Falloff of illumination towards the corners is well controlled for a wide angle lens with a fast maximum aperture. At f/2 the corners are only 1.6 stops darker than the image centre and visually uniform illumination is achieved with the lens stopped down to f/5.6 or beyond.

Imatest detected 2.41% barrel distortion, which is a reasonably mild amount for a wide aperture lens with a fast maximum aperture, but may still become visible in images with straight lines close to the edges of the frame. Corrections should be relatively straightforward to apply in image editing software afterwards as the distortion pattern is uniform across the frame.

Flare is not an issue, in all but the harshest lighting conditions and contrast is retained well when shooting into the light. Strong point sources of light shining into the lens will cause a loss of contrast, but only in extreme cases.

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