Samyang 10mm f/2.8 ED AS NCS CS Lens Review

Samyang 10mm f/2.8 ED AS NCS CS Handling and Features

Even though this lens is keenly priced for its specification, the build quality is excellent. Lightly textured high quality plastics have been used for much of the lens barrel, with a metallic red ring placed just after the aperture ring, which is a feature of Samyang's premium lenses. Despite its robust construction, the lens isn't overly heavy, which will make it feel just as at home on more compact camera bodies as it does on the Nikon D300 used for testing.

The manual focusing ring is smooth to operate and is a pleasure to use as a result, with just the right amount of damping making fine adjustments easy to apply. A very useful hyperfocal scale is provided on the lens barrel, which is adequately spaced to ensure accurate setting of the lens. Unfortunately, due to the use of low dispersion glass in the optical design, there is no hard stop for infinity focus, which may cause issues for those wanting to use this lens for astro photography. This lens' excellent manual focusing action will make this lens ideal for those who shoot video with their SLRs.


Closest focus is 24cm, which should be ideal for shooting in cramped environments or even for the occasional close up, where the wide angle will allow more of your subject's surroundings to be included than is possible with longer focal length lenses. Focusing is performed by moving lens element inside the lens barrel, so the length of the lens doesn't change. Due to the extreme wide angle nature of this lens, there is no filter thread provided and a deep, petal-shaped hood is built into the design of the lens.

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