Samyang 50mm f/1.2 AS UMC CS Review

Samyang 50mm f/1.2 AS UMC CS Performance

The lens is very usable for many different types of photography, including portraiture, landscape and any usage where a short telephoto is suitable. The f/1.2 aperture is an added bonus in that it makes possible creative use that is not available with smaller apertures.

The lens starts off with a very high degree of sharpness centrally, with the edges not far behind. Performance is excellent from f/2.8 through to f/8, with the edges being impressively close to the central sharpness. This only starts to fall away at f/11 and f/16, with even the edges at f/16 maintaining a good level of sharpness. An impressively even lens, performing at a high level throughout.

MTF
 

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. 

The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution as LW/PH. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple.

For this review, the lens was tested on a Sony Alpha A6000 using Imatest.

CA is actually controlled very well, and at the centre of the field is insignificant. The edges do show some modest fringing, for example in tree branches against sky, but this can be dealt with using software.

CA
 

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 a Sony Alpha A6000 using Imatest.

In a pictorial sense, the lens produces very attractive images, with creamy bokeh. Images are bright and contrasty, which also helps to give an impression of good sharpness.

There is a small amount of barrel distortion, -0.156%,  but nothing that would intrude in any normal shooting, including architecture.

Value For Money

50mm f/1.2 lenses are traditionally expensive marque optics. The Canon 50mm f/1.2L lens is around £995. The Nikon 50mm f/1.2 AI lens is manual focus and costs around £699. These are of course only for Canon and Nikon fit, so the Samyang does offer a wider range of choices for formats up to APS-C. There are plenty of other 50mm f/1.2 manual focus lenses on the second-hand market, as most marques have offered these at some time or another. Prices may be similar to a new Samyang.

In reality, there is very little difference between f/1.2 and f/1.4 and the choice of f/1.4 lenses is very wide. Unless f/1.2 is considered necessary then the f/1.4 lenses could be worth thinking about. For more options have a look at to Top 10 Best Samyang Lenses of 2015.

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