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Over the recent years Samyang, a Korean manufacturer, has gained some visibility in the system lens market. The company is quite small yet they released some highly interesting designs like the 14mm f/2.8, 35mm f/1.4 or 85mm f/1.4 – such large aperture prime lenses are normally associated with „high end“ products - but Samyang manages to provide them at a fraction of the costs of their original manufacturer counterparts. One of the reasons behind this is the lack of AF and mechanically controlled aperture so they can keep extensive adjustments for the various manufacturer to a minimum.

This time we’ll have a look at the Samyang 24mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC – a full format SLR lens which has been released earlier this year. This moderate ultra-wide angle lens is slightly more expensive than earlier Samyang products yet it is still offered for about half the price of the "comparable" Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 USM L II.

"During recent years fisheye lenses have seen quite a renaissance. However, they tend to be rather expensive beings - just take e.g. the Panasonic Lumix G Fisheye 8mm f/3.5 as an example (~650EUR) - and most users will be shy of investing big money on such a niche lens. There is an interesting exception to the rule though - the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 UMC fisheye is offered for an incredibly low price of under 300EUR.
The Samyang 7.5mm is the first model of a new family of lenses developed specifically for the Micro-Four-Thirds system."

Samyang is a fairly new Korean player in the DSLR lens market. In some markets their products are probably better known via co-branded offerings from companies such as Bower, Walimex, Vivitar, Opteka and probably a couple more. Samyang lenses are usually very affordable as well as nicely assembled and they tend offer something special. Our next candidate is no different here - it's the new Samyang 35mm f/1.4 AS UMC, obviously an ultra-large aperture full format lens with a moderate wide-angle characteristic. The Samyang is a manual focus lens with aperture coupling (in Nikon mount) . The aperture can be controlled from the camera so it basically behaves like a Nikkor Ai-P lens. A killer argument in favor of the Samyang is certainly its pricing of around 400EUR/500US$ which is less than a third (!) of comparable original manufacture offerings. A really surprising feature of the lens is the floating system which optimizes the element layout of the internal focusing system in close focus scenarios. Usually you will find such a mechanism in macro or high end lenses only.

"The Korean company Samyang builds its market position slowly but successively. It seems to be a part of their very well-thought-out strategy. They offer manual lenses, most often with short focal lengths in which the lack of autofocus is the least bothersome, which are characterized by good optical properties and a great price/quality ratio. In their line-up you can find such pearls like the Samyang 7.5 mm f/3.5 UMC Fish-eye MFT, tested by us not so long ago, which was undoubtedly the best ‘fisheye’ instrument we have dealt with so far. One step at a time, Samyang managed to gather a nice group of manual lenses for full frame. They are presented and compared in the following chart. The Samyang 24 mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC is the newest addition to this group and we are going to look closely at it now."

"While taking pictures in the chill temperature of -20 deg C is not the most pleasant experience we can imagine, we decided for it to show you the possibilities of a new Samyang 24 mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens, which had just arrived to our editorial staff. Enjoy!"

The Micro 4/3 system has been developing in leaps and bounds. Currently it offers the biggest number of lenses and bodies of all mirrorless systems, present on the market. What’s interesting it is the only system which was able to induce independent producers to design and manufacture lenses satisfying specifically its needs. The first such an instrument was the Voigtlander Nokton 25 mm f/0.95. Now the Samyang7.5 mm f/3.5 UMC Fish-eye MFT appeared on the market and so we would like to invite you to read its test.

I've to admit that I'm always looking forward to testing Samyang lenses. They're both very affordable as well as nicely assembled and they tend offer something special. Our next candidate is no different here - it's the new Samyang 35mm f/1.4 AS UMC, obviously an ultra-large aperture full format lens with a moderate wide-angle characteristic. The Samyang is a fully manual lens so you have to live with both manual focusing as well as an uncoupled manual aperture (in EOS mount). A killer argument in favor of the Samyang is certainly its pricing of around 400EUR/500US$ which is about a third (!) of comparable genuine manufacture offerings. A really surprising feature of the lens is the floating system which optimizes the element layout of the internal focusing system in close focus scenarios. Usually you will find such a mechanism in macro or high end lenses only. Samyang lenses are also marketed under various brand names including Bower, Walimex, Vivitar, Opteka and probably a couple more.

Almost two weeks ago we published sample shots made with the final version of Samyang 35 mm f/1.4 AS UMC lens mounted to the Nikon D3x. These two weeks were enough to make a full test and today we can present our review of this lens. Enjoy!

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