Samyang AF 85mm F1.4 Autofocus Lens for Sony FE

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Finally, moving indoors, you can the rest of the room fade away behind this wide open available light shot of our dog.

Image quality is nice and sharp with negligible color fringing, although barrel distortion can be noticeable. I will note that I’ve used the AF85 for a few of my YouTube segments and it did a much better job than the AF 35mm in not pulsing in and out of focus, however. Also, its aperture mechanism comprises 9 precisely-controlled iris blades, providing natural, circular, out-of-focus highlights at all apertures. I would like to see Samyang move to a lens-based USB-C port like Tamron and Viltrox have moved to, as that eliminates the need for an additional accessory for this functionality. Ben is the Imaging Labs manager, responsible for all the testing on Digital Camera World and across the entire photography portfolio at Future.It also effectively communicates information to Sony camera bodies for “SteadyShot” (IBIS), which results in a nicely stabilized 85mm lens. About 3 ½ years ago I reviewed the first Samyang lens that I thought was truly competitive with the main brands, and it was the Samyang AF 85mm F1. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. You need about 5 normal focus rotations to travel the extremes of the focus range, and I estimate the whole focus throw at somewhere near 380°.

Manual focussing should also be easy and precise in all weathers thanks to the micro-patterned rubber focus ring, while weather seals in seven areas protects the lens from light rain, snow and dust.

I subsequently reviewed the Canon RF mount version of the lens and found it even better (they added an AF/MF switch to the design).

The body materials here are engineered plastics, but good feeling plastics, and the build feels solid if not exceptional. One of those was weather sealing, which the first generation lens had, though with fewer seal points (only three on that lens).The newly integrated Custom Switch enables silent adjustment of the aperture by rotating the focus ring. If you’re a professional portrait photographer, the chances are that you’ll want to splash out the big bucks on a Canon or Nikon 85mm f/1. Stopping the lens down improves clarity across the frame, but the sharpness towards the edges still lags way behind that of the centre until around f/8.