Samyang 35mm F2.8 FE - The best walkaround lens
Introduction
Let’s delve into a detailed review of the Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE lens. This compact wide-angle prime lens is designed for Sony E-mount full-frame cameras such as the Sony A7C or A7III, but can also be used on APS-C cameras such as the Sony A6100 or A6700.
The uniqueness of this lens lies in its compact size and lightweight design. Despite its small form factor, it delivers great image quality, making it a unique offering in the crowded market of 35mm lenses for Sony cameras.
This lens is perfect for travel photographers and street photographers who value portability and discretion. Its wide aperture makes it a nice compantion for low-light photography and even creating a little bokeh, while its sharpness and fast autofocus make it suitable for everything from portraits to landscapes. Whether you’re a professional looking for a reliable lens for your assignments or an enthusiast seeking to elevate your photography, the Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE lens is a versatile addition to your kit.
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Build Quality and Design
The lens is incredibly compact, measuring just 3.3cm in length! Despite its small size, it delivers powerful performance. It is also extremely lightweight, weighing in at just 85 grams, making it an ideal companion for photographers on the go and you won’t even feel it on your camera!
The Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE is constructed from a high-grade plastic and has a metal mount without a weather sealing gasket. However we’ve not come across any water ingress in our time with the lens. There are no external switches, either.
One curious feature of this lens is the lens hood, which basically is an extension of the lens and does nothing to protect it from stray light. The lens cap goes directly onto said “lens hood”. If you remove the lens hood a 49mm filter thread is revealed. The lens hood itself has a 40.5mm filter thread, which is quite unusual.
As you can see from our sample: The hood does protect from falls, leaving only a small dent.
The actual design is pretty plain: It has an orange ring that kind of matches the Sony-Orange, that’s it.
When compared to other lenses in the same price range, such as the Sony FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA, there are some differences. The Sony lens is all-metal from top to bottom and comes with dust and moisture resistance. In the hand, the Samyang gives you the impression of being fairly robust but the Sony definitely has a more premium feel.
So, while the Samyang Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE lens offers good build quality and is fairly robust, other lenses in the same size category like the Sony FE 35mm f/2.8 ZA may offer a more premium feel and additional features like dust and moisture resistance but also cost 100% or double the price.
Size, Weight, and Handling
At a mere 85 grams, the Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE is exceptionally lightweight. Its compact dimensions (measuring 3.3cm in length) won’t burden your camera bag. Handling is comfortable, and the lens feels well-balanced on Sony mirrorless bodies: Meaning you won’t feel it at all! It’s a lens you can carry all day without fatigue, in fact you won’t even notice it’s on your camera.
Manual Focus
The manual focus experience with the Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE lens is quite straightforward. The lens features a wide focus ring, which is ridged for easier grip. This makes manual focusing comfortable and precise. However, there are no hard stops at the ends of the range, which can make it more difficult to set focus at infinity: This is after all a focus-by-wire system: The focus ring sends signals to the silent focus motor.
It’s important to note that full-time manual focus override is not available, and there’s no distance and/or depth of field scale either. This means that you’ll need to rely on your camera’s focus indicators or use the live view to ensure accurate focus, which is probably the best way to focus anyways.
Autofocus
The lens is a fairly quick performer when it comes to autofocus. It takes about 0.15 seconds to lock onto the subject and we havn’t run into any issues with tracking on the Sony A7III, Sony A7RIV A or the Sony A7C II.
It also doesn’t experience too much “hunting”, either in good or bad light, with the lens accurately focusing almost all of the time. Really dark light, such as a small campfire do pose problems for this lens. But that’s near darkness and ISOs beyond 50.000.
The focussing motor is very quite and can’t really be picked up by anything.
Overall the focus has been more than satisfactory: We haven’t used it for sports (We do use the Samyang 35mm F1.8 AF FE for that…), but in all other scenarios the lens has been a great performer!
Image Quality
Sharpness:
Center Sharpness: When shooting wide open at f/2.8, the lens delivers excellent sharpness at the center of the frame. This high level of sharpness continues throughout the aperture range up to f/13.
Edge Sharpness: The edges of the frame start off fairly sharp at f/2.8, becoming very good at f/4, and then reaching excellent levels from f/5.6 to f/16. Even at the smallest aperture of f/22, the lens maintains very good sharpness across the frame.
Chromatic Aberration:
The lens handles chromatic aberration well, minimizing color fringing. Longitudinal chromatic aberration (color separation along the depth of field) is not a significant issue with this lens.
Distortion:
Considering its wide-angle nature, the lens exhibits minimal distortion. This is commendable, especially for a lens in its price range and it’s size
Flare Resistance:
The Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE doesn’t really effectively suppress flare, even when shooting against bright light sources. This performance is crucial for maintaining image contrast and clarity and the image come become quite hazy when the lens comes from just outside the image frame. However this can also look quite good, so don’t dismiss the lens because of this.
Bokeh
The unfocussed areas of the image, called bokeh, are usually quite pleasing and not too busy. However you have to get fairly close to actually create bokeh in your images.
Vignetting:
Vignetting (darkening of corners) is quite evident in images captured with this lens. The lenses small design doesn’t really ensure consistent brightness across the frame. The corners do darken by around 2.5 stops when wide open, but this clears up by F5.6. It’s not quite as strong on APS-C cameras but still a noticable 1.5 stops wide open.
Coma
Coma is pretty much a non-issue on the Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE. Don’t worry about it. It’s really well controlled for the price and size of the lens.
In summary, the Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE strikes a balance between portability, affordability, and optical quality. If you prioritize lightweight gear and are willing to accept its limitations, this lens could be a valuable addition to your kit. Remember that Samyang lenses have a reputation for variability, so quality control can be an issue, but their generous warranties help mitigate this concern.
Best Accessoires
The Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE comes with a nice lens pouch, so you wont need to worry about carrying it anywhere safely. What we can recommend are the following:
A lens cleaning kit: If you always want your images to have the best quality you’ll have to keep your lens clean. The Zeiss lens cleaning kit offers everything you need.
Filters: If you get a wideangle lens like this Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE you should also get yourself some ND (neutral density) filters or a circular polarizer. Or both, like in this filter set by K&F Concept.
Step-up rings: If you already have filters, we recommend you get step-up rings, so you can use your existing filters on your Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE. We recommend getting a step-up ring that goes directly from the 49mm filter thread of the Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE to your filters to avoid possible vignetting.
What we don’t recommend is the use of a clear UV-Filter. It’s supposed to block out UV-light, but your sensor aleady has such a filter. And the possibly added protection to your lens isn’t worth the image quality degradation in our humble opinion.
Conclusion:
The Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE strikes a balance between portability, affordability, and optical quality. While it may not have the luxurious build of more expensive lenses, it delivers respectable image quality in a tiny package. If you prioritize lightweight gear and are willing to accept its limitations, this lens could be a valuable addition to your kit. Remember that Samyang lenses have a reputation for variability, so quality control can be an issue, but their generous warranties help mitigate this concern.
