Introduction

Ease of Use

The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens

The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens, isometric view

The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens, isometric view

For such a fast wideangle prime, the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC is predictably big and bulky, measuring 11cms in length and wighing in at 660g. While you can use it on a smaller APS-C body or even Samsung NX body, it won't balance very well - as demonstrated by the images above, it's a much better match for a professional-grade, full-frame camera like the 5D Mark III.

The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens fitted with the supplied lens hood

Build quality is very good, despite Samyang being a relative newcomer to the lens market. The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC feels very solid in your hand, even if the outer barrel and the filter thread appear to be made from plastic.

Front of the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens alongside the EOS 5D Mark III

Front of the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens

Rear of the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens

The focusing ring is generously wide and has a ridged, rubberised grip band. As this is a manual focus lens only, there's a distance scale that runs from the closest distance of 30cm to infinity, with a handy depth of field scale for f/2.8, f/5.6, f/11, f/16 and f/22. There's also a small white dot that appears to be an infrared focus index.

Front of the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens

 

Rear of the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens

Front of the Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens, isometric view

At the base of the lens is an aperture ring, adjustable in 1 stop (1 EV) intervals, which has a definite clicking action. An uncoupled (de-clicked) manual aperture version of the lens is available on special order if your main interest is shooting movies rather than stills.

The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens, in-hand

The lens is supplied with a detachable petal shaped lens hood, lens caps and soft lens bag. The filter size is 77mm. Focusing is performed internally so the Samyang 35mm doesn't change length and the filter thread doesn't rotate, good news for filter users.

Note that the Canon version that we tested doens't have any electronic contacts for transferring exposure information to the camera body - there is a Nikon AE version available that can do this.

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, typically seen as purple or blue fringes along contrasty edges, are impressively well controlled with this lens - the examples below show the worst-case scenario.

Light Fall-off

With the lens wide open at f/1.4, you can see some noticeable light fall-off in the corners. Stopping down helps, although to completely get rid of this phenomenon, you will need to use an f-stop of f/4 or smaller.

Macro

The Samyang 35mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC is not a macro lens. The close-focus point is at 30cm from the film/sensor plane. The following example illustrates how close you can get to the subject, in this case a CompactFlash card.

Close-up performance

Bokeh Examples

Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc. One of the reason to buy a fast lens is to be able to isolate the subject from the background, which is normally very hard to do with an ultrawide lens. Samyang was apparently very much aware of this requirement, as they employed an iris diaphragm with 8 rounded blades for a pleasing rendering of the out-of-focus highlights. Based on what we have seen, we can say that they largely succeeded. Below you'll find some examples, but you are also encouraged to check out our sample images.

Sharpness

In order to show you how sharp this lens is, we are providing 100% crops on the following page.