a while back on the alternate lens forum, this was part of a comment "Rokinon (aka Bower, Samyang, Vivitar) 85mm 1.4" Is the lens made by the same source and then branded in 4 different ways? Possibly this is often true, can anyone shed any light on this? thanks joanlvh
AFAIK, Rokinon, Samyang, Bower, Polaris, and etc. are all made by Samyang [1]. It's the only company of all those brands that actually says they make lenses; "Samyang Optics has been manufacturing Interchangeable DSLR Lens..."
ROKINON is owned and operated solely by Elite Brands Inc. "Elite Brands markets its products in the United States and worldwide, under its own and many private label brand names". The list of lenses at the EBI site [2] includes many Rokinon lenses, but not the 14/2.8, 35/1.4 and 85/1.4 (!).
Bower doesn't say who it's owned by.
Vivitar is owned by Sakar International, Inc. I suspect many of their current lenses are made by Samyang.
IOW, it's a corporate world. Nobody wants to officially say what's really going on.
I have Samyang UMC 14/2.8 AS and Rokinon 85/1.4 lenses. They're both very nice. I'd definitely stick to these two brand names (based on intuition), as there's no guarantee that other-branded "same lenses" were made to the same quality control (QC) standards. This observation is based on my personal experience with the SMC Pentax 28-200 lens made by Tamron, back in the 1990's. The Pentax and Tamron were made to the same design, but the Pentax QC was lower, according to those "in the know" back then. I owned the Pentax version, and it lived up to it's reputation as a dog; of course, I didn't find this out until after I bought it. The reputation for the Tamron was very good. I should have done my research first, and then bought the Tamron. Anyway, this is what got me started on my quest for the perfect lens at a bargain price. I abandoned this quest many years ago. Some of the Samyang products may be getting as close to satisfying this quest as is currently possible.
I'm ready to buy one of these 85 1.4s but found an interesting piece of information that I'm thinking may not be correct.
According to this comparison over at B&H, link it looks like the Vivitar version can focus as close at 1' while the Rokinon and Bower can only focus at 3.3'. That's a big difference, can it be true?
Altmanator wrote:
I'm ready to buy one of these 85 1.4s but found an interesting piece of information that I'm thinking may not be correct.
According to this comparison over at B&H, link it looks like the Vivitar version can focus as close at 1' while the Rokinon and Bower can only focus at 3.3'. That's a big difference, can it be true?
interesting, at the same link the vivitar checks in at over 900g. a significant amount over the others.
