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As promised in the other Samyang AF 50/F1.4 FE II thread, here is my review of the lens. Please note this is still work in progress as i will add things in the next several hours.
Couple of things before we get started:
- All tests were done on A7R III
- All in-camera corrections were off
- There is no profile correction for Lightroom or any other software
- All photos are RAW converted to JPG and downsized with the exception of the sample shots at the end of the review which are edited to taste
- if somebody wants RAW file/files feel free to ask
- i don't have Sony GM 50/F1.2 atm so i can't compare with it directly(thou i had it earlier) also this lens isn't a GM competitor
Now then let's begin with the boring stuff. 
1. Official specification and optical construction
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/specs.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/mtf.jpg |
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2. Build quality&what's in the box
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/samyang50FEII.jpg |
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With the newest lenses (including the new 24-70/F2.8 zoom) Samyang introduced new, modern design. First time in the hand new 50 feels pretty premium, nothing short of the newest Tamron lenses and pretty close to GM ones. The whole lens is made of engineered plastic with matt finish.
On top of the lens you get a big and nicely dampened rubberized focus ring (feels very nice in hand), next we got focus hold button (which you can customize in the body) and custom switch M1/M2 which you can customize with lens software, however you will need Samyang FE Lens Station to do this. Whole construction is weather sealed and since i did shoot this lens also in (pretty heavy) rain i can say it's done properly.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/inthebox.jpg |
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With the lens you obviously get a lens hood and a black pouch. The later was sorta a suprise since Samyang with its smaller (and cheaper) lenses included a very convinient and sturdy plastic shell so i was expecting the same here. That being said the pouch is fine, material seems to be of a decent quality. Front cap is pretty massive and locks into place perfectly. Same can be said about the tulip sun cover. Both are a big upgrade over previous Samyang lenses.
Overall build quality of the Samyang AF 50/F1.4 is excelent, easily the biggest upgrade over any other lens they made till date. Samyang in a way always was behind Tamron/Sigma and Sony in terms of build quality but not anymore. This lens is up there with all the other top tier lenses.
3. Center sharpness
For sake of consistency i've used a perfectly straight wall of textured tiles with matt finish.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/AFpoint.jpg |
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Focus point
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/f1418.jpg |
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Already wide open sharpness in the center is excelent with a small improvment when stopped down to F1.8
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/f284.jpg |
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At 2.8 sharpness is better still and continue to improve till F3.5-F4 where we find lens peak performance
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/f48.jpg |
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F4 vs F5.6 is extremely hard to distinguish so instead you got F8 here, where you can see difraction already kicks in.
4. Corner sharpness
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/AFpoint2.jpg |
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Focus point
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/c1418.jpg |
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Wide open corners are somewhere between good and very good, you gain a little bit more of fine details at F1.8 but honestly vignette covers a lot of it anyway.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/c284.jpg |
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Stepping down to F2.8 gives you another boost in detail and by F4 corners are excelent.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/c48.jpg |
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F4 and F5.6 look almost identical so again i give you F4 vs F8, where you can see the texture a bit better but than again difraction is already a factor.
5. Vignetting and microcontrast
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/micro-1.jpg |
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At F1.4 vignetting is pretty strong, roughly -2.7 EV (on par with GM 50), microcontrast is already excelent.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/micro-2.jpg |
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Stepping down to F1.8 improves both (vignietting -2.0 EV).
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/micro-3.jpg |
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Moving to F2 and we get another small boost in both (vig -1.8 EV)
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/micro-4.jpg |
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Now we're at F2.8 and we get a pretty big improvement in regards to vignietting (-1.3 EV) and small in microcontrast.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/micro-5.jpg |
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At F3.5 microcontrast reaches its peak while vignietting still slightly improves (-1.2 EV)
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/micro-6.jpg |
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Going to F5.6 is the end of the road for vignietting improvements (-1 EV)
5.1 Color rendition
As you probably already guessed, Samyang 50/F1.4 II renders color more towards warm side. Some people gonna love it, some not so much - personal preference and it's easy to adjust in post. I find it pleasing especially with the lens bokeh (more on that later). To give you a comparison take a look below (fun fact Samyang 45/F1.8 has even stronger vignette at F1.8 than new S50 at F1.4):
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/colors50s45.jpg |
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6. AF
If i had to sum up AF performance in one word i would say it's... fine. That being said lets get into some details:
- Accuracy is excelent, i didn't have any weird miss AF or false-positives taking photos even in low light. In that regard there is an improvement versus any previous Samyang lens. This is on par with Tamron or Sigma. In very low light AF sometimes goes over the focus point and comes back but still nails focus. Kinda like some Sigma lenses do.
- Speed is mediocre, it's pretty much the same as it was with any previous Samyang lenses (outside of the worst / oldest ones, on par lets say with Samyang 45/F1.8). It's not slow but it's also noticeably slower than Tamron not to mention Sony GM lenses.
- Noise is another point where it loses to Tamron/Sigma/Sony lenses. It's pretty quiet but it's not noiseless. It seems like this is the best they can do with ST motor.
- Tracking accurancy for walking people is fine/good. I had only few photos which AF didn't nail, however this was at night (very low light) and might as well be my fault. That being said i don't do sport so i can't say how this will hold up for running people / pets. I don't believe this lens is intendent for such a use case.
7. CA/LoCA
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/loca1-1.jpg |
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Whole picture (F1.4)
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/loca1-2.jpg |
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Crop
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/loca2-1.jpg |
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Whole picture (F1.4)
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/loca2-2.jpg |
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Crop
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/loca3-1.jpg |
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Whole picture (F1.4)
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/loca3-2.jpg |
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Before plane of focus - crop
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/loca3-3.jpg |
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After plane of focus - crop
LoCA is sadly a thing here, especialy when you're at F1.4 and in extreme compositions (many dark branches on grey sky - third picture). Thankfully in most use cases it's more than decent and once the profile for the lens is released it's gonna be way easier to correct.
When comparing to Samyang 45/F1.8 CA and LoCA is a bit better controlled but the improvement is pretty small. Quite a long way from GM 50/1.2, than again you can't have everything for not even 1/3rd of its price.
7. Focus breathing/shrinking
Happy to report that there is very little focus shrinking here. It's pretty close to being par-focal. Great for people doing video.
8. Flare
Since there is like no sun whatsover here and wont be for next few weeks i had to improvise.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/flare.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/flare2.jpg |
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I had really hard to time to produce any flare. Samyang did an excelent job here. I'm also very pleased that microcontrast holds up very well in direct light.
9. Rendering of sunstars
Without any sun well... i had to improvise again. Happy to report that thanks to the 9 blade aperture you will see nice sunstars from F5.6 and up.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sunstars.jpg |
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Whole picture (F8)
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sunstars1.jpg |
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Crop
10. Bokeh balls
Bokeh rendering is for sure one of several strong points of the lens.
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/bballs1.jpg |
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Whole picture (F1.4)
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/bballs1c.jpg |
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Crop
Bokeh Balls in the center are rendered clean and very creamy without any visible border. Even close to the edge of the frame performance is very good with only some minor vignette cutting the left side of the bokeh ball. This is almost 100% fixed by stepping down to F1.8. The only thing im gonna nitpick here is the 9 blade aperture which you start to see as soon as F2 and is clearly visible by F2.8.
11. Quality Assurance aka copy variation
The bain of all lenses. With my local distributor (thanks buddy!) we went throu 4 copies of the lens to find 1 perfectly centered. Two of them were only slightly decentered (for many people these would be fine) and one was pretty bad. Overall not great but not bad either.
12. Samples (edited to taste)
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sample1.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sample2.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sample3.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sample6.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sample9.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sample10.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sample11.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/s2.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sampleP3.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sampleP1.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sampleP4.jpg |
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https://4kgamer.net/kkm/Samyang50_II/review/sampleP5.jpg |
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13. Summary
Samyang AF 50/F1.4 FE II is a modern 50 mm lens which performs very well in almost all categories with the exception of very few. One could make a very compeling case for this Samyang being a better overall lens than Sony Zeiss 50/F1.4. In current Sony FE line up of 50 mm lenses this one sits just behind Sony GM 50/F1.2 which is a better lens but also costs 2200 euro, while you can pick up Samyang for 700 euro / 750$ or even less (for me it was 612 euro). Highly recommended.
Pros:
+ much improved build quality, on par with Tamron and Sony G/GM lenses
+ weather sealed
+ light and pretty compact for a F1.4 lens
+ excelent sharpness wide open in the center
+ very good sharpnes wide open in the corners
+ great microcontrast already at F1.4
+ AF accuracy is excelent
+ almost no focus shrinking/breathing
+ flare is well corrected
+ nicely pronounced sunstars from F5.6
+ smooth and creamy bokeh
+ great price
Cons:
- AF speed is only mediocre and while quiet it's not noiseless
- LoCA should've been corrected better
- pretty strong vignette
- you need Samyang Lens Station to customize switch and/or ring function
Edited on Dec 09, 2021 at 11:19 PM · View previous versions
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