Samyang 35mm f/1.4 AS UMC AE

£429/$499 Not entirely a manual affair

This manual-focus Samyang lens is available in a wide variety of mount options. Most have no built-in electronics, so you can’t control the aperture from the camera body. Instead, you need to use the lens’s own aperture ring, and the viewfinder image gets progressively darker with narrower aperture settings. However, the ‘AE’ version available in Nikon F-mount enables camera-driven aperture control, and thereby a full range of PASM shooting modes.

Typical of manual-focus lenses, the focus ring has a long rotational travel and operates with smooth precision. Zone focusing is enabled by the focus distance scale and depth of field markers for apertures of f/2.8, f/5.6, f/11, f/16 and f/22. This is a real bonus for traditional street photography.

Performance

As an f/1.4 lens, the Samyang is comparatively big and heavy. Sharpness and contrast are disappointing at apertures wider than f/2, but if you stop down to f/2.8, image quality becomes excellent in all respects.

N-photo verdict

For traditionalists and street purists, this Samyang manual-focus prime enables a classic style of shooting.

Sharpness

It’s lacklustre wide-open, however sharpness is excellent at apertures of f/2.8 through to f/16.

Fringing

There’s very little lateral fringing but spherical aberration can be noticeable at the widest aperture.

Distortion

Barrel distortion isn’t bad but, technically, it’s a little worse than from any other lens in the group.