SAMYANG MF 85MM F/1.4 RF/Z
This budget-friendly Samyang proves there’s still life in fully manual portrait lenses
Available in Canon RF and Nikon Z editions, this Samyang is designed with the latest mirrorless camera designs in mind. Both makes of camera feature highly effective face-detection and eye-detection autofocus systems that are great for portraiture, though Canon’s system has the edge.
It might seem strange not to make the most of them, but it’s not altogether daft.
For a relatively small outlay, you can buy this Samyang lens with its portrait-perfect combination of an 85mm focal length and fast f/1.4 aperture rating. Indeed, it’s the fastest lens in the test group.
Not just a ‘manual focus’ lens, the Samyang is fully manual, sometimes referred to as a ‘dumb lens’. As such, it has no internal electronics and, therefore, can’t communicate with the host camera body in any way. The upshot is that you can only shoot effectively in fully manual or ‘Av’ aperture-priority modes. And you can only adjust the aperture via the control ring on the lens itself.
The aperture value isn’t shown in the camera’s information display, nor recorded in EXIF information. Similarly, there’s no autofocus nor optical image stabilisation.
While the feature set might sound like a dead loss, the reality is rather different. The viewfinders of DSLRs are notoriously poor for manual focusing, but the electronic viewfinders and rear screens of mirrorless cameras make it easier, especially with aids like ‘focus peaking’. The typically long travel of the focus ring in this manual-focus lens enables precise and accurate adjustments.
A hybrid aspherical element and Samyang’s Ultra Multi Coating help to deliver good image quality with high levels of sharpness, along with minimal lateral or axial chromatic aberration (bokeh fringing), distortion, ghosting and flare. Testing the Nikon Z-mount edition, we also found that the camera’s in-body stabiliser worked really well with the lens, after dialling the details into the relevant camera menu.