Samyang 12mm f2.8 Lens Video Review - Sony FE

Today we’re taking a closer look at the Samyang 12mm f2.8 Sony FE fit lens. It’s a wangle, and ultra wangle to be precise. An ultra-wide angle.

Let me show you my wangle.

Samyang has pushed out a load of variations of this lens. They’ve made an APS-C version, a 14mm version with autofocus, and versions with various different lens mounts. This specific version is the Samyang 12mm f2.8 ED AS NCS Fisheye lens. Available here on AMAZON.

Samyang has given it a load of letters after its name. No, they can’t just call it the Samyang 12mm f2.8 FE, it has to be called the “Samyang 12mm f2.8 ED AS NCS fisheye lens”…. and then they miss out on the important FE bit. Doh! Ah well, we’ll cope. Here’s what that letter spaghetti means -

ED - Extra-low dispersion lens

AS - Ashgerical glass

NCS - Nano coating system

Basically, Samyang has put a bit more effort into the quality of it, to reduce flare, ghosting, aberration and barrel distortion, while improving sharpness and contrast yada yada yada. And their marketing team has put more effort into selling it. A load of letters after your name is good, we know that here in Great Britain.

BTW - for those who want to watch rather than read, here’s the Samyang 12mm f2.8 lens review video…

Samyang 12mm f2.8 Lens Review video, by a bloke with no letters after his name.

The bulge!

One of the most unusual things about this lens is the big bulge. It needs its huge bulge to maintain a 180-degree field of view on an FE body, apparently. And because of this, Samyang provides a petal-shaped hood with a couple of cut-out edges and upper and lower protrusions. It does offer some protection, but for the heavy-handed amongst us, like me, you’ll need to be super careful with this lens. It’s very vulnerable to damage.

What I like to do is to simply replace the cap after each and every shot, but I’m a big heavy-handed knuckledragger of a cameraman, maybe you’re more careful?

Aperture and Focus

Again, this is the Samyang 12mm f2.8 FE version. It’s full manual focus, with an aperture of f2.8 down to f22. There are no electronics inside that will communicate with a Sony Alpha, so you’ll need to rely on the aperture ring to know what F stop you’re at. No problem in most circumstances.

The aperture ring itself is nicely marked and clickable. I like a nice clickable aperture ring. It makes it difficult to accidentally knock out of place, even for us knuckledraggers.

The focus is nice and smooth, perhaps a little too smooth and easy to knock out of place, but I’m nitpicking now. It has a 0.2m minimum focus distance, which when used in conjunction with the f2.8 aperture can create a wonderful isolating effect while maintaining that crazy 180-degree field of view, it’s a really cool effect.

A little further down the aperture ring, this lens is incredible. Down at f9 and below this lens does a wonderful job of putting a huge depth of field into pin-sharp focus. It’s quite remarkable.

This should put the minds at rest of anyone a little bit hesitant to pick up a manual focus lens for photography. It’s actually quite a user-friendly lens for the novice. Don’t let the MF put you off.

Outside of photography, that huge sharp depth of field, when closed down, is really useful for video work. You can stick this lens on a gimbal, slider or whatever, safe in the knowledge that almost EVERYTHING is in focus.

Astrophotography?

Astrophotography is not why I ended up with the Samyang 12mm f2.8, but it’s actually a great lens for it. At f2.8, it’s just quick enough, but where this lens really stands out for me in the Astro world is the focus.

With this lens, infinity means infinity. I love that. What I mean is that when you wang the focus wheel around to infinity, infinity is actually in focus, compared to many lenses where infinity does not mean infinity is in focus, infinity is actually a little bit past infinity, leaving you with soft stars.

Have I made sense there? I’m not so sure.

What I’m trying to say is that if you’re on the side of a mountain in the dark trying to photograph some stars, because this is a simple manual focus non-zooming lens, you can just turn the focus to the infinity stop point, and it’ll be in focus.

It’s brilliant. No more analysing dark high ISO previews to try and get the focus right.

When I’ve had this lens out doing Astro in the past, I’ve even added some tape to the lens to stop it from moving. Locking it off at infinity with some black PVC, because I’m a broadcast professional, obviously.

Size and Weight

It’s relatively short, but relatively heavy, owing to the aluminium construction and it being a good old chunk of glass.

It can zoom?

No, but yes.

If you’re using it on a full-frame Sony camera like the Sony A7iii that I’m using in the video, you may well be able to take advantage of the APS-C crop mode while shooting video. This will take the huge 180-degree field of view down to a much more normal looking 125 degrees at the press of a button. See the end of the video for a few examples, but here are the screen grabs…

Samyang 12mm Field of View (180 degree)

Samyang 12mm Field of View (125 degree APS-C mode)

Cost

It comes in at around £400, which is a bargain IMO. You can buy it on AMAZON (if you’re lucky) or take a look at WEX.

Yes it could be better, it’s a little heavy, the front element is a little vulnerable, and the image quality could be better, but wangles are always a compromise, you can’t have everything, and at £400 this Sony FE fit lens is a bargain.

Cheers

Chris OBE EC BP FAYACM

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