Samyang 85mm T1.5 Cine Lens Review Video
The Samyang 85mm T1.5 lens is one of the best budget video lenses available for Sony FE cameras. Probably.
I don’t want to make it all clickbaity, and I’ve chosen against using it in my YouTube video title. As appealing as “The ULTIMATE BUDGET lens for incredible CINEMATIC shotz” title could have been, I also resisted the overly caffeinated, hyperbolic, excited American teenager personality, in favour of my boring, dull-as-dishwater, dryness. Anyway, enjoy the video, or read below to get the jist of it.
The Samyang 85mm T1.5 is a medium telephoto prime lens from Samyang, or Rokinon, depending upon where you are in the world.
It’s a “cine lens”, whatever that means. It’s a bit like “cinematic’, what does it mean? I have no idea. “Cinematic” to me, has come to mean some young lad on YouTube making coffee at f1.4 in 120fps with some neon backlighting. “Cine lens” is just as confusing. It uses T-stops instead of F-stops, a measure of transmittance. It’s T1.5, which I think I’m correct in saying, is equivalent in this case to the f1.4 version of the 85mm. In fact, I believe that optically, the T1.5 is the same as the f1.4. Got it? Yep, clear as mud. I’m not going to get down in the weeds on the difference between T stops and F stops here, it’s above my pay grade.
An easy way to decipher the madness is to remember that “Cine” lenses, are usually fully manual. They’re manual focus and manual aperture. Their focus and iris rings usually have big chunky-toothed gearing to allow you to more easily use follow focus gear, and more importantly in my case, the lack of automatic stuff keeps the cost down. You can pick up this Samyang 85mm T1.5 lens for under £300!!!
For some cost comparisons, Samyang also offer the f1.4 version of the 85mm with autofocus for just over £500
Samyang 85mm F1.4 Version with autofocus
And also available is of course the big daddy of the 85mm world. The Sony 85mm f1.4 GM, for a whopping £1350
£Ouch
The optics of the Sony 85mm f1.4 GM are sublime, but who can argue with the over £1000 cost saving of the Samyang 85mm T1.5, and I guess that’s why you’re here. So let’s continue…
£Much better
The full name of this lens is the Samyang 85mm T1.5 AS IF UMC 2. The build quality is ok, consisting of heavy-duty plastic and a metal lens mount. It has a few inset screws on the outer lens, I’m not a huge fan of that, and while it does focus internally, and Samyang claim that it’s weather resistant (whatever that means), I’d be concerned about taking it out in the pouring rain. I would, because I like to push my gear, but I’d expect it to probably lead to problems further down the line. For now though, it has been solid for me, but I’ve only had it out when it was spitting.
“Get the 85mm T1.5 lens in…. it’s spitting” - Peter Kay, 2006.
I like the big chunky toothed exterior. I can’t see myself personally wanting to chuck this in my Ronin or ever wanting to remotely pull focus, but they do have a nice feel to them.
It’s fairly short for a “telephoto”, (is it a telephoto?), and not too heavy either, at just over half a kilo.
I’ve not noticed much in the way of issues with sharpness, contrast, distortion or aberration. Nothing of concern anyway. For me, this is a video lens to bang out some extreme depth-of-field shots, and it’s not something I’ll be using for photography. I certainly won’t be wasting time analysing f9 shots of focus boards at 200% crop for imperfections. I’ll leave that to the photography geeks. I did notice a little chromatic aberration at T1.5 with a close and isolated subject, but it doesn’t bother me, and I doubt it would you either.
The insane depth of field shots will likely tick the boxes for the reasons you’re interested in it. It’s great fun to use, and the shots can look pretty special. I recently filmed the entire video “Coffee in the woods - July” using this lens, it was great fun. Check it out for some good examples of what’s achievable.
Coffee in the woods - July. Shot with just the Samyang 85mm T1.5 Lens
A downside to this lens is the minimum-focus distance, it’s a huge 1.1 metres. Far more than it could be, surely. It’s a little frustrating on an otherwise brilliant lens, however, when used on an FE body you can probably punch in a bit with the APS-C crop when shooting video, and feel a bit better about it. I did that a bit in the July Coffee in the Woods video. It’s a great feature and puts this lens at an effective almost 130mm T1.5, brilliant!
Other than the obscenely long minimum-focus distance, and the slight weather resistance concerns, it’s a bloody good lens. If you’re happy shooting manually, and you’re into video more than photography. I’d highly recommend considering adding the Samyang 85mm T1.5 to your lens collection. It’s PROBABLY one of the best budget lenses available for Sony FE cameras.
Out.
