Samyang has gone from strength to strength throughout their history, creating a product range, which now includes some of the most highly regarded lenses for virtually any camera mount. The popularity of their range is earned through a combination of high quality results and affordability, which meets the needs of creators at any skill level. The best standpoint from which to appreciate the full view of a subject is the distance of the diagonal length of the subject frame. This wider angle is superior to standing closer at a 50 degree angle to get a more detailed view.

Samyang (Rokinon) 12mm f2 review on Sony a6000 - The Weekend Samyang (Rokinon) 12mm f2 review on Sony a6000 - The Weekend

The Rokinon 12mm is a crop sensor lens made for APS-C sensor cameras giving it an effective focal range of what would be 18mm on a full frame sensor. The aperture range goes from f/2 to f/22. The fixed 12mm lens has a minimum focusing distance of 7.9 inches. The glass uses a Nano Coating System (NCS) to improve the transmission of light, reduce lens flares and ghosting, and provide more contrast. This lens takes a 67mm filter. The Rokinon 12mm is built like a little tank using a combination of metal and plastic. Coming in at 8.64oz (245g), this lens is not the lightest, but it handles very well. 67mm Filter The lens is weather-sealed, protecting against moisture and raindrops, and a rear protective glass adds to the level of sealing. The Linear STM motor results in fast and virtually silent AF. With the improved coatings and quality on this lens, almost all the complaints about chromatic aberration and coma have been solved when comparing it to the older manual focus design.Having a weather seal is encouraging, especially when you’re out in inclement weather and don’t want to risk damaging your equipment.

Samyang AF 12mm F2.0 review | Digital Camera World

Note that the Rokinon 12mm f/2.0 can also be found listed as the Samyang 12mm f/2.0. There is no difference with these two lenses as they are exactly the same and differ in name only. ** Thanks to Samyang for sending me a test copy of the lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. Samyang AF12 Build, Handling, and Features Would love to see a m43 prime lens between 7 and 9mm and f.28 or faster for a reasonable price. MF is fine with me especially if it brings cots down(I already own the excellent 7.5mm fisheye) - but the only real advantage of this Samyang 12mm is the f2.0 aperture. I am sure the Panasonic 12-32 is near enough as good at 12mm and offers autofocus too plus it costs slightly less. Lab-test results for ultra-wide-angle lenses never tell the whole story, as the physical size of the test charts requires that images are shot from very close range. In our real-world tests, we found sharpness to be excellent in the central region of the frame even when shooting wide-open at f/2, and edge/corner-sharpness to be generally very good, rising to highly impressive levels at apertures between f/2.8 and f/8. Optical construction is 12 elements in 10 groups, including 1 Hybrid Aspherical, 1 aspherical and 3 ED (Extra Low Dispersion). The diaphragm comprises 7 blades. Flare resistance is enhanced by the use of Samyang's well-proven UMC multi-layer coating techniques.I shoot with my Sony 10-18mm most of the time for ease of use with autofocus and auto aperture. When I look at my EXIF data, I’m almost always in the 10-14mm range. If I want to get closer to an object, I tend to do so with my feet since I’m so used to shooting with primes. This isn’t always possible when in the mountains, so I occasionally shoot at 18mm. The problem is that 18mm is still very wide and not ideal for getting close to things that are far away. A thin rubber seal does give this lens some weather/dust sealing which is a nice upgrade from other inexpensive APS-C lenses I’ve used. In 2014, Samyang released a very similar lens to this 12mm f/2 AF but with a manual focus design (we reviewed it here). Despite being manual focus, the lens was very popular. Now, the new and improved version comes with autofocus and has improved image quality. MPB puts photo and video kit into more hands, more sustainably. Every month, visual storytellers sell more than 20,000 cameras and lenses to MPB. Choose used and get affordable access to kit that doesn’t cost the earth.

Samyang 1220506101 12 mm F2.0 Manual Focus Lens for Sony-E Samyang 1220506101 12 mm F2.0 Manual Focus Lens for Sony-E

The MTF chart shows a good sharpness in the center, with – at full aperture – a decent gradient at the corners, especially for the fine details. Of course, this can be expected at full aperture for an extreme wide angle. What the MTF curve does not show and what we are of course very curious about is how fast and how much the corners tighten when we stop down one or more stops. As soon as we have a copy of the Samyang AF 12mm F2 E in our test lab, we will of course test it and publish a full review. For me this lens is more interesting on APS-C like Sony or Fuji as it gives an ultra wide fov (18mm equivalent in ff/35mm film terms) whereas the 24mm fov is a more common wide angle and a few m43 zoom lenses offer this already. I’ve also been using the Sony 16mm prime lately. It’s super soft and not good for high quality prints, but very serviceable for ‘web use only’ photos on my hiking trip reports. Samyang’s similarly new AF 24mm F1.8 FE autofocus wide-angle prime for Sony full-frame cameras has some neat handling extras, including a customizable focus hold button and customizable dual-mode operating switch, plus an LED indicator for setting the focus distance to infinity (useful for astrophotography). None of these extras are available in the smaller 12mm lens, so handling is more straightforward but is nevertheless perfectly intuitive. Performance

Fujifilm GFX100 II in-depth review

Vignetting on this lens is visible but it is nicely graduated which makes it much more pleasing to the eye and can even be beneficial to some images.