60mm or 85mm?

bokeh in the wrong hands is a very, very bad thing. Due to that, I'd recommend a lens for the op with as little bokeh potential as possible.

Often, beginners get intoxicated with bokeh and overuse it and even compose based on it. it's generally amusing, but also sad at the same time.
 
I prefer the 60mm. Much cheaper, stabilized, macro capable.

the 60mm is also very nice for portrait photos (a bit less dof than 85mm, but sharper image).
You have the DoF reversed at least according to conventional terminology, where at wider apertures the DoF is narrower. Also, for portraiture 60mm is on the wide end of acceptable, more suitable for group portraits. For shooting torsos and head shots, longer focal lengths are better because the camera won't be close enough to the subject to produce perspective distortion, resulting in noses being larger, ears smaller, etc.

These two lenses were designed differently, where the 60mm is optimized for using smaller apertures and the 85mm is optimized for using wide apertures. According to Photozone's tests, both lenses are very sharp in the center and very close at all apertures until the 85mm tanks at f/11. In the sides and corners of the frame it's a different story, and the 85mm is more uniform across the apertures and outresolving the 60mm until it catches up somewhere between f/5.6 and f/8. This is unusual for macro lenses, which usually maintain high resolution across the frame at all apertures.

It can be tricky reading PZ's resolution charts, because the numbers are valid only for the resolution of the camera's sensor. In this case both lenses were used with the NX200, and the numbers indicate that the 60mm macro lens doesn't fully utilize the resolution that the NX200 offers, at least when its wider apertures are used. The 85mm's results are inconclusive, and we won't know whether it will perform even better with a higher resolution sensor or not. What we do know is that Nikon's 85mm f/1.8 and f/1.4 G lenses (with the right bodies) far outresolve both of Samsung's lenses on the NX200. In fact, used on the 24mp D3x, the extreme corner resolution at all apertures is better than the highest resolution that the 60mm and 85mm could attain in the center of the frame at even their best apertures. Samsung's lenses appear to perform better than the Nikkors when they were tested with Nikon's D7000, but that's because the NX200's sensor has the advantage due to its higher resolution 20mp sensor.

My conclusion is that the 60mm Samsung macro lens is pretty good, but was a better match for the NX100. Samsung's 85mm lens has the potential to do even better if Samsung ever produces a higher resolution body than the NX200/NX20 but for now, the 85mm is the lens of choice for anyone that needs to shoot in low light, because it has a substantial resolution edge over the 60mm at all of the wider apertures, from f/1.4 up to nearly f/5.6, and of course the 60mm macro lens goes no wider than f/2.8, where its border and corner performance is really pretty poor.

I also prefer the 60mm as an overall lens, thanks to its focal lenght.
Can't argue with personal preferences. For a single focal length lens, both are pretty long to use as a walkabout lens, where most photographers would choose something between 30mm and 40mm (for APS-C sensors). So here I'd agree, that the 85mm would be much too long, where it would be better suited for use in a studio. Here are links to some of PZ's lens tests that I commented on, for the pages that include the resolution charts and tables.

http://www.photozone.de/samsungnx/693_samsungnx60f28?start=1

http://www.photozone.de/samsungnx/731_samsung85f14?start=1

http://www.photozone.de/nikon_ff/606-nikkorafs8514ff?start=1

http://www.photozone.de/nikon_ff/717-nikkorafs8518ff?start=1

http://www.photozone.de/nikon--nikkor-aps-c-lens-tests/718-nikkorafs8518dx?start=1
 
I forgot to mention that the Samyang was based on the results I had seen from a 12-14MP sensor cameras. since I don't have the Samyang anymore, the results can have a dramatic turn when using a 20MP or above due to the potentiality of the camera outresolving the lens. so this is another issue to consider if one was to use it on the NX200 or any of it's newer siblings.
 
sorry, i expressed in a ba way. I wanted to say that the 60mm has a less shallow bokeh, not that has less dof.
 
I apologize for the delay.

here are some 85mm photos. the lion shot is heavily cropped and approximately 1/10 portion of the whole image.

some shots are at wide open and some just slightly above it. but nothing at f5 and beyond. the only shot made beyond f3.2 and was taken at f4.5 was the house by the lake.



























 
bokeh in the wrong hands is a very, very bad thing. Due to that, I'd recommend a lens for the op with as little bokeh potential as possible.

Often, beginners get intoxicated with bokeh and overuse it and even compose based on it. it's generally amusing, but also sad at the same time.
Yes, I noticed that but it is off-topic to bring it up here rather than in the Pentax forum where you posted the pic. Running the numbers though a depth of field calculator, a subject distance of, say, 5 or 6 metres at f2 and 35mm focal length on aps-c gives a dof of nearly 2 metres, too much for subject isolation.

The main issue though was the point of focus. As usual, Eric got it right but didn't say so very forcefully as he is too polite. I'm not :)!!! Unless you or the intended audience have a foot fetish, it is normal to focus on the subjects' faces rather than their shoes. It helps to set and use a single, selectable focus point. If left on the default setting of auto af point selection, the camera will more often than not choose the wrong one based on the area of greatest contrast, in your case the stripes on the shoes.
 
thanks for the pictures ariston! great series.

makes me think the f1.4/optical quality will be great....but still, the 60mm is no slouch.

disappointingly, the sale i had found only delivers to canada, unlike henry's, so will have to put off on buying one of the lenses for now. hopefully there is a sale soon; there's no rush, but if there is not a sale by the time summer is starting to slow, i will have to just jump on the regular price
 
That's too bad, really. It would have been great to see the output with that lens.
 

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