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Samsung 85mm lens

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markyboy81

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I'm very interested in purchasing this lens but I'm wondering if now is the right time to do so, or whether I should wait for the price to come down more.
The cheapest I've seen it at the moment is used mint condition for £360 on eBay. Is there much of a risk with purchasing used with no warranty? How reliable is the lens?
The cheapest elsewhere is probably via Samsung themselves where it's around £560, reduced from £800.
Any help gratefully received!
 
I am using Samyang 85mm/1.4 - it's manual, but excellent quality (for less than €300)

Canon mount + NX adapter.





Samyang lenses - manual, but very good photo quality - usable for Canon, mFT, NEX, NX
Samyang lenses - manual, but very good photo quality - usable for Canon, mFT, NEX, NX
 
I have a (like new) samyang 85mm nx for sale btw :-D
 
I've been tempted by the samyang lenses to be honest but I'm a little but hesitant to give up auto focus. Does DMF still work with this lens? I can imagine focus peaking would help but would be much better if you could magnify the area you want to focus.
Any advantage of getting a non nx version and using an adapter?
Technoworld how much are you asking for the lens?
 
Hi Martin, looks like you are very familiar with Samyang lenses. In medium-term I like to buy a 85mm or 135mm from Samyang (mainly for portrait). Did you have any complaints about the build quality of Samyang lenses? I read in a forum that someone complaints about the bad mechanical construction.
 
Those are built like tanks imo. Only drawback is the lack of af. Optically they are very very good.
 
The magnification works, but it's for the center of the image only, you cannot move the point to be magnified around. I have both this and the Samsung one now (had the Samyang quite a while before). Honestly, if you're going to use it at f/1.4, the MF can be frustrating for slowly moving objects/people and focus and recompose isn't terribly reliable with such shallow depth of field. The Samsung 85 doesn't have the AF to keep up with fast action or anything like that either, but it is a nice convenience. Some reviews I saw said the Samyang was sharper, for my two 85s, the Samsung seems sharper, but only very slightly.
 
Their construction is very solid. My only complaint is that they are often not well calibrated. That is, infinity focus is not where it is marked on the lens, nor do the other distances line up. There is a video showing how to get to the calibration mechanism and correct your lens if you can find it (I can't remember just where it was anymore). This is only important for those of us that make use of these markings though, it's certainly not necessary for portrait work. The lens construction is very solid, focus ring is smooth, etc..
 
markyboy81 said:
I'm very interested in purchasing this lens but I'm wondering if now is the right time to do so, or whether I should wait for the price to come down more.
The cheapest I've seen it at the moment is used mint condition for £360 on eBay. Is there much of a risk with purchasing used with no warranty? How reliable is the lens?
The cheapest elsewhere is probably via Samsung themselves where it's around £560, reduced from £800.
Any help gratefully received!
Click to expand...
360£ is good price, I don't expect to get much lower as you can get a cheap body and you get awesome portrait setup. My 85 seems well build so second hand might be a good option. See the equivalent Nikon 85 1.4 price - it's much higher even for the old version.

I got mine from Amazon.es, where currently is just 537 EUR(~400£) - http://www.amazon.es/dp/B005VDKB28?m=A1AT7YVPFBWXBL
 
Build quality of the samyang is great, of sorts, meaning it feels solid. Mechanical quality is really bad however (at least on most of the earlier models). Focusing is stiff and with a grinding noise. After trying two copies, I decided to fix mine, which was not easy at all, since beside having to open it completely, you need to grind quite a bit of a barrel (the lens being internal focusing, has two parts that go in and out of each other, and dust can enter inside this way, which is probably why they made it fit just barely and this causes friction). I have seen countless posts complaining of same problem. Maybe with the cine version, they solved this problem.

Optical quality is pretty good, but there is still some spherical aberrations (bloomimg) from 1.4 to 2. What is strange is that at around 1.8 (there are no hard half stops) it's not really better than at 1.4 (usually it's the case with 1.4 lenses). F2 is much better though.

I'd get the samsung at prices going around. For 100-120 euro more than the samyang it's most probably very worth it.
 
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Somewhere I read a test which confirmed Samyang (35mm or 85mm ?) is SHARPER than Nikon equivalent lens :-)





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8e0e6a873c4046df883eb0631aa4e4a1.jpg
 
Hmm, both my Samyangs are very smooth, no grinding at all. They are the regular photo versions. Luck of the draw perhaps, Samyang isn't known for their quality control.
 
ttbek said:
Hmm, both my Samyangs are very smooth, no grinding at all. They are the regular photo versions. Luck of the draw perhaps, Samyang isn't known for their quality control.
Click to expand...
Mine is great too. But I do think I have a newer one. Going off amazon and b&h reviews I do not believe they have any major issues with build quality. I do agree that infinity is not where it is set at. Not a large issue.

As far as tagging things at 1.4, my dogs are nice for this. They give me a lot of practice capturing moving targets. The trick is quickly setting the focus to where they are going and snapping when they get there. After working with the dogs my toddler was a walk in the park. The focus is so fast once I got the hang of it that I didn't have any issues capturing her with mf.

Inside the results are much better than the 16-50pz. Oh look, take picture now. Instead it just readjusts a few times to ready itself. For this reason I'm not going anywhere near the Samsung 85. That stuff drives me crazy.
 
noncho said:
markyboy81 said:
I'm very interested in purchasing this lens but I'm wondering if now is the right time to do so, or whether I should wait for the price to come down more.
The cheapest I've seen it at the moment is used mint condition for £360 on eBay. Is there much of a risk with purchasing used with no warranty? How reliable is the lens?
The cheapest elsewhere is probably via Samsung themselves where it's around £560, reduced from £800.
Any help gratefully received!
Click to expand...
360£ is good price, I don't expect to get much lower as you can get a cheap body and you get awesome portrait setup. My 85 seems well build so second hand might be a good option. See the equivalent Nikon 85 1.4 price - it's much higher even for the old version.

I got mine from Amazon.es, where currently is just 537 EUR(~400£) - http://www.amazon.es/dp/B005VDKB28?m=A1AT7YVPFBWXBL
Click to expand...
 
Hmm, the 85 isn't too bad in that, the 60 drives me nuts. Being a macro lens it has a huge range to wander through. Thankfully both of these lenses have the MF override so that you can quickly MF if the AF is uncooperative.
 
ttbek said:
Hmm, the 85 isn't too bad in that, the 60 drives me nuts. Being a macro lens it has a huge range to wander through. Thankfully both of these lenses have the MF override so that you can quickly MF if the AF is uncooperative.
Click to expand...
The main issue for me with samsung's MF is that it doesn't give me any numbers to preset it. With my rokinon I can preset it and then move myself to where I need to be. Always been frustrated that I couldn't do that with my AF lenses. It isn't a huge problem but it is large enough for me to consider the 35mm for street pictures. The 45 AF is so fast that it fits my needs for now.

Does the 85 has a dedicated MF button like the 45? It does. It has numbers too. I'd consider the 85 if it didn't weigh so much...
 
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Amazon in Germany also ask for extreme high prices and that even for used ones!
 
ttbek said:
Hmm, the 85 isn't too bad in that, the 60 drives me nuts. Being a macro lens it has a huge range to wander through. Thankfully both of these lenses have the MF override so that you can quickly MF if the AF is uncooperative.
Click to expand...
You're right the 60mm is not that great for auto focus. I suppose when not shooting macro the limiter switch helps a bit but it still hunts loads.
 
Krazyheaven said:
ttbek said:
Hmm, the 85 isn't too bad in that, the 60 drives me nuts. Being a macro lens it has a huge range to wander through. Thankfully both of these lenses have the MF override so that you can quickly MF if the AF is uncooperative.
Click to expand...
The main issue for me with samsung's MF is that it doesn't give me any numbers to preset it. With my rokinon I can preset it and then move myself to where I need to be. Always been frustrated that I couldn't do that with my AF lenses. It isn't a huge problem but it is large enough for me to consider the 35mm for street pictures. The 45 AF is so fast that it fits my needs for now.

Does the 85 has a dedicated MF button like the 45? It does. It has numbers too. I'd consider the 85 if it didn't weigh so much...
Click to expand...
With the AF/MF switch does using this disable DMF when you switch from AF to MF and then back again? This used to happen with my old 45mm lens on my galaxy NX and used to annoy the hell out of me!
 
markyboy81 said:
markyboy81 said:
Hmm, the 85 isn't too bad in that, the 60 drives me nuts. Being a macro lens it has a huge range to wander through. Thankfully both of these lenses have the MF override so that you can quickly MF if the AF is uncooperative.
Click to expand...
You're right the 60mm is not that great for auto focus. I suppose when not shooting macro the limiter switch helps a bit but it still hunts loads.
Click to expand...
But 85mm is slower to focus. 60 is better here.
markyboy81 said:
With the AF/MF switch does using this disable DMF when you switch from AF to MF and then back again? This used to happen with my old 45mm lens on my galaxy NX and used to annoy the hell out of me!
Click to expand...
It doesn't. At least, I didn't notice that.
 
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