Photography Gear News

Over the recent years Samyang, a Korean manufacturer, has gained some visibility in the system lens market. The company is quite small yet they released some highly interesting designs like the 14mm f/2.8, 35mm f/1.4 or 85mm f/1.4 – such large aperture prime lenses are normally associated with „high end“ products - but Samyang manages to provide them at a fraction of the costs of their original manufacturer counterparts. One of the reasons behind this is the lack of AF and mechanically controlled aperture so they can keep extensive adjustments for the various manufacturer to a minimum.

This time we’ll have a look at the Samyang 24mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC – a full format SLR lens which has been released earlier this year. This moderate ultra-wide angle lens is slightly more expensive than earlier Samyang products yet it is still offered for about half the price of the "comparable" Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 USM L II.

"While taking pictures in the chill temperature of -20 deg C is not the most pleasant experience we can imagine, we decided for it to show you the possibilities of a new Samyang 24 mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC lens, which had just arrived to our editorial staff. Enjoy!"

"The Korean company Samyang builds its market position slowly but successively. It seems to be a part of their very well-thought-out strategy. They offer manual lenses, most often with short focal lengths in which the lack of autofocus is the least bothersome, which are characterized by good optical properties and a great price/quality ratio. In their line-up you can find such pearls like the Samyang 7.5 mm f/3.5 UMC Fish-eye MFT, tested by us not so long ago, which was undoubtedly the best ‘fisheye’ instrument we have dealt with so far. One step at a time, Samyang managed to gather a nice group of manual lenses for full frame. They are presented and compared in the following chart. The Samyang 24 mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC is the newest addition to this group and we are going to look closely at it now."