A short review: Samyang 8mm X mount for X-pro1

[DemonicAngelz]

I guess I'm one of the first few owners of this lens and I decided to write a short review of this lens as I dont believe that there are any out there yet. Hope that it can serve as a reference to anyone interested in owning it.



I got mine from Artworkfoto, and am pleased with their service. Pre-ordered it online and got it at a slightly cheaper price as compared to the price they are listing now. Also let me select another set as the first one I was shown had a spec of dust within the lens itself, and had a faulty pouch.

I believe they have a few sets left so if you want to get one of the first few third party x-mount lenses, you can call them to enquire. Note that I do not gain any benefit from this.

You can click on the link below each image for a larger view.

I. The build



The lens is made from metal as far as I can tell. Quite a solid build I would say, better than some of the newer Nikon lens that are made from plastic.

The tightness of the focus ring is "just nice"; not too tight to the point where it is hard to turn, not too loose to the point where you would turn it accidentally. You can pretty much set it to infinity focus and shoot the whole day as long as your subject is more than 2m infront of you. No focusing issues that I can foresee at this point, there is a hardstop at infinity, so you dont have to worry about focusing in the dark.



The lens cap provided is also pretty sweet. You would have to be careful when you put in on though. As you can see in the image above, the lens cap "clips on" to the longer part of the petal hood. If you do not put the lens cap on in this orientation, the lens cap would be unable to "clip on" and will fall right off. Just be mindful of this when you put the lens cap back on. Having said this, the "clip on" function is really quite ingenious. Even my Nikon 14-24mm uses a normal rubber hood, they should really take some advice from Samyang when manufacturing lens hoods .



The aperture ring goes from f2.8 to f22, in half stop increments. This means that there is a "click" between f2.8 and f4 which indicates f3.3, half stop in between the two. It is similar to the system that Fujinon lens uses, except in this case its half stop clicks instead of one third stop clicks.

One point to note is that the aperture ring is quite thin and sometimes when changing the aperture I will shift the focus by accident.

II. Optical viewfinder
The field of view is considerably larger than the widest setting (when the optical viewfinder is set to 18mm, without the magnifier; hold the EVF/OVF switch to engage or disengage the magnifier) available in the optical viewfinder. Hence, you may find it more useful to setting the viewfinder to electric viewfinder mode, where the entire lens field of view can be seen, allowing you to compose more easily.

You can also see the lens blocking your view in the bottom right corner (similar to the 18mm with hood on) when you mount the 8mm and switch to OVF (w/o magnifier).

I may attempt to get a picture of this in the future.

[DemonicAngelz]

III. Flare

It is relatively hard to get flare with this lens, much harder than my Nikon 14-24mm at least, which has a ridiculous front element that attracts flare. Many shots that I took with the sun in the image did not have the problem of flare.

However, when it does occur, it looks horrendous and I'm not exaggerating. See the image below for an example.



If you look at the bottom right corner, flare is pretty evident and has a distinct hexagonal shape. I guess I can live with this, but I would have to be careful.

IV. Distorsion

It is a fisheye lens after all. I would not make any additional comments about the distortion but you can see it in the sample images below.

[DemonicAngelz]

V. Miscellaneous issues

One of the minor annoying fact about this lens is that it has no electronic contacts and there is no way to know what aperture you are on when you look through the viewfinder. So, when you change your aperture you would have to remove the camera from your eye and look at the aperture ring to check what aperture you are on. Alternatively, you can rotate the aperture ring all the way to one end and count the number of clicks. Either way it is a little annoying.

There is also no aperture info in EXIF, and shows that it is taken at f1.0. As a result I can't remember which images did I shoot at f2.8 to check for CA. Also I've found that diffraction seems to start degrading the image at f11 on my copy, so try to shoot below f11. f8 seems to be the sweet spot.

To use this lens you would need to set "capture without lens" to on.

Remember to change to manual focus mode so you can zoom in to check focus with the scroll wheel

As it is a fisheye lens, you would have to be really careful of fingers. On a DSLR it is not that bad because there is a handgrip and the mirror box causes the lens to be further out and would not capture your fingers in the frame. However, on the X-pro1, the grip is relatively flat and for someone with long fingers like me I would need to make sure that my fingers are not in the frame, especially on my right hand as I would have to mind my grip. Due to the 180 degrees field of view shadows become very obvious as well.



A plus point about this lens is that it is small and does not require an adapter. A great travel lens, however it is relatively niche in usability. I would have preferred to get the 18mm and 60mm first before I bought this but oh well.

Wonglp also decided to write a review about this lens, available here.

[DemonicAngelz]

VI. More sample images

[zzyzx]

was a samyang lens user myself. i must say they make very value for money lens.

[Cheesecake]

interesting lens.

[wonglp]

Hi DemonicAngelz,

Looks like great mind think alike, I actually started a review on the same lens in review section as I like the fisheye (I have m43 version and loving it!) Let's post some photos for the benefit of all. We may have different user experience to share as well. Cheers and look forward to more nice photos, LP

[DemonicAngelz]

Decided that I'd rather have an 18mm Fujinon. Placed this one up on sale in B&S.

[yrh0413]

Decided that I'd rather have an 18mm Fujinon. Placed this one up on sale in B&S.

Mind sharing what leads to such decision? Lack of AF and no aperture data in EXIF?

[DemonicAngelz]

Mind sharing what leads to such decision? Lack of AF and no aperture data in EXIF?

Nah, AF is not a problem, just set to 2m f8 and shoot. Dont really need to focus at all. Aperture Data isn't a key factor for me too.

Just prefer a proper field of view + filter usage for my money thats all. Think the 18mm would be more suited for me. Theres nothing wrong with this lens.