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Lens review

Samyang 85 mm f/1.8 ED UMC CS

5 October 2018
Arkadiusz Olech

10. Focusing



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The Samyang 85 mm f/1.8 ED UMC CS is equipped with a manual focus ring as wide as 30 cm. It comes with a distance scale, expressed in meters and feet. The ring moves smoothly and is well damped; running through the whole distance range needs a turn through an angle of about 130 degrees. It’s a bit too small a value for a good quality manual lens. Even though the focus peaking functionality, available in mirrorless cameras the tested lens is designed for, helps a lot, a working range of about 180-200 degrees would be a much better idea.

Unfortunately the producer didn’t put any depth of field scale on the barrel. In the case of a manual lens it is not a good decision especially that the lens is completely manual, without any focus-by-wire mechanism when the speed of turn influences the range of the focus ring.

Samyang 85 mm f/1.8 ED UMC CS - Focusing