Samyang 135mm T2.2 ED UMC CINE DS — Shooting Video in Full Frame

In recent years, Samyang has giv­en the world a fair­ly large num­ber of lens­es for SLR and mir­ror­less cam­eras. These lens­es usu­al­ly lack elec­tri­cal con­tact with the cam­era and aut­o­fo­cus, which makes them stand out from the com­pe­ti­tion. At the same time, the image qual­i­ty is impres­sive, and, at times, is in no way infe­ri­or to optics from top brands. Today we’ll talk about one of these: Samyang 135mm T2.2 ED UMC CINE DS, designed for video shoot­ing. Will he be able to show a decent image qual­i­ty?

As with oth­er Samyang lens­es, the build qual­i­ty of the Samyang 135mm T2.2 is very good. The body is made of met­al and plas­tic, the bay­o­net is made of met­al. The weight and dimen­sions of the lens are rather big: 830 grams and 82 x 122 mm, but this is typ­i­cal for optics with a long focal length.

Since the lens is designed for video, the focus and aper­ture rings rotate freely with­out click­ing. The phys­i­cal size of the lens remains the same dur­ing the focus­ing process. Comes with bar­rel hood.

Opti­cal­ly, the 135mm T2.2 ED UMC CINE DS is based on 11 ele­ments in 7 groups and a 9‑blade T2.2 diaphragm. The min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance is 79.2 cm. The angle of view on full-frame cam­eras is 18.8 °, on APS‑C — 11.7 °.

In fact, this allows the lens to achieve impres­sive results: cen­ter sharp­ness is good even with the max­i­mum aper­ture, sharp­ness at the edges / in the cor­ners is slight­ly low­er. The max­i­mum sharp­ness in the cen­ter can be obtained some­where at T / 4 or T / 5.6.

The best val­ues ​​of sharp­ness at the edges and in the cor­ners are achieved at T / 5.6. I don’t advise you to cov­er the aper­ture fur­ther, since already at T / 11 there is a slight dif­frac­tion.

Chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tions are very small and chang­ing the aper­ture val­ue hard­ly affects them. High aper­ture lens­es tend to suf­fer from bokeh chro­ma­tism at wide aper­tures as well. In the case of Samyang 135mm T2.2, this prob­lem is almost invis­i­ble even at T/2.2.

Bokeh, or artis­tic back­ground blur, isn’t per­fect. From the inside, blur­ry light sources have a striped struc­ture, which becomes uni­form only at T / 4‑T / 5.6. The bokeh shape is round at T/2.2, espe­cial­ly in the cen­ter of the image. By reduc­ing the aper­ture val­ue to T / 2.8, the shape will grad­u­al­ly acquire angu­lar­i­ty.

Vignetting is with­in lim­its: edges are 1.7 stops dark­er at T/2.2. Nar­row­ing the aper­ture down to T/2.8 will give you only 1 stop, and fur­ther nar­row­ing will almost com­plete­ly elim­i­nate this prob­lem.

Dis­tor­tion cor­rec­tion is not the strongest point of Samyang optics, but this time the com­pa­ny’s engi­neers have out­done them­selves. The image tak­en with the Samyang 135mm T2.2 is vir­tu­al­ly free of dis­tor­tion.

Con­clu­sion

Samyang made a pleas­ant sur­prise with their 135mm T2.2 ED UMC CINE DS: image qual­i­ty is excel­lent, espe­cial­ly wide open. Yes, “bokeh” is not the most excel­lent, but every­thing else deserves respect. Giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly low cost of the lens, it will be an excel­lent option for begin­ner video­g­ra­phers, whose bud­get is usu­al­ly lim­it­ed.

Timur Bub­lik