Samyang unveils the MF 85mm F1.8 ED UMC CS lens for mirrorless cameras with APS-C crop sensors
Samyang Optics launches a new manual-focus lens for mirrorless shooters: The MF 85mm F1.8 ED UMC CS is designed for use with APS-C sensor mirrorless cameras in the following mounts: Sony E, Fujifilm X, Canon M, and Micro-Four-Thirds. It is competitively priced and light-weight. This medium telephoto lens inherits the renowned image quality of Samyang’s manual focus series and also boasts beautiful out of focus bokeh and availability for a variety of cameras.
Ideal portrait lens, with a fast, bright maximum aperture…
This manual-focus 85mm F1.8 ED UMC CS lens is a medium telephoto lens, with a similar angle of-view to a 135mm lens when compared to full-frame cameras. The Samyang MF 85mm F1.8 ED UMC CS is designed with 9 lens elements in 7 groups and it delivers high resolution from the centre to the corners of the image. A high-refractive and an extra-low dispersion element, along with Ultra Multi-Coating (UMC) help minimise chromatic aberrations and deliver clear, vibrant images. This lens is ideal for portraits, with beautiful bokeh from its floating-element system. Its low-light performance and shallow depth-of-field are especially useful features. mirrorlessrumors
Wide range of uses, with crystal-clear resolution…
The compact and light-weight design offers the portability and comfort needed for a long day’s shooting. This lens would be the ideal choice for keen photographers who want to capture everyday moments in high-resolution. The Samyang MF 85mm F1.8 ED UMC CS has a host of features including its outstanding optical performance. Its wide range of uses include portraits and other close-ups such as food, as well as landscapes and many other situations.
More fun with Manual Focus lenses…
The MF 85mm F1.8 ED UMC CS lens is perfect for shooters who want to have more involvement and express their own characteristics through their images. The Samyang MF 85mm F1.8 ED UMC CS weighs in at just over 300g and measures approximately 8cm long (without the hood and lens caps). Photographers can expect superb, emotional and unique images from this compact companion.
If it performs as well as the 85/1.4, this will likely be the sharpest portrait lens for EOS M cameras yet.
I sympathize. While a Canon 85mm (or 90mm) F/1.8 (or F/2) STM IS EF-M would be ideal, manual focus lenses could be much more appealing on EOS M cameras if Canon rolled out some form of focus peaking via firmware update.
Do the M's have focus peaking now? I don't own one, so I'm not sure. I just have the Canon DSLRs which it's noticeably absent in. In that case, the M's just got a whole lot more appealing to me. I might trade in my Fuji X-T1 for an M5 II when it comes out.
I have an M50 and focus peaking works quite well there.
You will need to find "Release shutter w/o lens" to use the Samyang as it's not chipped. This is C.Fn II.3 on the M50. (Canon decided to not document any of the C.Fn settings on the M50 presumably since the M50 is the mid-tier "M" and only deserves a Powershot grade manual.) I have the Samyang 16mm 2.0ED AS UMC CS for EF-M, this is one of theirs with the "metal tube bolted to the lens", as well as several pieces of vintage glass.
Just tried again the FD 1.8 85mm S.S.C. on the M50 which makes a very compact system. But one drawback is the mass of 600g with the FD-EF-M adapter which is twice of the Samyang. The old FD lenses suffer from strong LOCA and a little bit aged coatings while delivering good contrast and sharpness just wide open.
If the Samyang is very good .... excellent optically and canon doesn't give me a viable alternative maybe a lens that wanders into (on of) my bag(s).