Samyang AF 50 mm f/1.4 FE review - Autofocus

Have you rated your lenses yet?

Samyang AF 50 mm f/1.4 FE

7 November 2016

Arkadiusz Olech

10. Autofocus

During the work of autofocus you can hear quiet, low frequency buzzing from the lens. It reminds a bit of older “screwdriver” mechanisms from Nikon or Pentax but it is softer.

The speed of the autofocus leaves plenty to be desired. Even in good lighting conditions the mechanism is simply slow – running through the whole distance scale takes about 1.1 – 1.3 of a second.

When it comes to the accuracy we don’t have any serious reservations. The number of misses we got during our studio sessions didn’t exceed 4% and they happened mainly by f/1.4 and f/2.0 where the shallower depth of field is the most demanding. A series of almost 50 photos took by f/2.8 showed low autofocus dispersion rate because the maximum MTFs didn’t differ from the minimum ones by more than 10%.

Please Support Us

If you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - advertisement - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

We didn’ t notice any distinct front or back focus tendency either. In the photo below the DOF seems to be a bit shifted toward the longer end of the focal range but still it includes the proper object; mind you, the photo was taken at the most difficult combination of f/1.4 aperture and the minimum focusing distance. If you change any of these parameters the depth of field will increase and the whole problem will be marginalized completely.

A7R II, f/1.4