Samyang AF 24 mm f/1.8 FE review - Summary

Have you rated your lenses yet?

Samyang AF 24 mm f/1.8 FE

7 September 2021

Maciej Latałło

11. Summary

Pros:

shapely, small, lightweight casing,
sensible image quality in the frame centre,
decent image quality on the edge of the frame,
slight lateral chromatic aberration,
lack of problems with spherical aberration,
moderate vignetting on the APS-C sensor,
silent and accurate autofocus.

Cons:

noticeable longitudinal chromatic aberration,
very high vignetting level on full frame,
a bit too high astigmatism,
problems with performance against bright light.

If truth be told, the Samyang AF 24 mm f/1.8 FE didn't bowl me over. I was aware that constructing an f/1.8 24 mm lens is more difficult than constructing models with the same aperture fastness combined with a bit longer focal length. Still, the fact that Samyang put a higher price tag on the new instrument made me hope that, like in the earlier models, they had paid proper attention to optical properties of the lens. Unfortunately it is not the case.

As a result the resolution of the Samyang AF 24 mm f/1.8 FE is hardly impressive, the lens has problems with longitudinal chromatic aberration, vignetting, astigmatism, and work against bright light. These slip-ups cannot be ballanced either by an average correction of coma or by distortion, which is still corrected weaker than in the cheaper Samyang 2.8/24 FE, or by out-of-focus areas that also are far from perfect. As you see, it would be really difficul to find a truly strong suit of this lens.

It seems the new lens is saved only by the lack of strong, direct competition; mind you, that might change rather sooner than later, with a very dynamic growth of the Sony FE market segment.

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

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

In order not to make our summary overly pessimistic I have to add that the Samyang AF 24 mm f/1.8 FE is not a complete failure – after all it is able to produce sharp images. My complaining stemms from the fact that my expectations, concerning this lens, were much higher, especially after very good performances of its older f/1.8 brothers.