Rokinon 35mm f/1.4 Aspherical UMC

Don't be skeptical because of the low price. Rokinon lenses PERFORM !!!! The obvious attraction of this lens is it's incredibly low price for a very fast prime that can do double duty as both a regular and wide angle lens if you own a crop and full frame body. The obvious question you must ask yourself is whether a manual focus and manual stop-down lens will do what you need. Keep in mind that you frequently manual focus at very narrow depths of field to place the critical point slightly ahead or behind the subject to achieve acceptable focus while maximising the softness of the most obvious foreground or background object that you wish to throw out of focus. If you regularly use a 3.5-5.6 zoom without any performance or viewfinder issues, you can simply pre-set this lens to any of those slower apertures and use it as you would use your zoom. If you are shooting slower than f5.6 you probably won't see any difference between this lens and your zoom, so you can use your fully automatic lens for those shots. All the major camera manufacturers make excellent and affordable automatic f2 35mm lenses, so look closely at the difference between 1.4 and f2 depths of field examples which you can easily see in many commercial photo samples that are frequently shown in published lens tests. Also keep in mind that foregrounds and backgrounds can be selectively blurred in imaging programs. The one unique quality that this lens can provide is focus pulling while you shoot a video on your SLR. There are cinema oriented modified versions of this lens it you anticipate this use for your lens. I am deliberately avoiding a performance evaluation because those details are better handled by expert professional reviews which are easily found on the internet. They all essentially say the same things. The Rokinon fisheye lens, 24mm, 35mm, and 85mm lenses all perform optically in very similar manners when compared to their much more expensive rivals. Only the Rokinon 24mm tilt/shift and the 14mm have noticeably greater deficiencies, but again the price difference is significant, so if you need these lenses at an affordable cost they still represent reasonable value. I own all these Rokinon lenses and the 500mm f6.3 mirror lens, and I have not experienced any quality control issues mentioned in some reviews. Three of my lenses focus beyond infinity but this is frequently the design of large aperture manual focus lenses to permit greater foreground blurring while still maintaining acceptable infinity focus. One feature rarely mentioned in professional reviews is that these lenses are made with clockwise and counter clockwise helixes and accurately oriented and indexed aperture rings so Pentax, Sony/Minolta, Nikon and Canon versions focus in the same direction as your camera's brand name lenses and older bodies that optically project the aperture values in their viewfinders perform correctly. Sigma, Tokina, and Tamron lenses do not offer this advantage.

Great lens & bokeh; built like a tank! Excellent F/1.4 in low light. I debated between the Rokinon and the Canon F/1.4 EF 35mm autofocus lens. I researched footage from the Rokinon lens on Vimeo & Youtube only to find that Rokinon's low light 35mm had great, sharp pictures. As an Indie Filmmaker, I didn't want to sacrafice quality & sharpness. After the long debate I decided to take the plunge. Today I have absolutely no regrets! Picture quality is superb. Bokeh is like "cream cheese", and the F1/4 allows great shots in low light situations. This is the second non-Canon L lens in my kit; it definitely holds up well against the others. I've experienced no barrel distortion and the lens is built like a tank. The only dislike about the lens is that there is no auto focus for my Canon 5D Mark II. Oh well, that's what my follow focus is for. If this isn't an issue for you, then I'd recommend saving yourself $600 to $900 versus the competitive Canon L lens. I looked at the Nikon F/1.4 however decided to go this route. I made the right decision.

Good image, sluggish, uneven focus ring. The 35mm Rokinon is my most frustrating focal length. The others work great. image is good, but this lens is worthless in focus pulls because the focus ring is uneven and sluggish in parts. The one I previously owned had hardly any resistance. This has good basic resistance, but it's uneven and sluggish in spots. Not sure what to do about it. A good, well-damped, smooth and even focus pull is essential for what I do. Maybe I'll just forget the 35mm and simulate that focal length by shooting the 24mm in APS-C mode.