Rokinon 35mm f/1.2 ED AS UMC CS Lens for Sony E (Silver)

If you like manual focus lenses and you are looking for the APS-C equivalent of a classic nifty-fifty, this lens will not disappoint. I absolutely love it, and it has become the walk-around lens that lives on my X-T3. Amazing value for money in my humble opinion. Very sharp, minimal distortion, and good control of CA. It is somewhat heavy and bulky, but for the IQ delivered at this price point, this is a fault I'm willing to forgive.

This lens is pretty sharp and has a nice rendering. My copy is also nicely centered.. something I typically don't expect from Rokinon. Regardless this lens did impress me with it's ability in astrophotography. At 1.2 it has a lot of vignetting and coma is higher than I like, but close the aperture down to 1.7 or 2.0 and it cleans up very nicely. I think this lens would be a no-brainer if you don't mind manual focus. The handling wasn't as nice as I like in a manual lens but given the price I think it's a good trade-off. Assuming copy-to-copy variance isn't as high as other crop lenses from Rokinon, I would recommend this lens.

Crisp! Clear! Easy-to-use! [with focus peaking] Lightweight! Compact! By and large, I'm a Samyang/Rokinon shooter and use this 35mm [50mm full frame equivalent] as my primary lens. Whilst one may compare it to a 35mm f0.95 Chinese-made lens [which is also awesome], this lens is just a skosh better with slightly less lens distortion and crisper details. A great product fo sho!

Compared to another manual 35mm lens I really like, this Rokinon has better image quality. The build quality is very good and feels sturdy in hand. On the downside, the lens hood doesn't sit true and wiggles (unlike Rokinon's 21mm). And the focus ring is a touch stiff - but could soften over time. Since I've gone nearly manual with all my gear, this lens will be used daily because of it's superior optical quality and easy handling. Well done!

I bought this lens for videos. This lens is very sharp from end to end. Never regretted. I've used it for some photos too. Don't think twice if you want that 50mm focal length equivalence. Just buy it. Attached are some photos taken with it. You can also check on my Instagram page for more of pictures shot with it @yaw_niel_

For the money, this is another great fast lens. I bought it for the speed in low light situations and for the price, I havent been disappointed. With my Sony A6300, I get slightly better results stepping the lens back one or two stops, but even wide open it gives good results for what I use it for.

I bought this lens as part of a project to replace the kit zoom lenses for my Sony NEX-5T and a6300 by a collection of prime lenses. Zoom lenses have to make a compromise between sharpness, wide aperture, and weight. All three are important to me, because I often take photos hiking in remote places, where the camera equipment has to fit into two jacket pockets. Typically I take two prime lenses along with the camera body, plus an iPhone (for quick shots and macro). My wide angle prime lenses are the Rokinon 8mm f/2.8 Fisheye II, the Rokinon 12mm f/2.0, and the iPhone. My near-tele lens is the Sony 50mm f/1.8. This lens (the Rokinon 35mm f/1.2) fills the gap between wide angle and telephoto lenses (more on those at the end). It is well-built, very fast for twilight and night shots, and sharp across the whole field of view. Chromatic aberration is undetectable, a weak coma tail shows up in the corners (only when imaging stars in the night sky with open aperture). The central sharpness appears to be limited by spherical aberration, causing a defocus disk with a darker center on one side of the focus and a disk with a brighter center on the other side. There is a substantial drop-off in brightness toward the corners when wide open (vignetting). It can be corrected easily by working with RAW files -- or it becomes a feature for highlighting the center of an image. The wide aperture is great for focusing on a target and leaving the rest in a smooth blur. Focus peaking on the a6300 helps a lot to quickly move the focus to the right distance. Overall, I find that this lens combines great performance and light weight for an affordable price. There was one small initial glitch when I received the lens. The hood was stuck to the lens barrel and required a fair amount of force to twist it off. But after that first time it worked smoothly. An aside about longer tele prime lenses: In that case image stabilization becomes a fourth requirement. I have not found any satisfactory modern prime lens and use instead old high-end Canon lenses (Canon 135mm f/2.8 and Canon 300mm f/4.0 L, both with the new FD mount and an adapter). The lenses on the market tend to be super-heavy and super-expensive. Most of them are designed for full-frame, not APS-C.

Lens responds easily with a short but steady ring. It's fast and it's depth of field is predictable and performs well at all aperatures. Solid build. Stays on my Fuji xT1 to begin any shoot.