Rokinon AF 135mm f/1.8 FE Lens for Sony E

I am a professional photographer and this is a focal length I like to have for certain unique situations. Its also a great portrait lens if you have enough space to use it. I watched a number of video reviews on this lens. I have wanted it for a long time for some reason even thought i already had the 135mm GM lens. Every review i saw, i was confused with how none of the reviewers commented that in the comparison images that the sony images were at least 1/4 of a stop darker. I mean its not a huge difference but more light is more light. They did however ALL comment on the significant vignetting from the SONY and how the Rokinon barely had any wide open. And of course how the image quality and sharpness of both lenses is absolutely superb. In the end I sold the GM and got this. So far I haven't noticed ANY difference on my Sony A1 camera in terms of performance on the camera. I won't be able to max out the frame rate of the A1 for stills using 3rd party lenses, but I don't care about that. It shoots fast enough and still hits focus like a champ. Feels good in the hand and its about 20-25 percent lighter. Recommended.

I have a Samyang 85mm f1.4 but have had the 135 f1.8 on my list for a long time. I have been very pleased with the narrower field of view which allows me to create even more separation from the background than the 85mm f1.4 (if you have enough room in your studio for the greater working distance while maintaining the same framing.) I have not used this lens much outdoors yet but with its good close focusing capability (and a few extension tubes) I anticipate that it will be allow for some very special almost macro effects with excellent bokeh. The first copy I purchased was unfortunately slightly but noticeably de-centered and I returned for exchange from with no difficulties. The second copy was much improved. Auto focus works very well but if you really need fast tracking capability then you should choose the Sony 135mm f1.8. For my purposes this is an excellent value and a pleasure to use. If you purchase the lens I strongly recommend also getting the lens dock for Samyang/Rokinon so you can update the software and customize the function switch.

Having never owned a telephoto prime, I must say... I can't believe that I had not done this sooner!!!! The image quality is superb. The build quality is fantastic. It is surprisingly light. Not really much optical distortion. The low light capability is very good. And the sharpness is maintained across the entire frame. The autofocus is absolutely silent and quick. The only issue that one may have is the 135mm focal length in general. It is deemed a long lens, yet it actually sits in between mid-telephoto and a long telephoto lens. So if you shoot film or video, this lens is one for distance, dialogue, subject isolation, or compression. It is excellent for interviews, live events, weddings, concerts, documentaries, or deposition videos. If you have or work in limited space or need to track lots of movement, then I would suggest a wider focal length. Outside of that, I highly recommend this lens!!!

Summary: Very good for astrophotography. Centering is pretty good. Autofocus is ok, but not exceptional. Astro mode doesn't work great (but lens works fine without). Problems will probably be improved/fixed with firmware updates. Overall, highly recommended. Full Review: I shoot a lot of astrophotography, and got this lens largely for its use as an optic for wide-field deep-sky astrophotography. It does an excellent job at that. Sharpness is very good corner-to-corner, and the wide aperture blew the results I've gotten with other lenses out of the water, being 2-3 stops faster than any lens of similar or longer focal length I'd used in the past. The lens is also wide and light enough that I was able to get a stable image even with the very lightweight fully mechanical tracker I use, but telephoto enough to get excellent detail in wide-field objects like the North America Nebula. Centering was pretty good on my copy, the bottom left corner might be slightly worse than the other 3 but it's still well within the margin of expected error I believe. I'd say that centering is not substantially worse than any first-party Sony optic I've used, and better than some of them. For terrestrial daytime photography, the autofocus is pretty good, and I had a reasonable keep rate when shooting fast-moving subjects like running dogs, but if you're looking for top-class autofocus I might look elsewhere. This is with the caveat that I got this lens not long after release, and don't own a lens station, so I am on the oldest firmware version. Autofocus performance will probably improve as the firmware gets updates. Autofocus is also audible in a completely silent room, but functionally silent if there's some level of noise. It might still get picked up by the internal microphone, though I haven't tested it. The lens focuses closer than I was expecting, and I was able to get good results of subjects like flowers and medium-sized wolf spiders. For stuff that's really small, you probably want a dedicated macro optic, but it works well. The built-in astro mode currently has questionable usefulness, in my opinion. To begin with, on my lens copy the default infinity focus set in firmware is surprisingly far off from actual infinity focus, and since I don't have the lens station I can't change that. I also had several times when I was trying to test out the mode, and I wasn't able to change any settings in-camera - including aperture and shutter speed - without restarting the camera to turn off astro mode, changing settings, and restarting to boot into astro mode again. It also has times when it works properly, so it might be a bug that will be fixed, but without a lens station you won't be able to change what focus the lens automatically racks to. If the mode worked properly, I could see it being useful for quickly setting things up, but for perfect results nothing will beat manual adjustments with a Bahtinov mask.

Looking for a very fast lens for indoor sports, soccer and basketball, I ordered the Rokinon and tested it on still and moving subjects. Image quality was spectacular and autofocus was consistently very accurate. Unfortunately, my primary use for this lens is indoor sports and while the autofocus is excellent it is not as fast as the Sony 135mm 1.8 GM. AF speed is critical to that subject matter and I reluctantly returned the Rokinon. Nevertheless, at around 40% of the cost of the Sony, if high speed AF is not critical to you, the Rokinon is a no-brainer and a steal at the current price!