GH2 Samyang/Rokinon/Etc lenses? vs FD glass?

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peripatew

Well-known member
I've got a MINT FD 50mm/1.4. LOVE it. I'm testing out a few 17/24/35's to see which will fit my 50mm best. I really like the 35/2, but feel that f/2 is a little slow. My house is pretty dark, and an extra stop would make a huge difference. So I'm thinking about the Samyang's. The 35mm/1.4 and 85mm/1.4 seem to get good reviews, and the 24mm is coming out in January.

I seem MUCH more mention of legacy glass, besides the 25mm/0.95, than I do of the Samyangs. I'd like to have lenses that fit well together, so I'm trying to decide if I should pursue the newer Samyangs (likely in Canon mount)? I also plan on picking up the 12mm Nokton when it comes out in the States as well.

I think 12mm, 24,35,50,85 would be great, though 12, 24, 50 are what I use the most of currently.

Thanks for the thoughts!
 
All the time! But it is my low light testing ground. I'll be in a lot of small indoor places in Cambodia without the ability to setup lights, most without power, so low light performance is REALLY important.
 
The Rokinon/Samyang/Vivitar's are all build for full-frame 35mm, so they're rather large. The 50/1.4's and 85/1.4's will be the same size regardless of coverage, but wide angle lenses will be huge compared to m43 lenses. The Panny 20/1.7 is tiny compared to the 24/1.4.

OTOH, the larger size also means better handling for pulling focus, as long as you don't mind the lopsided feel.
 
f2 a little slow?

OK...

Anyway, I've got a soft spot for old Vivitar lenses. They're usually dirt cheap and have ridiculous flaring wide open, but a very nice look.

Folks speak well of Samyang/Rokinon, though I haven't used any to compare. I wouldn't, however, buy Canon-mount lenses for m43 use, I'd opt for 4/3 or Nikon instead.
 
I have the Samyang/Rokinon 85mm 1.4 and like it. Fully manual of course and the focus is internal so the length doesn't change when focusing. It's pretty tough to beat for the price, even most of the legacy primes with similar aperture tend to be more expensive used.

I haven't really tried many of the legacy lenses at that focal length so it's hard for me to make a direct comparison. I do have the Canon FD 50mm 1.4 though. The Samyang/Rokinon 85mm is sharper wide open (I find the FD 50mm a bit soft at 1.4). The color rendition is somewhat different between the FD lenses and Samyang/Rokinon, so I'm not sure how well footage would pair between the two.

Haven't tried the wider Samyang/Rokinon lenses yet, but they're supposed to be pretty good as well.
 
peripatew said:
Why is that?
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The canon lenses are much harder to adapt and expensive to adapt with controls. The nikon mounts are much more consistant since they really haven't changed much and the adapters are cheaper. I've gone this route myself and happy that I have.
 
Justyn said:
The canon lenses are much harder to adapt and expensive to adapt with controls. The nikon mounts are much more consistant since they really haven't changed much and the adapters are cheaper. I've gone this route myself and happy that I have.
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Nonsense, if we are talking about Canon FD manual lenses (which we are (see thread title) I have a fairly full set of these for m43 use, and in my opinion, they are the ones to beat for price/ quality ratio.
 
I assume that the first person who brought this up was talking about EOS lenses and not the FD atleast after the intial first post. Of course the FD work and I have several myself, but aside from the 50mm 1.4, anything that's as fast as that is really expensive. The 24mm 1.4 will set you back well over a grand. If you are looking for fast wide lenses that are modestly priced, then aside from the 50MM you aren't looking towards the FD lenses... As I see from your lens collection you have F2.8 and F 2 lenses and this person who posted this was saying those are too slow for his liking... So from that point, I think your going to be forced to think about other modern lenses.
 
The Nokton .95 is a killer lens and when the Noktor 12mm 1.6 comes out then I'll have a completely killer line up of really fast lenses....
 
Lucas Adamson said:
Nonsense, if we are talking about Canon FD manual lenses (which we are (see thread title) I have a fairly full set of these for m43 use, and in my opinion, they are the ones to beat for price/ quality ratio.
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OK, but the Samyang (or any other newer-build lenses) aren't made in FD mount.

Extra incentive, since Nikon mount has such a large flange distance, you can adapt them to just about anything (even canon EF and PL)
 
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