Samyang SY12M-E-BK 12mm F2.0 Ultra Wide Angle Lens for Sony E Cameras, Black

I'd been searching for a good wide angle lens for full body portraits because of the cool angles that can be achieved with it and WOW this is a purchase I do *not* regret!! I was a little scared to buy this because I'm not as financially secure as most everyone saying this is a "budget" lens plus none of the reviews on any sites featured portrait examples so this was a big gamble for me lol but it soooo paid off. As you can see by the billion example photos I've uploaded, this lens works really well for photographing people in close quarters. Almost all of these pics were taken up close and personal which allows for a really nice field of depth while not distorting facial features or limbs and keeping the subject nice and sharp. I've had this lens for almost a year and it has not let up!!Anyway, I decided to write this review for anyone else looking for wide angle lens for portraits rather than landscape or architectural photography.I use this lens in my Sony a6300 which is cropped sensor 1.5x so it's not as wide as it could be btw!

I purchased this for low light landscape and astrophotography mostly while backpacking. The lens is sturdy and well made, but not heavy. The focus ring has the right amount of control to get the focus right- use focus peaking.My copy is a little soft at f2, but up from that it just steps down into wonderful sharpness. The only drawback to this lens is it only has 6 blades, so sun stars and moon stars are not as great as a more expensive lens.

This review should cover both the Samyang & Rokinon 12mm lenses since they share exactly the same components (just branded differently).This lens is NOT perfect, but it serves its purposes PERFECTLY. What do I mean? This is obviously a landscape & architectural lens and when the lens is set for those purposes, it works very well. But once you start trying to use it for different scenarios its shortcomings become very apparent.CONS:1) Manual Focus Lens: pretty much means anything fast-moving is none capturable (Not a word, but you probably get what I mean)2) Since it is COMPLETELY manual, it doesn't even leave aperture metadata (not a huge deal since you should only be shooting at f8 & f11. Photos will detail exactly why)3) My particular lens was off center and the left side was not as sharp as the right side, but was remedied at smaller apertures4) I bought this lens for landscapes and astrophotograhy (because its f2.0) but f2.0 the photos are far from sharp which somewhat defeats its purpose for astro.PROS:1) Exceptionally wide angle view w/o fisheye (I feel fisheye has its place, but not for my purposes)2) Once the aperture is set appropriately the lens sharpens up A LOT! (see the pics to see what I mean)3) Affordable (subjective)4) It is compact and relatively light and matches my a6000 very well, dare I say, even jacket pocketable, but not pants pocketable.FINAL VERDICT:If you want to shoot landscapes, this lens will serve you VERY well at F8.0 & F11. Other apertures are pretty poor.It has a short minimum distance which is good to get a somewhat macro-ish imageI don't think there is a better deal out there for landscape photogs at the moment and if that is your preference, but it now (mine 3 1 9 u s d)!Do check the photo to see why the extreme apertures are not recommended, but the sweet spot is f8-f11.Hope this helps! Also, you can check out my post processed images I've taken with this lens on my flickr account "k1ngkong" just in case Amazon doesn't allow my links below.[...][...][...][...]

So far I couldn't be more pleased with this. I purchased for trip to Switzerland that is coming up. My new Sony a6000 is great but the kit lenses are f3.5 and I'm used to f1.7 on my previous camera (panasonic LX100, which is also a great travel camera). I was a little nervous about a manual lens. However, and has been mentioned by others, I found this to be almost a non-issue. It's sharp from 3m to infinity, and I've been setting it on f8 and just leaving it alone for standard day time use. So far I love it, and I know it will perform well in low light wide shots (like night streets and inside cathedrals etc where flash isn't allowed and useful regardless due to distances. Once I figured out how to use the magnifier tool in the camera I can easily fine tune focus where needed. This may be my ONLY lens I use on my trip as the a6000 at 24mp is a champ where I need to crop a scene. I looked at a picture at enlarged to full size from a 16th crop (pretty small) and, while a little grain, it was acceptable for me if I really needed it. I'm just a standard non-pro camera junkie but have enough experience to understand what works well, at least for my needs.

This technically will work on full frame, but its for a crop sensor. There was conflicting information on this in the description. I returned it because of this.

I'm a photo hobbiest and fairly critical of lenses. As the professional reviews state, this is a good value, fixed focal length wide-angle lens. I was taking this on vacation and planned on setting it to focus from about 3ft to infinity and leaving it there. I compared this against the much more expensive Voigtlander Nokton 17mm/.95 wide-angle lens. I made many comparison shots with both at similar distances with the same aperture/speed/iso settings. Given that I wanted a lens that I could set-and-forget for 3ft-infinity focusing, the Samyang proved just as capable for that purpose. I'm happy to spend more money on a lens when it delivers a much better image. In this case, I went with the Samyang.