Samyang 24mm f/3.5 ED AS UMC Tilt-Shift Lens for Sony Alpha

The Samyang T-S 24mm F3.5 ED AS UMC is an affordable tilt-shift lens that's available in several mounts. It's an excellent value when compared with others of its type.

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  Wide-angle field of view. Full-frame coverage. Very affordable. Shift, tilt, and rotation adjustment.

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  Some barrel distortion. Should be stopped down for best image quality. Flare can be an issue.

Some lenses are introduced and quickly revert to near anonymity, while others garner a great deal of photographer interest – even prior to their availability. This lens fell into the latter category, which prompted me to promptly get my hands on one. The reason for this interest?

Handling and features Tilt-shift lenses are normally so expensive that many photographers cannot justify the cost, despite its benefits with control of the focal plane and of distortion.

Costing considerably less than other tilt & shift lenses, the new Samyang T-S 24mm boasts an impressive set of features and excellent build quality. But how will it perform when put through our tests?

Tilt-and-shift lenses feature the film-plane-movement control normally associated with large-format monorail or studio cameras. They are considered to be very specialist kit designed for architectural and landscape photography where adjustment of the plane of focus and distortion control are key...

The Samyang company proved again that they employ very gifted optics specialists who, with a budget much lower than that of more renowned rivals, can offer a lot. That company have launched several lenses and I have to admit I haven’t encountered an optically weak device yet.

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  very good image quality in the frame centre,, good image quality on the edge of the frame,, excellent control of chromatic aberration,, moderate distortion,, slight coma,, decent astigmatism correction,, low vignetting in normal working mode,, the cheapest, fully-fledged T-S available on the market.

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  weak work against bright light,, unacceptable mechanics quality at this price point.

Although this tilt-shift lens is far from being an inexpensive optic, with its launch price being over £500 less than equivalents from Canon or Nikon, it does bring tilt-shift control within the reach of more people.

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  Priced very keenly, Excellent optical performance, Solidly built, Good, solid controls over tilt-shift movements

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  CA a little high towards the edges of the image circle, Susceptible to flare in harsh lighting

As a tilt-shift lens option, Samyang offers a very economic opportunity with optimal quality for all photographers to taste tilt-shift experience. Unless users go "pixel-peeping", the quality is nice and sufficient. The ideal aperture is f/8 for best sharpness.

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  1. Very economic opportunity to use tilt-shift lens, 2. Nice build quality but one "tick" lower grade than Canon, 3. Nice aperture control ring, 4. Nice resolution when not tilted, not shifted. 5. Light-weight and sturdy

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  1. Lock switches release lock completely when you turn them a bit 2. Tilted and shifted images have lower resolution at the edges 3. Focus ring is very easy to rotate; not well damped.

I bought this lens for landscapes and architecture and although I am very pleased with the results, it takes a lot of care in setting it up and focussing. But I am getting used to it and getting ever improving results.

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  Sharp Focus

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  Slow Focus