LK Samyang recently released their new Prima Series of lenses, a new series designed in their words “To be your first lens and the one you’ll reach for most often when shooting”.
LK Samyang sent me a copy of the AF 16mm f2.8 P FE to keep, test out, shoot some images for their release and write this review.
Yes another Sony FE/E mount only lens, sorry to other camera brand users but I don’t make these lenses, I just review them. So move along if this lens isn’t for you or switch camera brands already………there’s no point raging in the comments, or is there? Hmmm, I guess it helps my blogs reach, ok then, rage on.
Anyway…..
Words straight from the LK Samyang website
“The new AF 16mm F2.8 P FE is part of the Prima Series, designed to be “your first lens” and the one you’ll reach for most often when shooting.
This lens proves that great things come in small packages. Weighing just 207 grams, this compact lens achieves an impressive minimum focusing distance of only 0.12 meters, enabling you to capture stunning detail even in ultra-close shots.
Packed with only the essential features, it’s versatile enough to capture countless moments, whether in everyday life, during travel, or in breathtaking landscapes.
The AF 16mm F2.8 P FE — small in size, yet powerful in every shot”.
Specifications
INITIAL THOUGHTS
The LK Samyang AF 16mm f2.8 P FE lens is small and very light, at 207g it’s a lens that’s easy to carry on your camera or to keep in your bag as a wide angle option. I can see it being popular with street photographers, vloggers, hikers, nature photographers and those that just want a wide angle lens in their kit “just in case”.
Build quality is good, it looks nice and modern and perfectly suited to Sony’s modern camera aesthetics. It does have a mostly plastic body with metal lens mount, which is fine for its intended market and price point. It is a very simple, minimal design with no markings on the front of the lens to indicate it’s focal length, aperture or filter size (it accepts 62mm screw on filters). Most of these details are shown around the lens body though, along with the LK Samyang branding. There is a AF/MF switch and plastic focus ring, no rubber on this ring though.
The lens comes with a pinch style cap and rear lens cap. It also comes with a lens hood that has a clear and positive click when rotated into place. I really like this simple feature as the amount of times I have not rotated a lens hood fully into place shooting nightscapes or bumped a hood out of place while shooting mountain bikes and ended up with vignetting from the hood would surprise you, very frustrating when you don’t notice this out in the field and it ruins your images.
Around the metal lens hood there seems to be a slight rubber gasket but it is not a weather seal like we see on other Samyang lenses unfortunately, but again this is fine for it’s intended market.
A feature I really like on this lens is the USB-C port that is integrated into the lens mount, I hope Samyang continue this as it keeps the port safe from moisture, dirt, dust etc when out in the field. A nice simple solution to something I can see being a problem for nightscapers shooting in frosty, dewy conditions with other lenses.
Super clean minimal design
Auto Focus/Manual Focus switch and “knurled” focus ring
Pinch cap and lens hood
Clean look, no markings
The USB-C port is integrated into the lens mount
IMAGE QUALITY
I found the lens to give very sharp and detailed images but there was some distortion. I have not applied any lens corrections or profiles as I like to show how the lens truely performs with out these but you can download the profiles directly from LK Samyang here if you own this lens and are looking for them. LK Samyang AF 16mm f2.8 P FE lens profile
I will share a few images and let them do the talking.
The lens is able to capture lots of detail and colour looks good.
The size and weight of this lens paired with the Sony A7c2 makes for a great walk around lens, I took this on an afternoon walk with my wife around our local lake.
A feature of this lens is it’s ability to focus very close (0.12m) allowing you to get in and show close up details while still showing some of the surroundings. I think this feature would be fantastic for nature photography and makes this lens quite a versatile option with the ability to photography wide landscapes and also get in close for “macro” close up details of plants, fungi etc.
Nightscape Photography
I can’t write a review without showing how a lens performs shooting Night Skies. In the next few images let’s look at how it handles capturing the stars.
Above – An image taken at Lake Glenmaggie (giving away my locations here) with just minor adjustments in Lightroom. No cropping, no distortion control or lens profiles just a simple image, let’s look at some closer crops from this image.
Above – Top left hand corner crop we can see some coma, distortion and vignetting. Definitely nothing terrible but it’s there, I’ll bet exaggerated by the star trailing of the 20 second exposure..
Above – Top right hand corner crop, very much the same as the top left hand corner.
Above – A crop from the left hand side, centre of the image. There’s a little bit of coma on the extreme edge but you’d be really nitpicking to be bothered by it, it’s really good performance.
Above – A crop from the right hand side, centre of images. Very much the same as the previous image, a tad better performance if we really look close.
So as we can see the LK Samyang AF 16mm f2.8 P FE performs well when it comes to capturing stars, there is some coma and distortion, it doesn’t perform as well as say the LK Samyang AF 14-24mm 2.8 FE Schneider-Kreuznach lens, check out that review here but you wouldn’t expect that either given the price point, size, intended market etc but it definitely holds it’s own. I also think in these images the 20 second exposure likely exaggerated things.
So lets take a look at a 15 second exposure of the Milky Way core along with a few crops..
Above I used the LK Samyang AF 16mm f2.8 P FE to capture this image of the Milky Way core untracked straight from my tripod. It’s a single image no post processing, settings 16mm, f2.8, 15seconds, iso6400
I can see some obvious vignetting in the corners, fairly normal for a wide angle at wide aperture, it seems worse in the blog images than it does in the originals or Lightroom, hmmm maybe the dark theme exaggerating it? Let’s look at the crops.
Above – A crop from the top left corner, as suspected coma and distortion performance has improved significantly with the “faster” 15 second exposure and less star trailing.
Above – A crop from the top right corner again coma and distortion performance has improved significantly with the “faster” 15 second exposure and less star trailing.
Above – A crop from the bottom left corner and we are seeing the same as the two crops above.
Above – And a crop from the bottom right corner. As far as coma performance goes I think you’d agree this lens performs very well!
Above – The result of 15 consecutive exposures stacked in Starry Sky Stacker and a little post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. Settings for each shot – 16mm, f2.8, 15 seconds, iso6400.
Here’s some more Nightscapes that I have taken with the lens.
Sometimes it’s hard to get past shooting the Milky Way core but there’s so much more in our night sky to photograph. Here’s the SMC and LMC with a foggy foreground and light pollution from the Longford gas plant.
Big thanks to my buddy Ethan who I took out for a bit of a workshop recently for reminding me of this, usually workshop participants are purely focussed on the Milky Way core, not Ethan! He was more interested in the little details and various objects in the night sky, he was setting up his compositions to suit and then zooming in on his camera’s screen to take a better look and show me what he’d captured. Gotta take him out again, really was a great night.
I live very close to a RAAF base, it can be a struggle to keep planes out of my images some nights but I liked this shot with the light trail as a plane was coming in to land. I used these trails in a few different pics but I’ll share them another time.
CONCLUSION
The LK Samyang AF 16mm f2.8 P FE lens is a a small and lightweight lens that gives pretty decent performance. I can see it being a great option as a light weight compact set up for travel photography, street photography, hiking, outdoors etc. Really anytime you want a small, wide, light and versatile lens.
For Nightscapes it really holds it’s own, it’s not quite as good as some other Samyang offerings when it comes to coma, vignetting and star performance, although looking back over these review images maybe I’ve just been spoilt using the Samyang 14-24mm this season because the 16mm P FE is a pretty decent performer and is definitely capable of capturing nice Nightscapes.
Overall I think it’s a solid performer and very versatile for a lot of different uses in a lightweight compact package. It would make a great option for those on a budget or those wanting to really travel light but still have the ability to capture the stars, think hiking, bike packing, travel etc.
If this is something you are after your should check it out.
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Further reading/tutorials/YouTube.
LK Samyang AF 14-24mm f2.8 FE (Schneider-Kreuznach collaboration) – lens review
Basic Night Sky Photography – How to
Lens Choice For Night Sky Photography
Nightscape Photographer On YouTube
