Is Samyang's Compact f/2.8 Zoom Set Worth Carrying?

Samyang's three f/2.8 zooms, co-designed with Schneider-Kreuznach, cover 14mm to 180mm on Sony full frame bodies while stepping away from the familiar 16-35mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm ranges. Trimming a few millimeters here and adding a few there is how a lens maker cuts size, weight, and price, and those are the things that decide whether a lens leaves your house or stays on the shelf.

Benj Haisch walks through the Samyang AF 14-24mm f/2.8 FE, Samyang AF 24-60mm f/2.8 FE, and Samyang AF 60-180mm f/2.8 FE, starting with the ultra-wide, a 14mm zoom that takes screw-on filters. It has no bulging front element, so it accepts 77mm filters, and it's shorter than many prime lenses. The 24-60mm uses a 72mm thread, so if you shoot video with ND filters, plan on step-up rings to 82mm across the kit. That standard zoom extends as you zoom in, which Haisch finds more natural than the way the Sony FE 24-50mm f/2.8 G zooms, and it's light enough that a modern gimbal won't struggle with the shift in balance. It also reaches 10mm further than the 24-50mm lenses that have shown up recently.

The 60-180mm is the most interesting of the three. Haisch rarely reaches for a telephoto zoom, mostly using one for speeches and vows at weddings or for compressing mountain scenes, and that pattern is why he hasn't bought a Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS II. He loves the Sony FE 50-150mm f/2 GM when he uses it, but its size and cost don't line up with how often he'd shoot with it. Losing 20mm off the long end matters mostly if you shoot sports, where even 200mm can feel short. On his Sony a7R V, the APS-C crop mode still delivers about 26 megapixels and stretches the lens to roughly 270mm equivalent.

Tamron ran this playbook first on Sony with its 17-28mm, 28-75mm, and 70-180mm f/2.8 zooms, a trio that became popular largely because each lens gave up a little range to come in smaller and cheaper. Sony itself has since moved in the same direction with the Sony FE 24-50mm f/2.8 G. The pattern suggests a lot of people care more about what they'll actually carry than about matching the classic focal lengths exactly. Samyang's set pushes the idea in a different direction, going wider at 14mm and stopping at 180mm, which tilts the kit toward landscapes, interiors, and vlogging rather than sideline work. When you look at a set like this, try mapping your last few months of shooting against the ranges. If your telephoto images cluster below 150mm and your widest frames often feel cramped, the trade leans in your favor. Mapping your shots that way is also a cheap way to evaluate any future lens purchase, since your own metadata already shows where you shoot.

For video, Haisch sees the set as a way to cover everything from 14mm to about 280mm in crop mode without swapping between a bag of primes. He keeps the 24-60mm on the camera and leaves the other two in the bag. Shooting from a tripod that never moves, he shows the gap between 180mm and 14mm, and at the wide end, he stands an arm's length from the lens and can't reach the corner of the frame. Back in the studio, he describes the sharpness as good without being razor sharp, which he finds fine for video, and he notes some unusual octagonal bokeh shapes toward the corners on the 24-60mm. The 60-180mm, and to a lesser degree the 14-24mm, also drops completely out of focus while zooming, even in manual focus, which rules out crash zooms and gets annoying for stills. Haisch has reported it to Samyang and hopes a firmware update fixes it.

Haisch's bokeh tests from all three lenses are in the video above.