Don't Overlook This Surprisingly Affordable Lens

There are 85mm lenses aplenty at just about every price point, and each comes with a different value-to-performance ratio, but this lens may offer one of the best ratios out there. This fantastic video review takes a look at the lens and the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it in practice. 

Coming to you from Christopher Frost, this awesome video review takes a look at the Yongnuo 85mm f/1.8S DF DSM lens for Canon RF, Nikon Z, and Sony E full frame cameras. Yongnuo has long been known for manufacturing extraordinarily affordable speedlights, but in recent years, they have also branched into making lessons, and the 85mm f/1.8S looks like a fantastic value for portrait and wedding photographers in particular. Certainly, the f/1.8 aperture might put off some potential buyers are compared to the f/1.4 aperture that is more standard with high-level lenses, but on the other hand, remember that an f/1.8 aperture is less than a stop narrower than f/1.4. And given the advanced high-ISO performance of modern cameras and the narrow depth of field you can still achieve with f/1.8, it really is not something you need to worry about. Check out the video above for Frost's full thoughts on the lens. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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2 Comments

For $150 more, Samyang's 85/1.4 delivers 2/3 of a stop more light. For $50 less, Samyang's 75/1.8 is smaller and lighter. I love 'em both.

I tried the Youngnuo 35mm f/2 for Canon EF mount. It was way too soft at anything below f/2.8. Then, after only 2-3 uses, it quit stopping down no matter what the aperture was set to. Junk. I've also bought a couple of YN flashes. One lasted 54 weeks of occasional use. 40-50 frames using HSS over a 2 hour period did it in. It will give one full capacitor dump every 30 minutes or so. No pops at less than a full dump, no matter what the power level is manually set to. Junk.