About
Reviews (3)
12 May 2013
Great 85mm f/1.4 Prime lens at a bargain price. Great Bokeh but sharp too.
I was looking for a portrait lens for a FF Nikon digital camera that could be used in low light. This lens has a 1.4 maximum aperture and 85mm focal length that was just what I needed.
The Nikkor options were 1.4D at $850 or 1.4G at $1500 on eBay. Since I don't do a lot of portrait work the lens would be on the camera only 10% of the time. I found the Samyang by accident on eBay for a price of $330 shipped which was very reasonable. There is a special Nikon version with inbuilt CPU (Samyang AE model) to set EXIF data on my shots.
The only downside was this is a Manual Focus lens, and I was concerned whether this would be a nuisance to use - but it isn't at all. No worse really than turning the zoom ring on a zoom lens. My camera viewfinder assists sharp focus with a display that has left and right arrows to tell me which way to turn the focus ring, and a green dot comes on when the lens is in focus. Much easier than I thought really.
The lens itself feels very solid, gives great bokeh - probably the best and "buttery" bokeh of all my prime lenses. OK, the edges aren't perfect if you're wider than f3.5, but for portraits this is probably a benefit rather than an issue.
I like this lens a real lot - optically it's very sharp on a D800 (36 megapixels) and pixel peeping shows some mild CA when open wide, but not enough to really worry about especially given it's about 40% the price of the older Nikkor 85mm 1.4D, and 20% of the price of the latest Nikkor 85mm 1.4G.
Optically it's about as good as the Nikkor 1.4D but obviously not as good as the Nikkor 1.4G but I'd expect that to be the case due to price differences. It comes with a lens hood and soft pouch case.
The two things I least like are the front lens cap which is cheap and fiddly to clip into place, and the lens hood which although locks into position isn't really a "solid" lock - it can fairly easily unlock if carrying about. Manual focus is difficult with the lens hood fitted in reverse position as well.
To wrap up, if you're after a nice 85mm 1.4 Prime for your Nikon, and can't justify or afford the spend on a genuine Nikkor, and you love fantastic bokeh, then have a serious look at this lens as the price and quality are right.
08 February 2014
Small size, great sound, well made and finished.
I purchased a Lepai 2020A+ Tripath Class-T Hi-Fi Amp off eBay, this is a tiny 20W stereo amp with amazing sound quality. I needed a pair of small bookshelf speakers to go with it so I could play music from my laptop using the headphone jack to drive the amplifier.
Since the amplifier only cost me about $30 including a 12V power supply I wasn't intending to spend much on speakers but wanted something decent enough. I chose these speakers due to dimensions - they are compact but solidly made.
The sound quality is excellent for their size, with decent enough Bass considering the 6" woofer, and nice clean Treble. They are quite sensitive and produce enough sound to fill a decent sized living room with the 20W amplifier turned up to only 40%. Distortion remains pretty good even when the amplifier is wound up to 75% volume, but the sound level is then high enough to disturb the neighbours so you wouldn't really drive them that hard.
If you are looking for a mini sound system for your iPhone or laptop then the combination of the Lepai 2020A+ and these speakers is a certain winner - you won't be disappointed with the cost or the quality.
08 June 2017
Cheaper than the rest and works just as well
I was looking for a 64Gb expansion Micro SD to go in my new Samsung Galaxy S8+. It needed to be a Class 10 U3 speed card for best performance. The Toshiba card met my specifications and was considerably cheaper than equivalent offerings from Samsung and Sandisk which were often only U1 speed.
I fitted it to the Samsung S8+ and it installed without issue and data transfers to and from the card are excellent and fast. Recommended for eBay users looking for the best value U3 Micro-SD card.