Along with 35mm and 50mm, 135mm is one of the truly classic prime lens focal lengths. Before zooms became popular, no selfrespecting photographer would be without this trio in the camera bag. After I acquired my first 35mm SLR which, of course, was fitted with the standard 50mm lens, the very next purchase was a 135mm. It was all the telephoto ‘power’ I could afford at the time, but it was also a great all-rounder.
After primes started to come back into fashion, it was the classic wide-angles and the 50mm standard that predominated, but now the 135mm has made a return and there are a lot of photographers discovering how versatile this short telephoto focal length really is.
Samyang, naturally, has had a manual focus 135mm prime lens in its line-up for quite a while, but now it’s built an autofocus model for the full-frame Sony FE mount. The new AF lens is marginally faster than the MF model – f/1.8 versus f/2.0 – and it’s an all-new design leveraging the various benefits of the mirrorless camera configuration. The f/2.0 lens is from the DSLR era and available in a big selection of mounts, but the new mounts of the mirrorless era make it harder
