Samyang 10mm F2.8 ED AS NCS CS

Aberrations and Flare

On this page, we'll discuss various optical aberrations including ghosting, chromatic aberrations, and lens flare.

Ghosting and Flare

The 10mm F2.8 is Samyang's first lens to be treated with a nano lens coating (the "Nano Coating System", or NCS) that delivers lower reflectance than traditional multi-coatings.  In practice, this should equate to better resistance to ghosting and flare- and it does!

To test this, we went straight to the worst-case scenario: shooting directly at the sun during an Arizona summer.  Click on any thumbnail below to enlarge.

As you can see, ghosting is truly minimal, and unless your light source is in a corner or close to the center of the frame, you probably won't see much flare, either.

With that said, it's possible to get unlucky.  If the light source is very strong or dead-center, some interesting things can start happening:

It isn't surprising to see internal reflections in a lens this wide and in such strong sunlight.  The good news is that most of the time, the sun can be in your scene without causing any problems whatsoever.  Remember, the examples above reflect the worst-case scenario.  If you are stuck shooting in a similar environment, we recommend ensuring that your light source is off-center and away from the corners.  Even slight changes in your shooting angle can dramatically affect the presence of flare, so we recommend checking your final image to make sure you didn't get unlucky.

Caution: never look directly at the sun through the viewfinder, as this can be be very harmful to your eyes!  Strong sunlight can also damage your camera's sensor and AF module, especially with telephoto lenses.  Your best bet when shooting in strong sunlight with the 10mm is to turn on live view only when you're ready to compose and shoot, then turn it off after taking your shot.  Don't point the camera at the sun more than necessary, and use the lens cap when moving around.

Chromatic Aberrations

The Samyang 10mm is generally very resistant to chromatic aberrations, and we weren't able to observe any prominent purple fringing or coma with it.

When shooting highlights or reflections of strong light, it is possible to provoke slight red/green fringing, especially near the edges of the frame.  This fringing is virtually impossible to spot when viewing the whole image, but it can be see at 100% magnification, as in the example below:

100% crop of the scene above showing red/green fringing

A small amount of fringing can also be observed around objects in the corner of the image:

This naturally leads us to a discussion of the 10mm's distortion, which we will tackle on the next page.

Verdict

Thanks to its advanced glass coatings, the Samyang 10mm F2.8 doesn't exhibit much ghosting.  It's even possible to photograph the sun directly with almost no flare, but when a strong light source is in the center of the frame or near the corners, it's possible for strong flare to manifest itself.

Chromatic aberrations are minimal and won't adversely affect your images in practice; typically these aberrations will only be visible after zooming in on the image.  We didn't observe any significant coma or purple fringing with this lens.