Last Updated on 12/23/2013 by Felix Esser
When the Sony A7 and A7R full-frame E-mount cameras were first announced, the’re wasn’t really a huge number of lenses available for the system. Granted, both cameras work with E-mount APS-C lenses, but those don’t provide the large image circle needed for the full-frame sensor. So what many early adopters did was to adapt lenses from other systems to the A7 and A7R.
In order to address the lens shortage issue, Samyang/Rokinon, as one of the first manufacturers, has now come up with E-mount versions of some of its full-frame DSLR lenses. In order to make the lenses fit the A7 and A7R, Rokinon added extension to the lens barrels that make up for the difference in flange distance between the mirrorless E-mount and regular DSLR mounts. Hence why the lenses look like they’ve been mated to an adapter.
Samyang, the Korean manufacturer, initially announced five lenses in E-mount: the 14mm f/2.8, the Samyang 24mm f/1.4, the 24mm f/3.5 tilt-shift, the 35mm f/1.4 and the 85mm f/1.4. That’s a pretty decent setup of fast and versatile prime lenses, and especially in the tele and wide-angle sector it makes not much of a difference that these lenses weren’t designed for mirroless cameras in the first place.
Rokinon, the brand under which the lenses are sold in the US, so far only announced the 14mm f2.8 and the 85mm f1.4 E-mount lenses, but given that those are basically re-branded Samyang lenses, we can expect the rest of the bunch to be officially announced sometime in the near future. As for pricing and availability, we didn’t receive any official statements yet, but the lenses should sell for roughly the same as their DSLR counterparts.
Rokinon lenses are available from B&H Photo, and the new lenses should get listed there as soon as they hit the market.
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