Dpreview tested the Rokinon 50mm FE and says “The AF motor is very noisy, not unlike a distant submarine distress call”
Dpreview is testing the Rokinon 50mm FE lens but doesn’t seem to like it. The lens has some issues like the noise AF: “The AF motor is very noisy, not unlike a distant submarine distress call”. And the bad news continues:
The lens also has some issues with bokeh. Take a look at the onion rings in the out-of-focus highlights here, and if you search around the image above at 1:1, you’ll see slightly out-of-focus highlights having distracting holes in their center.
The takeaway: If you’re on a budget and want an FE 50mm F1.4 lens with autofocus, well, you don’t have a lot of options. Seeing as you can get some nice, usable images wide open, I wouldn’t steer you away from pulling the trigger on the Rokinon. But I would probably try to convince you to settle for F1.8 and save up for the Sonnar T* FE 55mm F1.8 ZA ($900) instead (quality-wise it is far superior to the Sony FE 50mm F1.8 – $200).
I do own the Zeiss 55mm FE and I absolutely love it. But I loaned it to a friend for a couple of weeks and it camera back with that noise AF. This is a “distant submarine distress call” :(