Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai. Today I'm going to talk about the Yongnuo 100mm
F/2 lens for Nikon cameras. It's also called the YN 100mm
F2N. Yongnuo has been releasing quite a few auto-focus lenses recently that are
very cheap. A 50, 35, and 40mm I believe. The 35...
isn't being reviewed too well, but the 50 is decent. I said 100mm is
more on the decent side of the spectrum. The manual lists this as having 9 aperture
blades with a minimum aperture of F/19. Which is a little confusing. Because both
of my cameras it lists F/22 as the minimum. So I think there's some firmware issues,
or something going on. Minimum focus distance is 0.9 m, or around 3 ft. And a
magnification of 0.14x. So you're definitely not going to use this lens in
those close-up focus situations. The lens doesn't come with the hood, but it does
have a 58mm filter thread that you could potentially attach a hood to.
It does have front and end caps that are pretty solid. Very similar to the Nikon
ones. The lens exterior is a mixture of metal, plastic, and rubber. In
the back there's plastic similar to what the Nikon lenses have. And then in the
front there is solid metal, and the rubber is just, of course, the focus ring.
Overall the build quality is very nice, very solid. Has a nice weight to it.
The lenses does come with a USB port for the potential of updating firmware, or
adjusting focus ** updates exist! **. So hopefully Yongnuo will release firmware updates in the future.
As we'll get to, it needs a few adjustments. The lens does have a DC
motor inside. It is louder than the silent wave motors in the Nikon lenses.
Here's a quick example of auto-focus sound. Most lenses in this price range
are manual focus, so just keep that in mind when you're considering this lens.
Getting a very good value for having auto-focus. The lens does have a switch
on the side to cycle between auto-focus and manual focus. It does not have the
quick-shift styled focus system you have to actually use the switch to get into
manual focus mode. Otherwise you can rotate the focus ring in auto-focus mode,
but it does not do anything at all. So far my testing the lens is relatively
decent with auto-focus. It is not as fast as the Nikon lenses, of course, but it can
get around the proper focal point you're selecting...
relatively quickly. But sometimes it takes a little longer than you would
expect it to actually get a focus lock. In those situations when I tried to
focus and re-compose I ended up having the lens try to refocus because it
didn't actually lock down on that focal point. So when the lens does get a focal
lock.. I'd say it's very consistent. I haven't had any issues with it either
front or back focusing. Again, hopefully all of the auto-focus abilities of this
lens will be further improved in the future with firmware updates *** they have! ***.
Manual focus really isn't too bad. Of course, you have to use that switch on the side of the
lens to get into manual focus mode. But once you're there...
This is decent amount of travel to it, and of course the grip on there is very
nice. With this lens.. 100mm F/2, it's pretty easy to see where you're
focusing. I did take this lens out in the night-time in a local park event where
there's a light show. I didn't really have any issues with auto-focus in those
dark situations. Frankly speaking, this lenses garbage in Live View mode with
focusing. I can barely get it to lock down when I'm using that Live View
mode. So Yongnuo really needs to improve...
this situation with firmware updates (They have!). This lens does appear to have issues
with exposure. Because both of my cameras read the lens as underexposing. For
example, with the D750 I had to add +2 stops or +2.67 stops to get a
properly exposed photo compared to my 50mm f1.8g lens. On the D600 it's
not as bad. It's about +0.7 stops, or +1 stop to get a properly exposed
photo. Here's a quick test of distortion vignetting see it at F/2, darkening of the
corners... pretty strong. Still not terrible. And up to F/2.8, it's getting quite a bit
better. And at F/5.6, it's pretty much gone. With distortion I'll leave it up to
you to decide. There is some curvature, but I don't guarantee that my photos
were exactly straight-on. Just so you know this was taken at 46 inches from
the sensor to the object. So let's get to the example photos... They're in different
sections, first one is aberrations. Zoom right in. You can see, this one has some color
fringing. It's pretty expected for this situation with taking photos of water
this, but it's not terrible. But we jump to 5.6 from F/2 and then it's all gone.
Which is a great result. Can't complain about that. A sunset photo, in this case
it's a very extreme lighting situation. But you also get very extreme color
fringing, so some purple.. reds.. greens. It's not a horrible result. It's not great, but
I'll take it. It's decent. So in this case just a little bit of red on the edges
here and there. Not a terrible result in that situation. Last one for aberrations. So
strong point light sources of full spectrum light. You can see you've got
some purples and reds. Again not a terrible result in this situation. So here is the
flare and contrast section. Let's get started with these. See this one is very
strong flare. You've got some rainbow-ing effect. Ah, I think the light source was
right to the side. So I'm pushing the lens very hard here. Extremely hard, I
guess you could say. I mean I don't know what to say about this result, but it's a
it's probably the most extreme situation you can get yourself into. So here's the
Sun is probably right about there. In this area.. you can still see some detail.
I don't think it's a horrible result considering what's going on. So
here's the one that's a little more manageable. You can see the contrast is
not especially good in this situation. We zoom in, there's still nice amount of
detail considering. You can fix this up pretty easily. Let's develop this one
real quick. Just to show that you can get that contrast easily back with just a
few quick edits. So I'm gonna cycle a change. So that's before after before
after. So this one I really like the image, but there is that strong flare
situation. so the.. up in the top left is where the Sun was and then you've got...
Still you've got a lot of detail, and I really like the image itself. Here's
another one and I don't even know what was going on here...
it's just a cloudy or something situation. Got very poor contrast. Again, we could
easily develop this and bump up the contrast, so it's not a huge deal. So here
are a few images detailing the sharpness and rendering of the lens. I think it's a
very sharp lens, this is at F/2. If you can believe it. Look at how sharp that is.
I can easily see the veins of this leaf. So when you buy a lens like this, you
generally want to use it at larger apertures, and this lens seems like it is
especially good at F/2, F/2.8. let's go to another one...
Zoom in on the face. A little bit blurry. It might have been my mistake, but still
you can see a lot of detail on the eye and the beak. Again here you can see
these individual strands. So here's a good one of just so much going on. Very
very busy image. So I definitely think that lens is good for any type of
situation that you want to resolve a nice amount of detail. There's another
one zoom in you can see my action camera. Lots of texturing on the top here. Not
too bad. It was at F/4. Here's one of a little grasshopper guy. F/5.6, so just a
small section of the frame. We zoom in. We see lots of nice detail on him. So in
this section we're going to go over background blur, which I think it's
especially important in a lens like this. You can see nice smooth background
blur, this is F/2. So here is an out-of-focus photo. You can see they aren't
perfectly round. Let's zoom in on them. They don't have any haloing effect on the
point light sources. Let's jump up to... Let's see... This is F/2. And this is very decent
result. You do get some haloing here, and it isn't perfectly round. I'm not going
to complain though. I think it looks nice.
So again a little bit of haloing. But besides that, I'm liking this background
blur of this lens. So I was F/2. Let's jump up to 2.8. Definitely see a difference.
Let's cycle that real quick. Again, pretty similar results just more sharp
in the background. Let's go up to F/4 now. Similar situation. Just a little bit
more background. Jump up to 5.6. Again it's it's not quite rounded, but still
relatively circular. At least we're not getting those donut (*football) shapes I hate those.
So I'm definitely glad this lens doesn't do the donut, donut point light
sources. So here is F/8. Definitely a lot more detail in the background, but again
very similar result. It just scales as you decrease that aperture size. So look
in the top here. It's very grainy, but it's ISO 6400. See very similar result to
the previous photos. Nice point light sources in the back, of course, it's these
things just a whole bunch of them. Similar situation.. I'm very happy with
the background blur of this, and foreground.. of this lens. Look at the edges.
Here's my last section. These are just a few images that I edited to improve
contrasts and such. I really like landscape photos at large aperture. Get
an interesting look to them. So for example, the focal point is in this area
Right there.. Just looks very interesting to me when the photos are rendered like
this. Another one, that's a cool detail in this shot. See how the cars. Can't exactly,
no.. I can see some of that license plate. Go to the next one. Great sunset
photo, vertical shot. So in this case I probably try to improve this area a
little bit more. So this lens can give a very dreamy look to it, which is
something I'd like about it. As I mentioned probably before. I had a few
manual focus lenses for Pentax that gave me a similar look to the background blur
and this kind of not super super high contrast, but very sharp and quality
image. Let's a good look at it in detail here. But I really like how it renders, so
I'm definitely gonna keep this lens. Now that I've looked at it in detail. So
here's another large aperture landscape photo. Focal point was right here in
these leaves. It's another one at night. Had some noise rejection on this one
definitely, but very sharp nice smooth gradients. I think this one was using
auto-focus. It worked out pretty well in a extremely dark situation. So that's it
for example photos. Now we're going to do this summary real quick on this lens. So
would I recommend Yongnuo 100mm F/2 lens for Nikon cameras? I think it
really depends at the moment. Hopefully in the future
they'll fix a few issues that have had. Such as the exposure issue, which is the
biggest problem. And also the auto-focus not locking quite as quickly as I would
want. As well as it not auto-focusing well at all in Live View mode. But
besides those issues, which I think are relatively easy to deal with. I think it
is a solid lens. Nice build quality. I really like the image output. Aberrations
and such are not terrible. And it is very sharp. At least my copy. So I'm glad with
the image quality, which is the biggest factor. But besides that it is a cheap
auto-focus lens. You can get it new, that's great. Alternatives...
they're really probably aren't too many. You can probably get a used macro lens
100mm F/2.8 with a focus limiter. Be similar to this, so that is an
option. But besides that, I think it's a relatively decent lens if you can deal
with the quirks. Hopefully those will be fixed in firmware moving forward so that
is the Yongnuo 100mm F/2 lens for Nikon cameras. I hope found this
interesting. Thanks! *** Firmware updates have fixed my main issues! ***