This video was originally going to be another episode of
Creative Tech News in which one of the stories that I was going
to cover was the new 24mm f/2.8 lens from Samyang, but upon
researching that lens as well as seeing some of the comments
on some of my more recent videos, and even other videos
that have reviews and comparisons of lenses
from Samyang and Rokinon and other brands,
I've realized that there is quite a bit of misinformation
about that brand in general and it's subsidiaries,
and I figured it's about time that we,
kind of, cleared the air about that once and for all.
Let's get Undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody?
I'm Gerald Undone, and today, as I said in the intro,
we're going to be discussing the lens manufacturer, Samyang,
and its North American counterpart, Rokinon.
I decided to make this video because the sheer amount
of comments that I've received on my own videos as well
as other videos and reviews and comparisons I've seen from
other YouTubers out there, I decided that there's really
quite a bit of misinformation about these brands
and I understand it. I am sympathetic to it
because the more I looked into it, the more confused
I even got, and now that I've even done the research,
I still don't even have all the answers. Okay, so let's
start off with why you should even care about this topic.
Well, in the videography and cinematography realms,
these brands are hugely important, not only
for driving a little healthy, competitive innovation but also
for bringing much needed price corrections into a market
that was budget-crippling for a budding filmmaker.
Now, in the photo realm, these brands are a little
bit less important, but you will see comparisons
between the big brands that you've come to recognize
to these third-party lenses to try to make
a value determination. And since once of the most
important steps to getting the value out of your purchases
is to be an educated buyer, this information will be useful.
Now, I'm sure some of you are already grinning
because you know what the big reveal of this video is going
to be, that yes, Samyang and Rokinon
are actually the same product, or the same brand, in a sense.
Rokinon is really just a private label rebranding
of Samyang Glass. So that's reason one
why comparison videos between Samyang and Rokinon lenses are,
unfortunately, wasteful, but it gets even more
complicated when we introduce the Cine DS and XEEN lineups.
And, the company's websites don't really do a lot to unpack
this mess, for instance, when you go to the Rokinon website
and you try to view their information,
you're led to another place called Elite Brands,
which state-- [highlighted words on screen]
Now that kind of makes it sound like Elite Brands is the parent
company making the lenses and that they represent both
Rokinon and Samyang, but when you go to Elite Brands'
website, it doesn't get any clearer, it's just a list of
other brands, an ambiguous picture,
and then some contact information.
Now, I did some digging to see if I could solve
the chicken and the egg timing between Elite Brands
and Rokinon because both kind of vaguely throw around
dates like "For over 30 years."
Now, it does seem like Elite Brands came first,
probably 1979 and in New York, seemingly,
and that Rokinon was crafted, and eventually purposed,
for rebranding Samyang lenses by Elite Brands,
but it's very important to note that none of these companies
or names that I've mentioned have any control or ownership
of Samyang, which is a publicly-traded company
in Korea, where all the manufacturing actually
takes place. Now, Samyang was founded in 1972
and is the origin of all these products, including
the XEEN line of cine lenses, even though XEEN has its own,
and yet another website that would make you think that
they're a third company that was maybe created by Rokinon
because of the "XEEN by Rokinon" word choice
in About section for Elite Brands on the Rokinon website.
At this point, I started to develop
a lot more sympathy for reviewers and commenters
who were comparing and recommending
identical products. It does really seem like
they're positioned to be something different
than they are. Okay, so now that we've laid all that out,
let's connect the actual product levels between
Samyang and Rokinon and see what's going on there.
So, if we look at Rokinon's product types,
they offer five different ones, plus the XEEN line,
and the five are Digital Photo, SP, Autofocus, Cine,
Cine DS, and then they have a separate tab for XEEN.
Now, the original Samyang lenses that these ones
derive from are as follows. You've got Manual Focus,
Premium Manual Focus, Autofocus,
Cine and Professional Cine. Now, for most of the tiers,
Samyang's list is a lot easier to understand.
You know what you're getting into with Manual Focus
and Premium Manual Focus, where Rokinon's list
is a little bit trickier, like what exactly does
Digital Photo and SP mean, and how do they differ?
Although it should be noted that the SPs from Rokinon
are available on Samyang under the Premium Manual,
and they're called XPs on Samyang's side.
Now, Autofocus is autofocus, and that's the most
exciting category for me because I'm always looking
for great third-party innovation in that space.
And Samyang is relatively new in that group,
with the majority of their releases coming out
in the last two years, all with availability for Sony E-mount.
Right now, they offer the 14, the 35 and the 50mm
with a 24mm on the way next month, which is,
like I was saying, what this original
video was spawned by, the announcement of the 24mm.
Now, something to keep in mind with third-party discount
lenses is that consistency isn't always there.
While Samyang has done really well to achieve sharpness
and image quality, it does come at some cost
of some looser build quality allowances
and performance inconsistency.
In fact, this led to reputation of Rokinon being
established comically as, kind of, the disposable
Cine Lens as they would allow a budget-conscious
filmmaker to take on riskier shots or more complicated
projects without the risk of destroying a $15,000
rental or conforming the entire project
to a single focal length. And it's in that Cine Lens
category where Rokinon does better with their naming
categories by separating Cine and Cine DS,
where Samyang just, kind of, bundles them together.
And to make it even more confusing,
Samyang also has Mark IIs of many of their lenses,
but the overlap between that and DS isn't very clear.
Now the big difference between the Cine
and the Cine DS lenses is the ring positioning.
The focus ring is constant throughout all the Cine DS
lenses, which is important, but also fantastic that they
did that because if you want to keep a consistent rig,
that's pretty much crucial, otherwise every time you put
a different lens on, you're going to have to change
your rod position or your rings, or your follow focus
in order to make it lineup with the new ring.
For the Cine DS, they're perfectly interchangeable now.
Now, my first assumption would be that all of the Mark IIs
from Samyang were going to be Cine DS
because they don't actually have it broken down
by Cine DS on the website, but that is not true.
Some of the Mark IIs do not have the Cine DS constant,
uh, ring position and some of the non-Mark IIs do.
So, it's very confusing, and the only real way, I guess,
to know which is which clearly would actually be to shop
on the Rokinon website even if you wanted to order separately,
you would use the Rokinon website in order to determine
which ones were Cine DS lenses, but I'll put a list
in the description that NoFilmSchool
posted the highlights which of these lenses
are available in Cine DS, which is kind of handy.
Now, lastly, let's draw the line between XEEN
and the professional Cine, or XEEN by Rokinon
and XEENGlobal.com, and again, it's a lot more confusing than
it needed to be, basically, Samyang made an important move
by taking their already beloved line of Cine lenses
and adding some important features and changes to them
like taking the build quality for instance and making it more
rugged by changing the chassis from plastic to aluminum
or adding a PL mount onto it, and then also, sort of,
changing the form factor to be a little bit more conventional
with what people would expect in the cinema space,
so that you can have the same accessories and matte boxes
and filters, just making the size a little bit more typical.
This helped shake off that disposable stigma
while still remaining quite affordable and injecting
necessary aforementioned price corrections into a pretty
stubborn lens market, and the XEEN lineup was Samyang's
answer to that call. The fact that XEEN has its own website
is inconsequential, and I can only imagine that Elite Brands
chose to call it, uh, XEEN by Rokinon in North America
as a way to, kind of, comfort the customers
into not thinking, like, "What is this XEEN?
I don't know this company!" But, it's XEEN by Rokinon,
you're like, "Oh, I know Rokinon, oh this must be
Rokinon's new premium Cine lens."
It's, to, it's to make you feel like,
"Oh, this is the Rokinon that I've, I've come
to know and trust", but that's the joke of it.
It's not the Rokinon that you've come to know and trust.
It was, and always will be, Samyang.
Alright, now it's time to hear from you, and I have
two questions for you that I would love to have you answer
in the comments. One, what was your knowledge of this topic
coming into this? Did you already know the relationship
between Rokinon and Samyang? And two, do you own any glass
from either of these brands? If so, which one, and what do
you think of it? Let me know that in the comments.
Anyway, that's going to be it for me. I hope you found this
video informative, or at least entertaining, and if you did,
make sure you drop it the old thumbs up and consider
subscribing but if you did not find it informative
or entertaining, feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright!... I'm done.
[upbeat techno music]
♪