{"id":4667,"date":"2015-02-12T21:12:46","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T02:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/?p=4667"},"modified":"2015-02-13T17:46:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T22:46:30","slug":"review-samsung-16-50mm-f2-2-8-s-ed-ois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/review-samsung-16-50mm-f2-2-8-s-ed-ois\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Samsung 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 S ED OIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samsung has been somewhat stealthily building a fairly strong lens lineup for their NX cameras over the past few years, and today I’m taking a look at what is often the core lens in a high-end lens lineup: the fast standard zoom.\u00a0 Samsung’s 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 joins an elite group of standard zooms for interchangeable lens cameras that have maximum apertures faster than f\/2.8.\u00a0 The 16-50mm is the first lens in Samsung’s pro-grade ‘S’ lineup, which has now been joined by the new 50-150mm f\/2.8 to create a two zoom pair to cover a wide range of photographic needs.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Samsung 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 S ED OIS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with my reviews, I review from a real world shooting perspective. You won\u2019t find lens charts or resolution numbers here. There are plenty of other sites that cover those. I review products on how they act for me as a photographic tool.<\/em><\/p>\n

Construction and Handling<\/h3>\n
\"The<\/a>
The 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 mounted on the Samsung NX1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Samsung 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 S is billed as a professional grade lens, and it certainly lives up to that standing in terms of construction.\u00a0 The lens is extremely solid, with the exterior constructed entirely of metal. Like most standard zooms, the lens barrel extends when zooming towards the long end, and even the extension barrel is solid metal and extremely rigid.\u00a0 There is absolutely no movement or wobble in the zoom extension, even when applying gentle pressure to the end.\u00a0 As a nice touch, the interior ring of the outer barrel is painted metallic blue to give a subtle pop to the lens when zoomed out to 50mm.\u00a0 The zoom ring is covered in a nice ribbed rubber that provides excellent grip.\u00a0 The zoom and focus rings are both very well damped and move smoothly and surely.\u00a0 The lens features switches for the optical stabilizer and manual focus switches, along with Samsung’s excellent iFunction button to allow the focus ring to change other settings.\u00a0 The 16-50mm is a lens that feels premium in its construction.<\/p>\n

The lens is quite large, however, as you might expect from a zoom with such a large aperture.\u00a0 It’s a moderately long and quite fat lens with some real heft.\u00a0 However, it handles beautifully on a camera such as the NX1 (reviewed here<\/a>) which features a prominent hand grip, and I’d imagine cameras like the NX30 would work just fine with it as well.\u00a0 I don’t think it would handle particularly well on some of the smaller NX bodies such as the new NX500.<\/p>\n

Going back to the iFunction button mentioned earlier, the button is a nice large and easy to find rubberized button, so accessing the iFunction capabilities are quick and easy.\u00a0 Simply press the button, and a menu comes up in the camera\u2019s viewfinder or rear screen to change one of several settings, such as aperture, ISO, shutter speed or white balance.\u00a0 The photographer can quickly change the settings by turning the focus ring on the front of the lens.\u00a0 It\u2019s a nice extra feature that can help to quickly adjust certain shooting parameters.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The lens extends towards the longer focal lengths<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Autofocus and Image Stabilization<\/h3>\n

The Samsung 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 features a very fast and quiet stepping focus motor that was able to accurately lock focus nearly instantly in good light.\u00a0 I found the focusing consistent throughout the focal range.\u00a0 In good light, the focus is as fast as most any lens I\u2019ve had the pleasure to use, and this speed is present for continuous autofocus as well.\u00a0 The quiet focus motor also makes the lens good for use with video shooting.<\/p>\n

I did notice that the lens tended to slow down substantially when shooting in dimmer light.\u00a0 This is likely primarily due to the limitations of the focusing system of the camera, and with the bright aperture and fast focus motor, there is potential for low light focus speed to improve with future camera releases.<\/p>\n

The 16-50mm comes complete with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), and the stabilizer used in this lens is fairly standard when it comes to reducing camera shake.\u00a0 I found the OIS unit capable of reducing shake for approximately 2-3 stops of extra stability.\u00a0 At the wide end, shutter speeds in the 1\/5 second range were fairly common, while I was able to manage approximately 1\/10-1\/15s at the telephoto end of the zoom.\u00a0 It\u2019s a capable stabilizer unit, but merely average when compared to today\u2019s competition.<\/p>\n

Continue: Image Quality<\/a><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Image Quality<\/h3>\n

With an upper-tier pricetag and professional credentials, my hopes were high for the optical performance of the 16-50mm f\/2-2.8, and I wasn\u2019t disappointed.\u00a0 Let\u2019s dive into the specifics:<\/p>\n

\"Samsung<\/a>
Samsung NX1 with Samsung 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 S ED OIS @ 26mm, f\/5.6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sharpness<\/h4>\n

The 16-50mm is a very sharp lens.\u00a0 Central zone sharpness is already very high throughout the zoom range right from the maximum aperture.\u00a0 The outer third of the frame is a bit softer at these wide apertures, especially at f\/2 and the wide end of the zoom range, but I never felt held back by image sharpness if I chose to shoot wide open for depth of field considerations.<\/p>\n

Stopped down, the lens is very sharp across the frame, with only the slightest bit of softening in the corners.\u00a0 Overall, it\u2019s an excellent lens for most any type of photography with regards to resolution.\u00a0 The 16-50mm was able to provide plenty of resolution to meet the needs of the NX1\u2019s very dense 28 megapixel sensor.\u00a0 I was very pleased to see that while the wide end was slightly weaker than the long end, the overall performance was quite even at most any setting.<\/p>\n

Click the image\u00a0to the right\u00a0to open a full-size sample to see the resolution you can expect out of the 16-50mm. Click on the green arrow at the bottom of the screen after the image loads to view at 100%. (Note, the file is large and may take some time to download.)<\/p>\n

Bokeh<\/h4>\n

The Samsung 16-50mm has a very wide aperture for a standard zoom lens, with the lens starting at f\/2.0 at the wide end and proceeding to f\/2.8 at the long end.\u00a0 As a result, the lens is capable of good subject isolation in many circumstances, and overall it performs fairly well in this regard.\u00a0 Focusing closer up wide open at the 16mm setting produces a very pleasing look to the out of focus areas, with generally neutral edges to highlights.\u00a0 At the long end, things remain quite nice.\u00a0 It\u2019s not going to produce super creamy images, but the bokeh produced by the 16-50mm is very good for a standard zoom lens.<\/p>\n

\"Eyeing<\/a>
Eyeing the City – Samsung NX1 with Samsung 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 S @ 16mm, f\/2.0, 1\/1250s, ISO 100<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Color, Contrast and Chromatic Aberration<\/h4>\n

The 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 produces images with very nice contrast and excellent color.\u00a0 The tonal response isn\u2019t overly harsh, but provides good tonal separation and smooth gradations in areas of more subtle color change.\u00a0 The color comes out of camera with moderate saturation that takes postprocessing very well.\u00a0 It renders somewhat similarly to how many Fujifilm lenses render, which was a nice thing, since I tend to really enjoy that drawing style.<\/p>\n

\"Columbus<\/a>
Columbus and the Scioto – Samsung NX1 with Samsung 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 @ 20mm, f\/8, 1\/80s, ISO 100<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unfortunately, one area where the 16-50mm is weak is in chromatic aberration.\u00a0 The lens can show rather significant red and blue lateral chromatic aberration, especially towards the corners of the frame.\u00a0 The CA can mostly be corrected with Lightroom\u2019s CA correction tools, but some mild residual chromatic aberration remains even after software correction.\u00a0 Longitudinal CA is also present in the right circumstances, but I didn\u2019t find it generally field relevant.<\/p>\n

Distortion, Flare and Vignetting.<\/h4>\n

The Samsung 16-50mm does a fairly good job with distortion considering the very wide to short telephoto focal range. There is some barrel distortion at the wide end and some minor pincushion distortion at the long end, though neither are objectionable unless your scene features lots of straight lines, and even in those situations it can be corrected fairly easily.<\/p>\n

With regards to flare, I found the 16-50mm to be generally quite resistant to ghosting and contrast reduction when bright light sources were in the frame.\u00a0 Even the sun near a corner produced minimal flare.\u00a0 However, the lens isn\u2019t perfect in this regard.\u00a0 Bright light at the very edge of the frame, or just out of frame can produce strong linear ghosts that appear to shoot in from the edge of the frame.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t a common problem, but it\u2019s something to keep in the back of your mind when shooting around a lot of lights.<\/p>\n

The 16-50mm does a great job with regards to vignetting.\u00a0 Some mild vignetting is visible at maximum aperture, but it\u2019s not objectionable and it essentially disappears when stopping down a bit.<\/p>\n

The 16-50mm f\/2-2.8 is a lens that produces excellent image quality in most any scenario.\u00a0 It\u2019s very strong wide open and is excellent stopped down.\u00a0 It\u2019s an extremely versatile lens that provided confidence when shooting, which allowed me simply to focus on getting the shot I wanted.<\/p>\n

Continue: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h3>\n

\"1650_s\"<\/a>Pros:<\/h4>\n