That Is It. No More Sony Mount AF Lenses… Remaster Slim?… Dang It Samyang.

I have not considered a new native FE AF lens for Sony in months. Over the years I was able to assemble my personal Holy Grail native AF lenses. (Manual focus and adapted lenses are another story.) A nearly perfect 50mm. A great portrait lens. A great event/portrait/all purpose zoom lens. Kept a wide zoom around for those rare occasions that I needed it. What had eluded me was a small prime to pair with my A7C. After much trial and error over many years I finally settled on the Sony FE 40mm f/2.5 G.

A great lens. Near flawless optically. Between it and the 50mm above I actually let go of my other 50mm-ish Sony AF lenses. The 50mm f/1.8 was easy to let go of and as much as I liked the ZEISS 55mm it lost out to the 50mm G Master when I wanted a fast aperture and the wider 40mm G when I wanted something smaller for daily use. So it sat unused and I let it go. But as much as I like the 40mm I must admit something. While small it is not a pancake lens. Which is why I pivoted to truly pocketable pancake lenses on another system for daily use. Sure Samyang/Rokinon made almost pancake lenses that I have owned. But even they were slightly larger than what I would call an actual pancake lens. Also did not help that they were made of a less than pleasing shiny plastic and lacked any switches. Had thought this might be a limitation of a full frame sensor. The only true mirrorless pancake AF lens I know of from any brand is the Canon RF 28mm f/2.8 STM. (With its fixed f/8 aperture and MF only specs the Panasonic pancake is a solid nope.) What gives Sony?

Had started to think there was something to the whole Sony FE mount diameter shaming I have seen crop up from time to time. But Samyang says nope. I think. More on a possible caveat below. I read a Petapixel article about Samyang announcing an interchangeable lens AF system called the Remaster Slim. (All images below are screenshots from Samyang’s website.)

Full disclosure: I did check the post date for April 1st and went to Samyang’s website before becoming too invested in this. Seems legit though.

Cool. Very innovative. But the interchangeable lens part is not what interests me here. This lens appears to be made from a better grade plastic than the existing pancake-ish lenses, includes an AF/MF switch, offers closer focusing in MF mode, and most importantly… it is a true pancake lens…

…that is much smaller than their prior lenses as well.

While it looks good on the faux SLR Sony camera in the sample pic I think this lens will really shine with the smaller A7C line of cameras.

Also very reasonably priced it seems at less than $300. I assume that is for an AF module and one lens insert. I am curious how the lens modules will be priced. I would likely go with the 32mm option but if the other modules are relatively inexpensive another one might be in the cards. I could make a case for getting a 32mm and 21mm module rather than splitting the middle with the 28mm. Although if I did get the 28mm I doubt I would get the other two.

The sample images look good also.

Also, it does not hurt that Remaster Slim sounds like a stage name for a low energy rap artist…

Nice. What of my caveat?

I see references to E mount, instead of FE which is usually used to denote full frame, and I do not see it stated anywhere that these are full frame compatible lenses. One could assume it is full frame because they show it on a full frame body, but I have trust issues and never assume.

Worst case if it is an APS-C lens it will be a great option for the a6xxx line of cameras. I have no love for the only true Sony made AF pancake APS-C prime, the 20mm f/2.8, so this is likely a better option.

Hopefully my concerns are unfounded and it is a full frame lens.

Anyhoo. Will chime in again when more specs are released and they are available for purchase.

Happy capturing.

-ELW