Third lens from Yongnuo, The 100mm F/2 was in a lot of talks until he came out. Did we wait for something? I’ll try to answer that right now…

Presentation of the Yongnuo 100mm f/2

So, I was lucky to get the lens a few days after it came out on the market, and get it delivered the same day. I bought it on Amazon for $165.

Pretty surprised during the unboxing, Yongnuo did not include a lens cover this time, nor a lens hood. Too bad, I started to get used to it. On the user manual though, Yongnuo tells you to buy the ET-65 III lens hood from….Canon, pretty funny.

The overall quality seems pretty OK, we’re not on high end lens but it does not feel cheap either. The lens weight 15oz / 0.9lb (416g) with both caps on. The picture below shows the Yongnuo 100mm f/2 compared to the Canon 50mm f/1.4 and the Canon 100mm f/2.8. This is to give you an idea of the size. Unfortunately I do not have the Canon 100mm f/2, but this one look very similar.

The focus ring is 0.6″ large (16mm large) and have a short course (a little over a quarter turn to go from minimal to infinite). I liked a lot the softness of the focus ring, not hard as I was used to with the Yongnuo 85mm f/1.8.

The manual focus is great, because for once, I find it easy to focus precisely on a subject, it’s easy to see what we are doing in the viewfinder and the final picture is focused where we choose our focus point.

The autofocus is also great, especially in terms of noise. I was used to the Yongnuo autofocus (AF) motors, which made a lot of noise, but this is not the case here. And this is very surprising, I would almost say this is an ultrasonic motor (USM). So a good point for Yongnuo, hoping that the next lenses go in the same direction. There is still a catch: I had some problems with the autofocus for distant subjects, I speak more about that at the end of the article, but hopefully this looks like an isolated issue.

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Using the Yongnuo 10mm f/2

From the firsts pictures I shoot I directly had a good feeling and was quite happy with this prime lens (that was not the case with the 85mm I tested a week earlier). The auto-focus is quieter (and faster?), it hangs on almost every time, except a few far scenery.

The sharpness goes from good to very good when you have enough light. Here are a few examples shoot with a Canon T3i (EOS 600D). Pictures are coming directly from the camera, no editing, just cropped and resized to 1600px wide.

Click on the picture below to enlarge.

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I did not see any chromatic aberration, so that’s a good point compared to the 85mm.

The following pictures have been taken with a Flash (the Yongnuo YN-14EX). As you can see, the it’s sharp and detailed when we have a good light. This is to show you what we can do some proxy photography / close-up. Don’t expect to do macro photography with it, the magnifying multiplication is not big enough and the minimal distance is 0.9m.

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Technical Specifications:

• Optical formula: 6 groups / 8 elements
• 9 blades diaphragm
• Minimal aperture: f/22
• Amplification factor: 0.14X
• Minimum focus distance: 90cm
• Weight: 0.9lb / 390g naked
• Filter diameter: 58mm
• Price: $165

I’d like to come back on the focus issue I had. When I tried to shoot distant landscapes, I often get stuck with no response from the auto-focus motor. I could not replicate every time, but it happened quite often so I had to talk about it. The solution when I got this issue, is to move the camera to a short subject and focus again, then go back to the distant subject. This seemed to work and fix the issue every time I get it.

This does not look like a production problem as I was not able to find other people with the same problem. I think that my device might have been defective.

Conclusion

If we forget about the auto focus issue I had, I really recommend this lens, if you don’t already have a 100mm or even a 85mm. Pictures are sharp and the lens is easy and nice to use. This is encouraging for the future, Yongnuo is delivering better and better products.

If you are a Nikon user, you should know that this Yongnuo 100mm f/2 lens is also available with a Nikon mount.

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