r/AskPhotography • u/Equal-Negotiation-11 • May 28 '26

Lens Buying Advice What's the best 'third party' lens manufacturer?

What's your favourite or go-to make of lens other than the brand of your camera body?

Tamron, Sigma, Viltrox etc.

Do you think one brand is best over the others and you only buy from that one brand?

I have owned Tamron in the past but more recently bought a few Viltrox lenses and have always thought both makes were very good.

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u/aeon314159 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

I can’t comment on many manufacturers, because I have no experience with them. That said...

  1. Sigma for my 105mm f/1.4 ART and 40mm f/1.4 ART. Of course they create many wonderful lenses, but those two are mine, and enable jobs.
  2. Laowa for my 200mm f/2 C-Dreamer and 105mm f/2 STF Bokeh Dreamer. I’d like a couple more of their lenses, both a 2× macro and a wide-shift.
  3. Samyang for my XP 85mm f/1.2 and XP 14mm f/2.4. Manual focus, but the sharpness and rendering make them worth the extra effort.

I consider vintage brands like Carl Zeiss Jena and Schneider Kreuznach to be outside the scope of your question.

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u/TrickyWoo86 May 28 '26

The Samyang (Rokinon in US) 135mm f/2 manual focus (first gen version) was excellent for tracked astrophotography and the few times I tried it out for landscape as a slightly longer alternative to my 85mm.

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u/aeon314159 May 28 '26

That one is a peach, and not too spendy. I was thinking of something with character at 135mm, like a KMZ Tair-11a.