By site editor Dan Chung:

After leaking online last week, Korean lens maker Samyang have just officially announced their new XEEN brand of cine lenses. Initially there will be three lenses available – a 24mm, 50mm and 85mm. Three more are planned for release next year to make a complete set of six.

First Look: Xeen Cinema Primes from Cam Noir on Vimeo.

These are different from existing Samyang lenses and look like they are much more solidly built. They have metal casings and unlike the existing Samyang lenses these will be available with a PL mount. They are designed with higher end cine cameras in mind with proper witness marks for pulling accurate focus. All three lenses share a fast T1.5 maximum aperture.

It looks like the optics in the new lenses are the same as those found in the existing Samyang video oriented lenses but with new Multi-Nano-Coatings to reduce flare and ghosting. The focal lengths and apertures are otherwise the same. Hopefully we will be able to compare them soon.

As well as the PL mount they will also be available in Canon, Nikon, Sony E and Micro 4/3, but it isn’t clear if these mounts are interchangeable like the Zeiss CP.2 range. In the UK these lenses have a suggested retail price of £1600 per lens (inc tax). At this price they are cheaper than industry standard Zeiss CP2 Cine lenses, but several times more than the current Samyang video DSLR lenses. Competition will also come from the recently reduced Sony Cinealta PL lenses, a set of six now costing only $12900 at B+H.

If you want more info then Matt Duclos of Duclos lenses has an excellent article about the lenses on his blog.

For more details you can visit the XEEN website. Hot Rod Cameras has the Xeen cine lenses in stock and they are now shipping.