Sirui Night Walker 24mm T1.2 S35 Cine APS-C

A dirt-cheap T1.2 cine lens that's brilliant in the dark and mushy everywhere else. If you're not shooting night video with manual focus, this lens will annoy you more than it impresses you.

The T1.2 aperture is the whole show here, and it does deliver on the low-light promise. You can shoot in conditions that would make slower zooms cry. But our database puts the optical quality at the 17th percentile, which means this lens is near the bottom of the barrel for sharpness and contrast. Wide open at T1.2, expect a dreamy, soft look with noticeable chromatic aberration. It's not a technical masterpiece. The bokeh is also just average, landing in the 31st percentile, so don't expect that creamy, high-end cine lens blur. The manual focus ring is smooth enough for video work, but with no stabilization and no autofocus, you're doing all the heavy lifting. For a dedicated video shooter on a tripod or gimbal, that's fine. For anyone else, it's a chore.

Stacked against the competition, the Night Walker is a weird animal. The Tamron 28-300mm and Sigma 16-300mm are stabilized, autofocusing zooms that crush this lens in versatility and build quality, but they can't touch T1.2. The Panasonic Leica 12-35mm f/2.8 is sharper, sealed, and stabilized, but it's also more expensive and two stops slower. The Sony 18-135mm is a travel zoom that's better at everything except low light. If you need one lens that does it all, any of those zooms beat the Sirui. If you specifically need a fast, wide, manual cine prime on a budget, the Sirui has no direct rival at this price.

At $279 USD, this is a budget ticket into the T1.2 club, and that's genuinely rare. But you're paying for the aperture and not much else. The build quality sits at the 29th percentile, and the optical performance is worse. For a dedicated night video rig where you'll manually focus and stop down slightly for sharpness, it's a decent value. For anything else, you're better off saving for a used autofocus prime or a faster zoom with stabilization.

The Sirui Night Walker 24mm T1.2 is a niche lens with a very specific job: pulling clean, cinematic wide shots in the dark without breaking the bank. At $279 USD, it's one of the cheapest ways to get a true T1.2 aperture on an APS-C L-Mount body. But that low price comes with some serious compromises, and this is not a lens for everyone. The headline feature is the aperture. T1.2 is genuinely fast, letting you keep your ISO down when the sun goes down. The catch? Everything else about this lens is manual, unsealed, and optically middle-of-the-road at best. If you're a solo shooter who loves the ritual of pulling focus and doesn't mind some softness wide open, this could be a fun tool. If you want sharp, reliable, autofocusing glass, keep walking.

If you're looking for a sharp, reliable everyday lens with autofocus and stabilization, this isn't it. Go grab a used Panasonic Leica 12-35mm f/2.8 or a Tamron 28-300mm instead. The Night Walker is for night video purists who enjoy manual focus and don't mind soft, characterful footage.

The Sirui Night Walker 24mm T1.2 is a one-trick pony, but it's a pretty good trick. For low-light video shooters who don't mind manual focus and can live with soft, characterful footage, this is a cheap way to get a true fast cine prime. For everyone else, the lack of autofocus, stabilization, and sharpness makes it a frustrating daily driver. Buy it for the darkness, not for the detail.