I was out this afternoon taking photos to compare some 35mm lenses, and I figured, why not fire up my new Samyang 14mm f/2.8? Excellent detail. I'm impressed. Here's a photo of a local grain elevator taken with a 1DsIII + Samyang 14/2.8 UMC at f/8, on a tripod, 1/320 sec, and ISO 100. The following panels show 100% crops from various parts of the image, at locations shown by the red squares in the Navigator panels. Auto-contrast and a touch of USM have been applied (30%, radius 1.0 px, threshold 0).
This lens is the reason that I am selling my Tamron 17mm (2nd Ver.). It is so damn sharp, and I use PTLens to correct for the weird mustache distortion.
Amsterdam was great, as always. I had two hours at home to change bags, between returning from the Dominican Republic at 0700 and flying to AMS at 1200. I arrived in AMS with about 30 minutes to spare, before the start of the meeting that I was chairing. I used up most of that extra 30 minutes by getting on the wrong train at Schipol. I was traveling light, and so I only took my XZ-1.
Indeed it's a sharp lens, I can just agree. Oddly I got the Nikon version so I could get a Nikon-EOS EXIF/AF confirm adapter for the 5DMkII I use. Here's a shot from late winter, sorry for the vulgar size.
My Tokina AT-X 17/3.5 is slightly sharper than the SP 17/3.5 (newer model 151B) that I also once owned. I haven't directly compared the Samyang 14mm with the AT-X 17mm. I plan to do exactly this in the near future, so I can decide if I will take both the 14mm and 17mm with me to Utah, or just the 14mm. Of course, my comparison will be to determine if the 14mm cropped to a 17mm AOV has 'as-good-as' sharpness as the 17mm uncropped.
My overall impression is that the Samyang 14mm is 'sharper than' the AT-X 17mm, on a 'wow, that's sharp' basis; however, whether it's sharp enough cropped to match the uncropped AT-X is a different matter - I suspect it's not. OTOH, the TS-E 24/3.5L II is sharp enough to match most 35mm lenses, when cropped to a 35mm AOV. We'll see.
You can see some of my comparisons of the SP and AT-X in these threads.
wfrank wrote:
Indeed it's a sharp lens, I can just agree. Oddly I got the Nikon version so I could get a Nikon-EOS EXIF/AF confirm adapter for the 5DMkII I use. Here's a shot from late winter, sorry for the vulgar size.
wfrank, I must have slept through your post. Great photo. The size is not vulgar, nor is it standard.
Thenk you very much for the links! Just checking it out right now.
Found SP 17/3.5 in store yesterday but its price is close to that of Samyang, so I wasn't exactly sure which one to pick up...
I was traveling light, and so I only took my XZ-1.