Making my first foray into manual focusing w/ a recently purchased Rokinon 12mm F2. Any advice ? Specifically interested in pointers for settings & focus assist.
Most of the time I just set the focus to infinity and control the aperture according to the environment I'm shooting. Make sure when you focusing at infinity white dot on the red ring align with the 'straight' line on the focus ring(not the infinity symbol). One thing I like about this lens is how close you can focus with it. Below are my photos and I'm extremely satisfied with the quality of the photo produced. Sorry my reply don't really answer your question.
12mm is so wide angle that it is such a large DOF that you will find that stopped down to f4 or more if you set slightly back from infinity that everything will be in focus anyway.
I suggest you check that the infinity focus mark is adjusted correctly. Rokinon/Samyang makes some very nice lenses, but it's not unusual for the infinity stop to be "off".
I have the Samyang 12 for E-Mount, and I just set it to halfway between the 1m and infinity marks for most shooting. If I have very close focus needs, I'll focus wide open and then stop down if need be.
I had one and it it had a bit of a stiffer feel, certainly took a deliberate action to twist it, but it was smooth. Didn't require any amount of force that I would consider a measure of strength, or frustrating at all.
Certainly nothing like trying to twist off a stubborn lid on a food jar etc.
