, to buy or not to buy, that is the question. I am updating my lens collection and this is the next on the list. I own a Tamron 14mm f2.8, and really like this focal length. The Canon 14mmLmkII gets good reviews, but I would like to see photos on what this lens can really do before I plop $2k on it. I really would appreciate your help.
I bought the tamy 14mm recently from a man who had just purchased the Canon 14. He provided me with PMs with comp shoot from both. I can try forwarding them to you if that would be helpful. I'm not quite sure how to do that, but there must be a way.
FWIW, faced with a similar choice, I took a slightly different route. I was a little underwhelmed by the Tamron, didn't want a zoom at that width & felt the EF 14L Mk II was simply too expensive to justify (based on the use it would get). So, I ultimately went for the EF 14 L Mk. I - at well under half the price of the Mk II. It has received some mediocre reviews & I was a little hesitant to try it but I have been very pleasantly surprised with the results I've been getting. I know this is not a popular lens here but I think it's received an (unwarranted) excessively bad rap - I suspect from many who are simply passing on "received wisdom" as opposed to actual experience with the lens. Of course, this is my experience - YMMV!
i really dont know which one i'll end up keeping. yes, the nikon is better overall, and the zoom makes it more usefull, but the canon is a canon and if you need a fast shot, you dont have to deal w/ guessing shutter speed,apeture, etc....
here are shots, both straight from camera, camera was set at SRAW in neutral picture style:
big country wrote:
as you can see, very close, but the nikon is def. better.
For sharpness and contrast, certainly, but the Canon is far better for distortion and vignetting. With a 14mm lens, distortion and vignetting are quite important factors, since shots very often involve large spaces and straight lines, as your example here illustrates. On the strength of these shots that you have kindly shared, I'm not sure I wouldn't take the relatively small and light AF 14mm for use on Canon. The picture looks a lot better until you start peeping, and even then it's not an enormous difference. And presumably this is without DPP lens aberration correction. It's a hard decision.
14 is wayy too wide angle for me. it looks like a fisheye. however, if i needed a 14mm lens i'd go for the nikon 14-24. cheaper brand new (incl. cost of adaptor) than the stupid rip off from canon. can zoom too. AF isn't crucial at 14mm.
The 14L2 is superbly rectilinear for a lens that wide. It's kind of an anti-fisheye.
I agree that it's overpriced. But Canon will probably sell them to people making movies with 5D2. You can't so easily turn the camera to portrait when shooting video, and the frame is more letterboxed too, so you end up using significantly wider lenses for video than for stills.
big country wrote:
the 14mm II is nothing like a fisheye. the 16-35 on the wide end has more fishyness to it than the 14mm II.
+1
here's one hand held, very nice lens for night shooting without tripod. this one with 30D it perform even better on 5DmarkII. I have better images than this one, but lazy to upload lol.
That's not the kind of shot that will show the problem. A fairly common type of shot with a 14mm lens is one where there are multiple straight lines which are either parallel or converge. When shooting buildings or interiors curvature can be a nuisance. The lamp post here illustrates that shooting this lens on Canon will often require lens correction for this kind of shot. Whether it matters to you depends on what kind of photography you do, but many architectural and interior photographers are very fussy about this issue, understandably.
big country wrote:
i really dont know which one i'll end up keeping. yes, the nikon is better overall, and the zoom makes it more usefull, but the canon is a canon and if you need a fast shot, you dont have to deal w/ guessing shutter speed,apeture, etc....
here are shots, both straight from camera, camera was set at SRAW in neutral picture style:
as you can see, very close, but the nikon is def. better.
Thanks for sharing - they are very close. I think the Nikon has a slight edge in sharpness in this comparison, at least in the corners. Hard to tell since I'm on a computer other than my own. Different monitor, different settings.
mohamed alfari wrote:
here's one hand held, very nice lens for night shooting without tripod. this one with 30D it perform even better on 5DmarkII. I have better images than this one, but lazy to upload lol.
1/25s f/3.5 at 14.0mm iso400
I like that image, Mohamed.....it also shows a good lens pedigree.
If we were on a photo sharing/critique forum, I would have liked to discuss the cropping options for that shot with you, but we are obviously not.
what strikes me is the difference in the every-day reality of life that simon & mohamed experience - which at one level is completely irrelevant here, but at another level illustrates the power of the medium we all love.
thanks for sharing guys.
