The European distributor is Foto-tip in Poland and the obvious place to go is their EBay site, which seems to be well known, and where the price is £309-99 (inc. P&P).
However if you go to www.foto-tip.pl (as prashant points out above) the price works out at 301-34 Euro + UPS at 16-25 Euro.
Better still their conversion rate to £--Sterling works out at £243-39 + UPS adding £8-40.
In response to my query on the 14th. April as to when the 14mm would be available Foto-tip told me last week that they were about to send out the first lenses but they didn't have many. I had pre-ordered so emailed back 'hoping'................ almost by return they confirmed that they had dispatched my order!
As I said earlier first impressions are very favourable.
Beni wrote:
Question: how do you focus a lens with that much DOF?
In some situations (e.g. interiors) you may not need to focus at all. Any focus position will be adequate certainly from f/8, probably from f/5.6, and maybe even from f/4. For a landscape with distant features, you are probably good as long as you aren't focusing real close to MFD.
ScooberJake wrote:
In some situations (e.g. interiors) you may not need to focus at all. Any focus position will be adequate certainly from f/8, probably from f/5.6, and maybe even from f/4. For a landscape with distant features, you are probably good as long as you aren't focusing real close to MFD.
It is not difficult to focus at f/2.8, and you need to do it, but stopped down it will be more forgiving.
A 14 mm f/2.8 will give MUCH less DoF on FF than say 10mm f/3.5 on a crop body. With 10 mm f/3.5 I can easily see the focus change using LV full image. Zoomed in 5x, even a very small movement of the focus ring makes things blurry.
pinball_pw wrote:
I must be reading the EXIF wrong on the pics linked. They all say 50mm. Do they not report back the focal length?
No the lens is not chipped to report information to the camera.
You can of course add an AF confirm chip yourself - most of these are set to report a focal length of 50mm, and some of the newer ones do have the facility to program with focal length and max. aperture.
I am pretty interested in these lenses that Samyang is bringing to the table. it's exciting to see companies making affordable fast primes (albeit MF only)
This is actually an interesting lens. I already have the 16-35mm Canon, but to get a bit wider on a 5D would be nice in some circumstances. I'm interested to hear more from people who purchase them. Probably in the market to pick one up in May or June -- maybe once they become more widely available and/or when price comes down (though, you can't complain about price, even at $465)
I'm a rare person who thinks that a little distortion isn't the end of the world, as it can usually be corrected enough in post processing to negate any real issue. However, this distortion is enough to ruin images. As I'd use it mostly for architecture, it'd kill my ability to use it. I'm hoping he had some oddly decentered elements or something, as I notice the field curvature in his test images to be massively extreme (relatively sharp lower corners, sharp upper center, but completely blurry sides and top corners which are subjects far away.) We'll see if other people have the same experiences. If so, I'll pass. It seems to me that the original images posted, though, are far better than these, and that was before the lens was redesigned to IMPROVE the optical quality. These are also nowhere near the quality of the images posted on the Samyang website...could they be doing massive correction? Yeah, but I'll wait for more reviews to make sure this isn't just a one off terribly aligned copy.
wickerprints wrote:
Looks really nice in the corners, but with some small caveats of course:
1. We are looking at a resize to something like 30% of the original image resolution.
2. With the exception of the final image, the other subjects are not ideal for looking at corner performance.
I'd also like to know what f-numbers these samples were shot at--some look stopped down, others maybe not, but I can't tell, since it's missing from the EXIF.
But yes, this appears to be very, very nice performance indeed. And at a very competitive price! In many ways, one would not miss not having AF on such a lens. Based on image samples I am tentatively claiming that this lens outperforms the Sigma 12-24/4.5-5.6 @ 14mm. Canon better watch out. My fondest wish is for upstarts like Samyang to shake up the 35mm lens retail market, because competition leads to innovation and downward price pressure....Show more →
AF? Why AF? Set to infinity, release shutter, enjoy.
Seriously, if the lens is decent, I wouldn't care too much about AF for what's probably more a landscape lens than anything else.
Interested in more user tests, dont know the QC of Samyang. Dont like to use software to correct such an issue. If this is the standard Samyang will set for this lens, I do not expect high sales volumes, too much competition in the same price category.
