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wolfbreath
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Registered: Feb 4, 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 0
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Review Date: Jul 10, 2022
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 7
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Pros:
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Sharp contrasty ultra wide view with nice color rendition even at 2.8
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Cons:
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Pretty distorted. Can’t screw on filters. Hard to get focus correct. Awful sunstars.
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It’s pretty distorted so in my experience, works better outdoors. I’m okay with manual focus but this lens looks focused in camera and out of focus on the pc. It’s so sharp and contrasty, even for high res cameras, quality is good. I wish I could attach a polarizer filter. Sunstars look awful.
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 Jul 10, 2022
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flapjack
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Registered: Jan 25, 2015
Location: United States
Posts: 25
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Review Date: Apr 27, 2022
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: $250.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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wide, sharp, cheap
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Cons:
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manual focus, hard to nail focus.
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this is the beginner astro lens for good reason. cheap and a wide aperture, I dont think you can get anything close to this price and this good for wide astro shots. It can be tough to nail focus, but that can be technique more than lens.
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Apr 27, 2022
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Seb Coell
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Registered: Mar 30, 2021
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 0
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Review Date: Apr 3, 2022
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 8
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Pros:
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Sharp in centre, Great for astrophotography, very wide. Price is great.
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Cons:
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Very inconsistent focusing, element easy to damage, manual focus only.
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The 14mm Samyang, is a bargain and it's pretty good for the price, with second hand examples costing the same as new almost, you can tell its a good lens, expect very soft corners, coma, vignetting, but a great wide lens and with decent centre sharpness
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Apr 3, 2022
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Didi88
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Registered: May 12, 2020
Location: Croatia
Posts: 43
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Review Date: May 12, 2020
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Decent sharpness when stopped down, dramatically wide on a ff
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Cons:
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Inaccurate focus scale. It seems the lens barrel "breathes", giving you sharpness inconsistency from shot to shot
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Bought a red ring version for canon for about 230$ used.
First thing I noticed is that 14mm on a full frame is considerably wider than 10mm on a crop.
At f2.8 my copy is not usable. The sharpness gets much better at f4. At 5.6 and 8, you get a decent sharpness across the frame
The focus distance scale is inaccurate. You have to test it and find out where is infinity on your copy.
In the hand, the lens feels dense and sturdy, but I noticed a problem with my copy. I think the plastic barell can bend slightly because of mechanical pressure or temperature change. I don't know exactly. In such situations, the optics gets misaligned, and I get both sides of the photo blurry. Like I was using the tilt-shift lens. The effect is not permament, and in the next shooting situation, photos can turn out to be fine.
Would I recommend this lens? If you are an amateur photographer, definitely yes. You can't get anything so wide for so little money.
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May 12, 2020
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abhu
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Registered: Oct 3, 2016
Location: Hungary
Posts: 0
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Review Date: Apr 2, 2019
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: $260.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Cheap, f 2.8, nice IQ, great focal lenght
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Cons:
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That moustache distortion, easy to scratch the front element- also its a dust magnet
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So its your lens if you want a fast prime for almost everything- except interiors or if you want to get straight lines.
Sharp at 2.8, the vignetting is significant till f8- but for this price i dont think it should be a problem.
You can get used to the manual focusing- i use it on events: after some time you will learn where to roll that ring to get the focus on the subject- its very forgiving.
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Apr 2, 2019
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josh paris
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Registered: Dec 3, 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 410
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Review Date: Oct 30, 2017
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: $225.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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best value, sharp, minimal coma and abbriations
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Cons:
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? not sure the downside unless your exception a Pro lens for this kind of money...I goes you could say build quality and manual focus maybe...
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If you need this local range and speed from a lens and don't have a big budget, this is your lens...I have heard some quality control issues around this lens and brand, but I didn't have any of those issues.
I use this lens strictly for Nightscapes, in fact I had a Zeiss 21mm 2.8- however the coma was too strong so I sold it (yes it a gorgeous lens other than that, but the Rokinon for my use IS cleaner images and wide open its great).
I the electronic 'focus' dot isn't the best indiction that you are pin sharp, I always flip to live view and dial in that way, and from doing that I found about just short of full lock on infinity is pin sharp (which is extremely important to know when shooting stars).
Overall I'm been very content with the Rokinon 14mm 2.8, and would recommend.
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Oct 30, 2017
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ERB2analytical
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Registered: Nov 11, 2015
Location: Canada
Posts: 0
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Review Date: Dec 12, 2015
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: $290.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Build quality is very good with smooth focus and aperture operation.
The lens is generally very sharp right from f2.8 (see cons)
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Cons:
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Some slight right side extreme corner softness and some right side field curvature. Focus distance scale is a bit off for some distances.
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Review is for the Rokinon version purchased from B&H.
Price is USD including GST.
I would recommend this lens to anyone who is comfortable using a fully manual lens who wants a sharp ultra wide full frame lens for a good price.
Build Quality:
The focus ring is very smooth but lightly damped so some care is needed to avoid accidental movement after focusing.
The aperture ring works smoothly with solid clicks at f2.8 and f4 and at half stops after that.
The large lens cap which covers the built in lens hood clips on firmly.
Sharpness:
1. Focused at the center of the frame:
f2.8 was very sharp across the left 3/4 of the frame with some softness on the far right side of the frame.
Stopping down improved the right side until f8 where it was very sharp, however, the extreme upper and lower right corners (8-10% of the frame area) never got tack-sharp like the rest of the frame.
2. Focused at the lower right corner of the frame:
In this case the right side was sharp at f2.8 getting softer moving to the left of the frame.
Stopping down improved sharpness across the frame, however, the extreme upper and lower right corners were still slightly softer than the rest of the frame.
These results seem to indicate some field curvature on the right 1/4 of the frame.
For most shooting situations this will not be what limits sharpness, however, square on architectural shots will require stopping down to get best sharpness across the frame.
The focus distance scale accuracy in meters is good for some distances but off for others. I taped a thin strip of masking tape in the lens to mark corrections on the lens.
Distortion/Vignetting:
The “moustache” distortion of the lens is quite pronounced as is vignetting at wider apertures.
Lens correction will be needed for any shots containing subjects with straight lines.
I got good results with the lightroom canon-6D Rokinon 14mm f2.8 ED AS IF UMC raw lens profile downloaded from here:
http://darwinsden.com/lens-profile-rokinon-samyang/
This appears to have vignetting correction but I don't understand how this works with the canon version given that there is no EXIF data capturing the f-stop used for each shot. I'd appreciate any insight readers have into this.
How I Tested:
Testing was done on a tripod, ISO 100, aperture priority, manual focus at f2.8 with liveview and then stopping down to shooting aperture.
My initial testing in my backyard seemed to show some corner softness.
I did additional "brick wall" testing. I leveled the camera and framed the shot so that the bricks were aligned with the upper and lower edges of the frame with both bottom and top brick rows parallel to the frame edge to get as square as possible to the wall. While setting this up small angle adjustments resulted in obvious misalignment of the bricks with the frame edge so I am fairly confident that I was square to the wall.
In my test the wall was about 2m/6ft away so not a very typical shooting distance for most users – results may differ for subjects that are further away.
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Dec 12, 2015
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Fred Meebley
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Registered: Dec 26, 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 383
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Review Date: Jan 1, 2015
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: $325.00
| Rating: 8
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Pros:
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Nice sharp optics if you get a properly centered lens. For the price, its a beautiful piece of glass.
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Cons:
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The distance scale on the lens isn't even close. Why bother even putting one in the design, if you aren't going to calibrate it at the factory? Because this is a manual focus lens, having an inaccurate distance scale can make focusing difficult. Even with live view zoomed in 10x on a tripod it can be difficult. I got some great landscape shots with it but I'm still not sure if they could have been a little better if the focus was more accurate.
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Jan 1, 2015
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CarteB
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Registered: Dec 24, 2014
Location: Australia
Posts: 0
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Review Date: Dec 27, 2014
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Very sharp, very well built
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Cons:
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If I have to nominate, probably the distortion of long horizontals, but no deal breaker, and the fact that the distances on the focus ring are inaccurate. I'll explain this later.
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I shoot with a 6D, have several top "L" lenses and have used this lens quite a bit: overseas, around the dinner table and in the street. Top IQ. I use it mainly at f5.6, with or without flash, but it handles f2.8 quite well. However, being manual focus, I spent quite a while working out how to use the distance scale on the focus ring because I can't visually discern focus through the viewfinder with such a wide angle of view. The issue there was that the distance scale is inaccurate; in other words, 3feet on the barrel doesn't focus on objects 3 feet away. But it's all right now, in fact ... well, I love this lens. I have worked it out, know where to set the focus ring for my particular subject, and get 100% keeper rate regarding accurate focus. I know it's lovely to just whack the lens on and start shooting, but this lens needs some time, which, if you are like me, is a great excuse to take and test lots of pictures and play with your gear. It may not suit a happy snapper or the more impatient.
As for that moustache distortion, yeah, I occasionally see it, but not often. For example, I got the edge of a long roof horizontally into most of the frame first time I noticed the distortion, but then, I can shoot ocean scenes where you'd think the horizon would warp, but unless the horizon takes up most of the frame, distortion isnt an issue. I mean if, say, you have beach or headland in 1/3 of the frame, distortion of the horizon isn't noticeable. For all other shots where straight lines don't dominate, like interiors or around the streets, no problems. If I made money out of ultra wide photography, I'd probably test it first, but for a hobbyist like me, that distortion is a minor trade off for, otherwise, excellent optics. Really, so many pix from this lens are so satisfying that the occasional wonky horizon doesn't worry me.
So it's a really good lens that benefits from some trial and error to refine the focusing.
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Dec 27, 2014
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mmajsw
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Registered: Aug 9, 2009
Location: Canada
Posts: 74
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Review Date: Jul 13, 2014
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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I got this lens on an impulse buy from a friend who bought it but was not sure if he liked it - he does buy a lot of gear. I must say that considering the price, it is an amazing lens. You have to live with manual focus but at this focal length, it is hard not to have things in focus. The focus ring is smooth and well damped. The long focus throw makes it easy to fine tune your focal point. As long as you are aware of it's shortcomings, I find it to be very useable for me. I have seen nothing else at this price point.
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Cons:
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Strong vignetting at 2.8 - 4 and the difficulty of using ND/Polarizing filters. the filter issue is a bog one for landscapes.
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Jul 13, 2014
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Dpedraza
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Registered: Jan 8, 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 1843
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Review Date: Nov 25, 2013
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: $280.00
| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Sharp, price, MF, light weight
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Cons:
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distortion
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I had my Samyang 14mm for a short while couple months at best. I used it the canon 6d I had. I must say the lens def shocked me. for the price point there isn't an ultrawide that can touch this lens. It's very sharp and light weight. I bought into this following the hype over here on the forums about how well it performs. I must say I was shocked at how well the lens did for how cheap it is. The only real downside is the distortion.
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Nov 25, 2013
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Reviews
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Views
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Date of last review
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11
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24598
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Jul 10, 2022
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Recommended By
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Average Price
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100% of reviewers
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$271.67
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Build Quality Rating
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Price Rating
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Overall Rating
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7.91
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9.64
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8.8
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;)
