The Samyang AE 14mm f/2.8 ED AS UMC Lens

Who, what,when, where and why . Thur. 12/15/11

I have been working on improving my work. In order to improve my understanding and use of perspective I wanted to limit my optics to three prime lenses. One wide, one normal and one short telephoto. For the time being I am giving the zooms a rest. I wanted, for a time,  to limit choices and focus on one perspective at a time. Also, to travel light and simple.

Hard Mid Day Side Light

The available choices of normal and short telephoto prime optics for crop sensor dslr cameras abound, but what about a real prime lens wide angle choice? Right you are,  not many. So the Samyang 14mm came to mind. It is manufactured by the Korean Samyang Company. In the U.S.A. the lens is marketed under Rokinon, Phoenix, Vivitar and other house brand names. The lens I purchased is electronically coupled to the camera. Consequently, aperture can be set from the camera body, the camera's meter is fully operational, the focus indicators work and all of my EXIF data is recorded. To this point I can not tell you which of these house brands is, AE, electronically coupled. I phoned B and H and the service representative told me that the Rokinon version they market is not. I am not sure that is correct, however at the time the model number and specs did not show any AE.

Early Day Winter Light

So, to obtain this lens with AE and under the actual name of Samyang I ordered mine from Poland through Foto Tip www.foto-tip.pl/sklep. I should mention that Karol Pietka,www.samyang.pl Sales and marketing  manager for Samyang in Poland was very courteous and helpful. Also helpful are information about and reviews of this device available from Photozone www.photozone.de and even more so www.lenstip.com. When reading the Lenstip review be sure to select the review for the current USM version. Note: that AE has been sdded since that review was published.

What a surprise! But first let's get two things out of the way. One is that this is a manual focus lens. Well at 14mm on DX or FX what would that matter? I set the focus to between two and three meters  with the apeture at f/5.6 or f/8.0 and just shoot. Everything is in focus. Note: some blog and forum people have noted a problen with the alignment of the distance scale with these lenes. I have not had this issue. The second is that this lens has a lot of distortion. Barrel in the center and on FX whiskers to the edges. I only work with DX. The distotion is high, however in most images it is not really a factor and a simple hit of the default setting in "correction/distortion" in Capture NX2 (NX2 being a subject for some other day) works wonders. If you are into architectural photagraphy then this lens is not appropriate. The amount of correction that would be needed in Photoshop or PTlens would IMHO degrade the image and leave it no longer a wide angle view. Once again, in real life shooting this is not a big issue unless you insist on putting verticals towards the edge of your compositions. Perhaps it would be fair to consider that serious architectural work probably begs the use of specialized tilt and shift lenses in any event. Please review the quick test shot sample images. They have recieved no compenstion for distortion other than the mild aforementioned NX2 Adjust Section Distortion Control default setting.

Drab Gray Winter Light

Back to the surprise. It is such a shame that it is not possible to show how extrordinary the performance of this lens really is. The jpegs sized for the web and and the limitations of monitors do not allow me to show you the quality of prints that can be made from images taken with this lens. The edge to edge clarity, third dimension,sharpness and micro contrast are out of this world. Admittedly, I am shooting between f/5.6 and f/8.0. I have not tried f/2.8. I am using a tripod and a 16mp camera. However, the quality of results I am getting are revolutionary. I own and have a good deal of experience working with the Tokina 11mm-16mm f/2.8. It is a very good device. But, aside from the distortion issue it is not in the same league with the Samyang 14mm f/2.8. This lens has such inherent qualities of sharpness, color and local as well as overal contrast that it alters my editing process. It opens new doors to shooting in dull drab light.





Late Day Winter Light

To conclude, not only are the optics a joy to behold the device is cheap, feels great on the camera and is well built of nice materials. Oh well, we will see how living with and caring for these modern bulbous non filter protected front glass elements works out. Not a lens, any more than the Nikor 14mm-24mm f/2.8, Nikon 14mm f/2.8, Canon 14mm f/2.8 or the Sigma 8mm-16mm, for dirty environments. You can not protect the lens with or use filters. This is one fine optical device. I hope you get to enjoy the use of one. At one half to less than one quater the price of the others you well may be able to. IMHO resolution figures alone will not tell you the type of performance a lens can provide. Only fairly large well crafted prints can do that. And on that score this lens delivers. For the tech stuff check out Photozone, Lenstip and others. Till next post, Respectfully KFW