Testing the Waters – Samyang 14/2.8…
by Rodney Campbell on Nov.04, 2014, under Life, Photography
A test shot taken the day I got my new “toy”. The Samyang (also branded as Rokinon/Bower/ProOptic) 14mm f/2.8 ultra wide angle prime lens.
Testing the Waters
NIKON D600 + 14.0 mm f/2.8 @ 14 mm, 1/30 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100
Officially it’s called the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC and I’ve ostensibly purchased this lens for shooting astro photography (stars, milky way, star trails). The reason it’s good for this:
– it’s very wide angle (but not fisheye) (to allow a wider view of the landscape, sky and stars)
– it has a fast maximum aperture (to let in a lot of light)
– it has very good coma correction (so points of light – i.e. stars – appear as points rather than strange distorted smears, streaks or bird shapes – especially towards the edges and corners of the frame)
– it’s cheap (relative to say the Nikon 14-24/2.8 which costs in excess of $2000 here in Australia – compared to the Samyang which cost me $380 delivered)
It is a manual focus lens however the Nikon mount version does have electronic contacts so Aperture control from the camera works, as does focus confirmation and you get exif data from the lens back to the body.
This is my first handheld test shot just on sunset (I’ve manually blended two bracketed exposures here).
I’ll do a more complete writeup on the lens at a later stage but so far it is looking very good.
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