Small Userreview of the Samyang 14 mm / 2.8 IF ED MC UMC Aspherical super wide angle lens with a Canon EOS 5D DSLR - this lens is also named Bower 14 mm f/2.8 Manual Focus Aspherical Super Wide Angle Lens, Walimex Pro 14 mm /2.8, Vivitar 14 mm f/2.8, Falcon 14 mm f/2.8 ED Asph IF and Rokinon FE14M-C 14 mm F2.8 Ultra Wide Lens
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This is not a 1:1 translation of my German page - I am not that good in languages to do that.
Some people in different photo boards asked me to show first pictures and tell my experiences with that cheap new super wide lens.
Many amatuer photographers hope to get with this lens a cheap extreme wideangle lens, with only minor disadvantages in comparison to the expensive Canon EF 14 mm oder Nikon Nikkor 14-24 lenses.
The images above are optimised, some in Silver Efex Pro (plus vignetting), some during the moment of picture taking.
My following test-images - they are shot with a Canon EOS 5D (the old one, not 5D MII) as RAW images. With Rawshooter the images were processed, without sharpening or contrast corrections, if no other is mentioned. These images are linked from the smaller ones you can see here.
left f/ 2.8, right image f/4.0
left f/ 5.6, right image @ 8.0
At last f/11 - these 5 images were shot from a small tripod with mirror pre release
Because some can´t see the resolution and the borders of the images good enough with my first images, here a better one (same lens as the other images):
The tree images bellow are at f/ 2.8 - without image processing to sharpen or contrast optimizing. I like the bokeh of the Samyang wideangle lens. From the few pictures I found in the net taken with the Nikon 14-24mm @ 14 mm and the Canon EF 14/2.8 I and II at open iris and withnear objects I have the impression that the Samyang could have a little bit better bokeh rendering. I like the feasibility to work with f/2.8 in close distance with that lens.
Now images mostly @ 8.0, here you can see the moustache distortion :
On the left side an normal image from the Samyang super wide angle with moustache (Wave) distortion - in the middle the image with PTLens corrected, and right with my self created Adobe Lightroom lens correction file - one can see how little image border area is gone with all these corrections!
The moustache distortion is the main problem of this lens.
With
PTLens one can correct most of the distortion of this extreme wide angle lens, I should test that, one of my pictures was the correction master-image.
For me it seems, that stray light / flares are no special problem of this lens. But I have not tested the Canon EF 14 mm lens, or the Nikkor 14-24 or the old Tamron 14 mm.
Mechanical Quality of the Samyang / Rokinon / Wower 14mm f/2.8 lens:
My impression is, that the iris steps are not even. When I close the iris from 2.8 to 4.0 I need not twice the time. But that could probably depends on the decreasing of the vignetting. Have to test that further (with a full homogen object, and some test images).
My lens has the problem, that the flange back lenght is not properly adjusted. If I photograph objects in infinite distance the focus scale is on ~ 0.8 meters.
While correcting that by myself I could see, that the mount ring has only three screws which are in plastic - for my impression not very trustworthy.
Regarding the focus scale: The lens has no depth of field scale and no IR index.
I think the later I will add myself for easier infrared photography with that lens.
Here in this cut away picture I colored all the plastic parts red - for me as a lover of old manual lenses too much:
The screws from the metal mount are in plastic - seems not very durable.
Here in an German photo board a user write his focus was deadjusted after a 40 cm fall - inside the camera bag!
The three mount screws are screwed into plastic - I don´t think that is ideal for such a big lens.
Here you could see, how I did the focus-correction on the Samyang 14 mm f/2.8.
The not correct focus scale seems to be a very common problem of this lens. It can be fixed. Some users have problems with a stuck iris. And others like me problems with bad mechanics of the lens. It seems that three screws inside the lens are used at Samyang production plant to make the lens front parallel to the back, and to correct back focal length. When one of these screws is loose, there is no correct way to repair it. This is probably the reason why this lens is excanged when it has defects - until now I found no one that got his lens reparied back.
My Samyang 14/2.8 lens is defective after one year of use. It is no longer parallel to the sensor plane.
More about typical / common problems the Samyang lenses !
Now Pictures made with the Samyang 14mm 2.8:
Here a test image for freelensing with the Samyang superwide: The wasp or bee touches the lens! But it didn´t care.
One of my first Samyang 14 mm freelensing images is the 7. image from the top.
In this image one can see the smooth bokeh very good.
There is no filter usage planned for this lens. Flat filters need some 17 cm diagonal in front of the lens. If one shortens the lens shade, smaller filter should be ok.
I perform at the moment some tests with filters inside the camera mount. The image of the stones and water is made with a greyfilter inside the camera mount. The image of the waterfall is only stopped down, and ISO 50.
More about my idea how to use filters with the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC - German text.
Adobe Lens Profile for Samyang / Bower / Vivitar / Walimex /Falcon /Rokinon 14 mm / 2.8 lens on EOS 5D (Mark I)
I made with the Adobe Lens Profile Creator correction profiles for Lightroom and Camera Raw.
I do not upload my files to Adobe, because I several times correctet the distance scale with different methodes - not sure that this has no influence on distortion.
Here are the *.lcp files for JPEG and RAW with distortion, chromatic abberation and vignetting.
And here a *.lcp file that corrects only the distrotion for
RAW.
Short test of the Samyang 14 mm / 2.8 ED AS IF UMC Aspherical Super Wide Lens with Canon EOS 350D ExF Infrared-Modified
I bought the Samyang super wide lens as a super wide for my fullframe camera, but it should be useful for the infrared crop-sensor camera too. My infrared camera is a self modification invented EOS 350D with exchangable filtersystem inside. So I have the bright viewfinder, short exposure times, and the possibility to change in two minutes the filter in the camera to react to different situations. I can use up to now the original Canon ir cut filter, two different IR-transmission filters, a red filter, a UV-cut filter which passes infrared and visible light. For these tests I have used the common Hoya R72 filter.
I made some tests of
green grassland in the bright sun, I didn´t see any hotspots from f/2.8 to f/8.0 - I could´t make further iris settings due to a older women who talked with me till the sun went away.
These infrared images (near infrared) are optimized - red-blue channel exchange, Silver Efex Pro, dust removal:
More of my Samyang 14 mm / 2.8 pictures:
Infrared 1, Infrared 2, Infrared 3, Cow, Waterfall 1, Waterfall 2, Devil, Architekture, Coverage of a colorful German folk music festival
Further Reading:
- Company Samyang
- Foto-Tip.Com with the Samyang Domain and a page for the 14 mm Samyang.
- Some informations at dpreview
- Test of that new version of the Samyang 14 mm lens at Lenstip.com
- Test of the Samyang 14 mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC Aspherical on a full format camera at photozone.de
- Adobe Lens Profile for distortion correction, Thomas Berndt
Some more pictures made with this corrected version of the lens:
- forum.nikoniarze.pl
- canon-board.info - here is another user with false flange back distance - and his repair on page 17
- Here a repair tip how to correct the focus on the Samyang 14 mm / 2.8, Thomas Berndt - and here is my way for this register length adjustment
- Comparisson between the Samyang 14 against Canon EF 14 mm/2.8 L II USM and EF 16-35/2.8 L II USM - Samyang seems to be good
Please visit my own photo equipment DIY page too :-)