Rokinon FE14M-C 14mm F2.8 Ultra Wide Lens for Canon (Black)

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I bought this for a 4-corners trip anticipating starry skies. I didnt know there was monsoon season in the american southwest. So I had one good clear night. It is a great lens for astrophotography (i think, Im just learning)and for landscapes and big skies. Colors are nice and good contrast. I tried using this as a walk-around lens and ran into huge problems with the manual focus. Im 50 with bad eyes. I can manage a manual focus Yashica 50 and 28mm pretty well, but this lens has such as wide focus range and the view is so wide, large turns of the focus ring make imperceptible changes through the viewfinder, so tons of my pictures were out or focus. When it was in focus, I was very happy with the results. If you can afford it then an autofocus option may be better if you want to use this for more flexible needs, but if just using at infinity then I cant imagine a much better UWA lens at any price. These were all shot with on a canon 6d

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Cons: - Manual lens, but you know that, right? Thankfully its depth of field at anything over f/5.6 is deep enough to cover most situations, those close-ups require patience. Perhaps its my eyesight, but I have a hard time seeing the image clearly enough to gauge precise focus. I usually resort to a test shot or two. - no range rings to assist with depth of field - even with the fixed hood, its bulbous glass makes it a big target for rain; I hike in the Pacific Northwest, so you can understand the challenge to keep it clean - the mustache distortion begs for post-process fixing on images with long horizontal lines Pros: - great images -- crisp, but it gets a bit blurry right at the edges/corners - only $350! - fast @ f/2.8 - solid lens cap -- my lenses get bounced around a lot and I appreciate the extra protection. Updated 10/22/2013: I continue to believe this is one of the best lens values on the market. If youre a competent photographer and can handle a totally manual lens, you will be hard-pressed to own a better lens value for the price. I have some photos from this lens that rival or exceed the quality of Canon L-glass lenses.

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This lens is wonderful. It is one of the top rated nightscape lenses that is currently available on the market. Here is what I have found: Pros: 1. This lens is cheaper by orders of magnitude over similar lenses. To get a fast prime lens like this usually costs upwards of $2000, for a mere fraction of that price this lens blows away the competition. 2. Sharp. This lens has great optics and takes sharp pictures corner to corner by f/8. Wide open it is is a little softer in the corners, but that is just how it goes, unless you want to spend $5000 that probably wont change. 3. Almost no Coma or Chromatic Aberration. For those who dont know, coma is when points of light appear as streaks or smears. The only time this is really encountered in a practical situation is when you are photographing stars. Even on the much more expensive canon and nikon lenses the corner stars appear as ugly streaks, this lens has some of the best coma correction available Cons: 1. Fully manual. This may or may not be a con for you, but in the age of auto-focus, and auto everything, it certainly takes some getting used to. My first 20 pictures with this lens all looked terrible because I was focusing wrong and underexposing. Once I spent some time learning how to properly use a manual lens those problems disappeared. 2. Distortion. This is not really a good lens for architecture. There is rather significant mustache distortion in this lens. This can be corrected in post processing by finding the correct lens profiles online, but that is not ideal if you are photographing buildings and man made structures for a living. However that being said, if you use this lens for landscapes, nightscapes, or pretty much anything that isnt architecture then you will never notice the distortion and shouldnt worry about it. 3.. Focus scale is off. This is the only reason I gave this lens 4 stars instead of 5. From reading around this seems to be a common problem with these lenses. For some reason the focus distance scale is not set correctly. If you google this lens you can easily find a guide to correcting the focus ring and setting it to the correct distances. However upon doing this I found out that it is actually more subtle than just a wrong distance scale. With my particular lens I found that I obtained maximum sharpness for objects ~1mile away when I set the distance scale to between the 7ft and 10ft marking on the lens. This is quite a ways away from where the infinity mark is. However at night when attempting to photograph the stars, I found that I obtained maximum sharpness of the stars with the focus set slightly past infinity. Most of the time one would expect that 1 mile is essentially infinity when it comes to lenses, but for some reason there is a huge difference between 1 mile and infinity. Once I conducted enough tests and examined the test shots at 100% I was able to use simple masking tape to re-label my lens for the correct positions for various situations. It should be noted that this is really only an issue if you are shooting wide open at f/2.8. By f/8 everything will be razor sharp and in focus no matter where you set your focal point due to the enormity of the depth of field of such a wide angle lens.

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Most people, including myself, misunderstand this lens at first. Those of us used to using autofocus will look through the viewfinder and find it difficult to pinpoint focus exactly and complain that focusing is an issue. However, it is not. Once you (optional) calibrate the infinity focus at the L mark left of the infinity mark, you can literlaly set the focus anywhere between 3 feet and between 10 feet and infinity and everything from 2-5 feet out to infinity will be in focus. I dont focus this lens. Once I learned about hyperfocal distances, etc. I simply set mine at 10 feet, f5.6 for landscapes (the sharpest setting for this lens) and walk around and shoot. Its a no brainer lens that is razor sharp and produces amazing images. For anything inside of a few feet, I use live view and magnification to compose the shot or use the AE confirm chip. If you dont understand these things, as I once did not, the lens frustrates you at first. Having AE confirmation chip really does nothing for you because it will light up from 3 feet to infinity most times, however, being able to adjust the aperture electronically is why I bought this version. This lens is now glued to my camera for anything involving tight spaces, interiors, forests etc.

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Primary use is for real estate photography (need for tight spaces like a bathroom) Crystal clear, I dont notice any vignetting and any barreling/distortion can be corrected in PS or with "PT Lens" software (cost is around $25...see photos of before and after correction) Bought the "clicked"aperture version first but ended up returning for the "de-clicked" and intend to use for video too. Versatile and well worth the space in my bag.

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I have both the Rokinon 14mmf2.8 and the 24mmf1.4 which I got specifically for astro photography. I like this one far better than the 24 mostly because of the very deep DoF. While not as fast as the 24 the wider lens can be left open longer without causing the stars to trail so Milky Way shots end up about the same with the two lenses. The 14mm has the advantage of the hyper focal distance at f2.8 being around 10 feet as opposed to the 24s 30 feet at f1.4. That means being able to get the stars and a closer subject in focus in a single shot as opposed to focus stacking in post process. Anything that allows me to do more in camera and spend less time in post manipulating the images is a great thing in my book. I will add that I now use this lens for myriad other uses besides astro photography and it is amazingly sharp without much distortion for the angle and it is fast becoming my go to glass when I want wide wide wide shots. It is an amazing piece of glass for the money! (Use of the lens for non astro purposes; set f8 and the focal length to three feet. Ensure anything you want in focus is 3 feet or more away. Shoot. Simple as that.) I tried to add a couple sample shots from the glass below.

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I love this lens to death. Its a full-manual lens so you have to do everything yourself, but thats not a huge problem to me. Its so sharp its insane. The option for a wide aperture allows it to get the job done in pretty much any kind of lighting situation. Its infinity focus allows for great astrophotography. The lens is still pretty wide on a crop sensor, and its totally nuts on a full frame. Like, so nuts you could take pictures from the roof and itd catch the side of the building. Since the lens is so wide, it can be pretty versatile, but thats just a personal opinion. Its really great if you need to capture a lot in a small space (or a lot in a big space. Either way). However, since its so wide, on a full frame it can cause distortions near the edges of the photos. If you opt for a crop sensor, that problem is minimized. The only major downfall I see in it is that sometimes in live situations when youre unable to use the focus ring numbers quickly enough for an accurate focus, it can be difficult to see exactly when youre focused since the lens is so wide. The focus ring numbers do make it incredibly easy to focus in controlled situations when the viewfinder just doesnt cut it. Overall, its a great lens.

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Very very good wide angle lens! Minor Minor distortion on my canon t3i. Worth every penny. Dont mind it being a manual at all. Smooth focus ring. Cant beat it for the price!

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EDIT, Ive added a photo from a recent shoot. This picture is completely unedited and straight out of the camera (6DMk2). I got this lens here on amazon for $250 (brand new direct from Amazon), I received it this cheap by simply buying it when the demand was low due to it being on the "off cycle" of the Milky Way here in the USA (usually the 1st-16th,27th-31st). During these times, the price drops drastically, just hold out or plan ahead. The price begins to soar as the 20th-26th comes every month.

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This quickly became my favorite new lens this year. I tried to use it in everything that I shot! I even planned a whole camping trip around it this summer! We werent super knowledgeable about timing or anything regarding shooting the stars/milkyway (still need to learn) BUT I did get a few great shots with it. I will say figuring out the manual focus was a little difficult for someone who relies on her auto-focus, but once I got the hang of it, I had no issues. I cant wait to take this thing out when the timing is EXACTLY right! Its going to be magnificent!

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