Rokinon FE14M-E 14mm F2.8 Ultra Wide Lens for Sony E-mount and Fixed Lens for Other Cameras

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First of all, Im not a professional by any means - this is my first lens. Ive always had dreams of taking amazing photos of the stars, so I got a Sony A7, and this lens based on the recommendation of lonelyspeck.com. Ive been reading up a lot on technique, and I have to say that as a beginner, Im VERY happy with this lens. The only other lens I have is the kit lens, and at F2.8 this thing can bring in SO much light, hands down way easier than the kit lens. At night when there is any light present from the moon, or even light pollution, it makes it easy to get landscape photos. It would be nice to have the electronics to communicate the settings with the camera, but for me its not necessary, and probably doesnt happen at this price. Manual focus is easy, it would be hard to focus on anything in motion manually, as it would with other lenses. It requires what I feel to be a lot of rotation to get through the entire range. It seems to be a solid lens and I plan to take many more photos with it! My only advice is to buy one and go out and shoot!

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Based on research I did prior to purchasing I was aware that buyers frequently go through several copies to get a lens that is not out of specs. I received my first copy and after testing on a brick wall, and after testing at F2.8/4/5.6/8/11, all corners were soft with only central part of the image sharp. While harsh corner vignetting improved reasonably by F4 and was pretty decent by F5.6, the corners remained smeared on all four sides up to F16. I received a replacement, which was. Update: attached are pictures of center/corners at 100% crop from copy 1 and copy 2, the second copy looks waaaay better and will do just fine for my skill level and hardware requirements, adding tow stars to my original 2-star rating. Update2: using this lens in the wild I am very happy with having access to the amazing effect 14mm will produce in a full frame camera. That said, it takes some finesse to compose when there are people in the frame or when straight lines need to be preserved. Mustache distortion of this lens is very well corrected in RAW, jpeg shooters may want to look elsewhere. Attached are a few shots of night sky and some redwoods from NoCal. Notable is the flaring around omnidirectional light sources that renders as a rather large oval (seen in the milky way shot and moonlit landscape, could be due to lens fogging) TL;DR: Lens is known to be great value, build quality is solid but DO expect to get a poor quality control and have to replace to get a good copy.

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UPDATE: the lens seems to degrade a bit over time, with softness in the corners getting more pronounced. Changed my score to 3 stars. The good. -Widest Sony E mount full frame (for alpha series cameras) lens available that is NOT a fish eye as at Jan 2016. 14mm is ultra wide and is more than enough for most people. -Sharp under good lighting conditions. (Only F2.8, which becomes more of a factor under poorer light) -Made for Sony, so runs well with Sonys alpha series cameras, (but no autofocus) -Relatively cheap, compared to say, Sonys 16-35mm FF lens. (Around $US1100). -One can play around with a relatively inexpensive, ultra wide angle lens, such as for specialised landscape/architecture and astrophotography, for not too high a price. -not a fish eye lens, which isnt everyones taste. The Bad -No autofocus (which doenst matter much unless you shoot closer up, which is not what this lens is for) -Only F2.8, not great, but not too bad either. -Some moderate mustache style distortion (i.e. mid level horizontal lines arent completely straight, but its only recognizable on some styles of photography) -Large and difficult to clean the lens -Relatively heavy and bulky -Not as sharp as some other E mount full frame fixed focus lenses (becomes noticeable compared to, say, Sonys 55mm/1.8 lens, especially in lower light). -A little lower pixel resolutions than other full frame lenses. All in all, not too bad at all for the price, at around $US300. The images you generally get are not QUITE (but pretty close) the same high sharpness and quality as some of the other Sony E mount full frame fixed focus lenses, and which also have lower F stops (such as the Sony 35mm/1.4 and the Sony 55mm/1.8), but for what its worth, it does pretty well, and it stacks up well against other similar ultra wide angle lenses of other camera brands (e.g. Nikon, Canon) which exhibit similar slight limitations.

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Great lens, super great value at a price you cant beat. Its sharp IF you can get a good copy. However, as many on the web have already said, the lens has a lot of issues with inconsistency and de-centering. Ive heard of this issue before from many people online but figured if it was even reasonably consistent then I wouldnt mind keeping a lens that is sub $300 and is so specialized that I would only use it sparsely anyways. Instead I got a lens that was essentially unusable. From my tests, the lens has good center sharpness and great light gathering ability due to the large aperture. However the entire right side of the lens is UTTER RUBBISH and blurry. It is simply unusable as the right side of the lens is so poor that I wouldnt hope to capture anything on the right side and expect it to be clear. The following photo was taken at f2.8 on an A7rii and not sharpened, only added additional exposure and not cropped. As you can tell, the right side is TERRIBLE. Even when stopped down there is minimal improvement but the comparison between the left and right is palatable. This is due to de-centering, or certain elements in the lens that are off-center, tilted, or uneven. I have some other samples and they all show the same conclusion. LensRentals did a review and Samyang/Rokinon/Bower lenses and they are all the same company sold under different names. LensRentals conclusion is that they are great value but the quality control and materials used are awful. While most lenses use metal, screws, and heavy calibration, Rokinon lenses make extensive use of plastics and GLUE! The result is copy variation is VERY INCONSISTENT and a lot of internal elements that move around, break, or move out of position and alignment. LensRentals says that Rokinon/Samyangs are the most frequently repaired lenses they have. With these lenses, you are essentially getting the luck of the draw with the lens lottery. You might get a superb copy with outstanding sharpness, or you might end up like me with a potato. MAKE SURE YOU TEST EXTENSIVELY before you decide to keep!!!!

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I cant believe how much detail I can attain with this 14mm wide angle lens on my Sony a7II. Pros: - Price range for performance and coverage of the image is great! - The sharpness is good, I can hardly tell any bad flares or issues shooting with this lens. - The distortion is a given on most wide angles but, it isnt bad if you require it for certain styles and themes for your shot. Cons: - My only real issue here isnt from the quality of the lens but, the fact that the lens cover is so huge to lug around in your pocket or leaving out, I can use it as a cup to drink coffee if i wanted to. - You could get flares from the sun if you dont want it even with the current lens hood thats on it. - Its fully manual, no AF or stabilization but, its a given when purchasing cheap lenses.

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Paired this with my [full-frame] A7S as an affordable astrophotography option. This baby lets me get the full 30" exposure out of the sensor without resorting to Bulb mode, resulting in a ton of light/stars without trailing setting in! Between that and a roughly 110* field of view on a full frame, this is a great landscape lens for run-n-gun photography, or for small-club concerts. The focus ring does make the manual-only aspect a little tricky though. It turns more than 180* around the barrel, and due to the nature of wide angles in general, it can be very hard to tell precisely where your focus point is - even with focus peaking on. Best bet is to use the zoom magnification. [Without the magnifier] I had some trouble getting my whole scene in focus due to not knowing exactly where my sharpest point was - even at F11 to get the sun points a tree about 6 away was blurry. Even though that tree was also not to the extreme side of the frame it still had quite a bit of distortion. Thats the other weak point of this lens - the corner distortion and lack of detail. With the right lens correction its definitely better, but it still makes the entire frame difficult to use in most applications. Adobe Bridge has Rokinon lens profiles, some of which help get rid of the mild fish-eye effect in the center of the frame, while some de-skew the corners and bring them back to a usable status. I have yet to find the magic cure-all for both. I think the Rokinon 12mm/16mm and a few longer-lens Canon profiles had the best middle-ground of both. Now dont get me wrong, as much as I painted a negative tone for this wide of an angled lens, it does still manage to give some really cool shots! One of my first real compositions [as opposed to just shooting for the novelty of the wide angle] with this lens came out fantastic and gave a lot of cloud movement to the scene. Ill try to find the picture and post it as example. But with the right angle and the right subject matter this is still a very handy lens that can get some fantastic images! If youre looking for a natural-feeling scene that needs a lot of area covered, shooting from eye-level or slightly higher is your best bet for the least amount of distortion. A good rule is also to have your foreground subject be at least 6 [if not 8] away to avoid too much distortion that you may or may not be able to recover. In the end, despite all my cons listed above, this is still a really good lens that can let you capture some great composures - its all just based on how you use it! :)

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Great lens, but had to send first lens back. I found an ISO Chart in pdf to download, went to copy shop and had it printed 3x2 and shot test photos. First lens had focus issues along the left side. Love Amazon return policy, once I contacted them had a new lens in 2 days. Tested that lens and found it to be spot on. Returned the first lens. All is good. Looking forward to my desert trip to use it for astrophotography, cant wait. This is a great lens for landscape and interior shots where I want to get the most in the photo. It is manual focus so I had to figure out how to set my Sony AR7M2 body to do focus magnification (not something automatic with a manual lens). Once I got that working this lens is easy to fine focus and works great. I am seeing that generally I am shooting one stop underexposed so if I am using a tripod I just shoot the first photo and another with it opened up a half or full stop. This lens has a profile in Lightroom so correction for pincushion and edge distortion is simple and accurate. I may grow to love this lens and give it more use, however, at this time my Sony SEL50F14Z Planar T FE 50mm f/1.4 ZA Lens is my favorite and always on my camera body.

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I dont think Ive ever fallen in love with a lens quite so quickly. Its perfect on the Sony A7. Its what it says on the tin. Manual focus. Manual aperture. No communication of any kind with the camera body. So far, there are only two things about this lens that drag it down for me. One is the focus ring. While it is buttery smooth, you have to crank it quite a bit for a tiny change in focus. I would certainly prefer a shorter throw. The other is the aperture setting. You go straight from f/2.8 to f/4 with the first click. It would be nice to have proper 1/3rd EV stops. One nice thing about using this lens on a Sony A7 is that it gives you something to grab onto. The lens is heavy. It has to be with the large glass objective. However, the barrel is long enough to get good purchase on and the focus ring is right there. The Sony A7s focus peaking and zoom lets you get sharp focus on your subject. The wide angle of view helps with camera shake, although I wouldnt necessarily want to use this as a video lens without some way of stabilizing the camera. A7MII etc users wont have to worry about that. Im attaching an untouched photo taken with this lens.

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This lens has been a welcome addition to both my videography and especially photography. On the lens itself: The lens is well-built, hardy, and features a very nice focusing ring that makes pulling focus feel smooth and not jerky whatsoever. The face the focusing ring is also not an infinite one, but rather has hard stops at macro and infinity is great as well. The lens does warrant some criticism though from me at least. On my Sony a7sii, while shooting in 4k, the focus is never easily discerned via viewfinder or lcd screen. Ever. Despite tweaking the peaking, enhanced zoom while finding focus, and other methods, I still find myself guessing at times. Most of the time I use this is with a steadicam (EC1 Beholder) so I will just throw the f-stop to above 10 and that works, but at 2.8 you will have trouble knowing if youre truly in focus while shooting on the a7sii. For astrophotography however, and wide-shot photography, Im simply in love with the lens. The focus is wonderful near the middle, and the distortion is easily corrected in your photo-editing software of choice. As far as wide lenses on a budget goes, this one is the king as far as Im concerned.

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Focus issues, couldnt not get it to focus correctly, tried with my A7RII and A6300 and on both units the focus is way out of order. My infinity is at 3 meters, go figure. my only regret is that I waited to long to test it and find out about the issues. Also looks like it was a refurbished copy, noticed very small scratches on the screws. Willing to try another copy if a get the chance return this copy, I really believe it is a good lens based on the reviews I saw, but i think I got a limon.

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