Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC Ultra Wide Angle Fixed Lens w/ Built-in AE Chip for Nikon

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Okay, so here’s the deal. If you’re starting out and need a budget wide angle lens, great. It will even capture stars and the Milky Way with its 2.8 aperature. I’ve heard quality control being an issue but after purchasing 2 of these, I got good copies both times for my Nikon. Here’s the downside and my biggest gripe: distortion. The center of your photos will look awesome. Nice and sharp if focused correctly, but the left and right sides of the frame (I’d say about 15% on each side) will look distorted/stretched. Some software adjustments in Lightroom can help a tiny bit, but you won’t get rid of it all. The edges are also very prone to getting blurry and out of focus. Many budget wide angle lenses will have this problem, so let’s not kill Rokinon for it. Just know that flawless edge to edge sharpness isn’t going to happen here. Nonetheless, it’s a great lens to learn on for many types of photography. I’ve used it for real estate, landscapes, astrophotography and long exposure work. I would NOT use it for group portraits though. People on the edges will look stretched. All in all, you get what you pay for with glass. This is a solid lens to learn on and use in the right scenarios. Just don’t expect it to be flawless at this price point.

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I bought this lens specifically for real estate photography. There is noticeable distortion when looking at straight lines, however any photo editor that has lens profile adjustments can correct for these distortions fairly well. I have started to fall in love with this lens so much that I have been looking for and finding other places to use it, like in sports or street photography. This lens is actually getting used more than my 50mm right now.

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This lens is manual focus. I bought this for astrophotography but Ill now be using it for architectural photography as well. The lens is sharp and has a great price point. The infinity focus is off, mine is only mm off. I tape my focus down for shoots anyway since I dont want to refocus in the dark. It is amazing. Good solid lens and does everything I want it to. For the price, it could be hot pink and I would still use this lens. Photo is straight out of the camera. No adjustments (not even horizon correction)

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This lens is amazing. I bought it mainly for taking pictures of the Aurora. Which might I add it does extraordinarily! I live in Alaska, and one thing I hate is never getting enough of the scenery in my photo. This lens solves that problem. I pull it out everytime I am out now, and find that the pictures I take with this lens tend to be my favorite out of all of my pictures. For the price this lens is an A++ in my book!

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I purchased this for Nikon for use on a D7000. I will be moving to FX in the future, so this was my decision for a wide angle lens over the Tokina 11-16. What do I use this lens for? Landscape, architecture, astrophotography, night time long exposures, unique portrait angles and city/street scenes. I use all of my lenses for all kinds of things. Its just a tool, but a quality tool at that. Lets get down to it. Build: Solid. Very solid. This lens has heft to it, and its metal (except for built-in hood, thats thick plastic) and well put together. Its not overly heavy. It just feels right. Feel: The lens feels incredibly well built. The manual focus ring has just the right amount of grip and a perfect level of dampening in my opinion. The aperture ring is easily turn-able, but not too easy, and has a slightly firm click-into-place at each aperture marker. I feel the focus rings throw is a little too long. This wont bother you unless you need to make quick adjustments fast (candid, street shooting, concert). But, theres also technique to help you get through that. Image Quality: This lens is sharp. Super sharp at f/2.8 and just keeps getting better. Out of focus parts of the scene are rendered very nicely. Youre not going to blur things into oblivion, things will still have detail and shape, but its smooth and pleasing. The lens does flare quite a bit on long exposures with bright light sources. To me this seems very dependent on the scene and the contrast between different objects and ambient lighting, etc etc. Ive shot buildings with the sun just at the edge of the frame and there was no flare at all (lost a little contrast though). Ive also had a few small lights on long night exposures create long, hexagonal flare effects. What Im basically saying is that it doesnt flare on my all the time, but it does. Okay, yes, theres distortion in the lens. It has supposedly been corrected quite a bit from the last iteration. Do you post process? If not, then it might bother you. If you do, then distortion is easily corrected with a current lens profile from Adobes Lens Profile Downloader (if youre an Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom user). As far as perspective distortion, well, thats up to you. If you need your lines straight and nicely vertical and horizontal, then you need to mind your sensors angle with respect to your subject. Thats just the nature of wide angle. Chromatic aberration... I dont even notice any. Other: Ive read that others have had trouble with the accuracy of the focus confirm chip. Also, that the distance scale is not quite accurate. Either Ive gotten lucky or the lenses being made from now forward have been adjusted. Everything worked great on my copy out of the box, no fine tune or anything (unlike my Nikon 50 and 85 1.8G lenses that both needed this). If youve been doing your research on a lens in this focal length, then you know what youre getting and what youre giving up with this lens. The pros far outweigh the cons.

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I bought this lens for a specific and unusual purpose: to use it on a Nikon-to-MFT lens-shifting adapter for shooting architecture. Lens-shifting is useful when it is desirable to place the subject horizon line somewhere other than in the image center while still maintaining the verticality in the image of subject verticals (such as those of buildings, trees, etc.). This feature is an inherent part of many large-format cameras such as sheet-film "view" cameras and a few other types. With most small-format cameras, this function can be purchased in the form of lenses specifically made with this feature included, often called "PC" ("perspective control") or "T/S" ("tilt/shift") lenses. Unfortunately, at this point there are no available PC lenses made that can be fitted directly to micro 4/3rds cameras, and ones that can be adapted are not wide enough in coverage to be useful (there is little point in shifting "longish" lenses since the resulting effect would be minimal, and it can be more easily applied later to such images using photo editing software). I ordered the interesting Kipon adapter that permits perspective-control lens-shifting with Nikon-mount 35mm lenses for the purpose of making my own PC lens. Noted earlier (when checking my many Nikkor full-frame lenses on a non-shifting adapter on the MFT format) was that most of the wide-angle lenses I owned for the 35mm full-frame format unexpectedly showed considerable CA problems, and some also showed (VERY unexpectedly!) considerable edge softness. Adapted lenses 50mm and longer fared better, and with some of those Ive used a lens tilting adapter. I bought this Kipon shift adapter specifically to use with the Samyang 10mm f2.8 (DX-format) lens in Nikon mount, but when that lens finally appeared, it was too expensive for my purposes, it appeared to be too limited in coverage to be very useful, and the first review of it indicated that it may not be good enough to use for making a PC lens. I decided to return to an earlier idea of using this adapter with the (potentially...) very sharp Samyang/Rokinon 14mm f2.8 lens for a 28mm-equivalent PC lens, even though its linear distortion is quite severe (as is sample-variation with this manufacturer, and it took three tries to get a good sample of this 14mm). This combination has worked surprisingly well, and even when using the full available lens shift of about 10mm (20mm-equivalent for the 35mm full-frame format, which permits placing the horizon line outside of the frame edge regardless of orientation, which no other PC lens can do), the far edges and corners are sharp by f8-f11 (depending on the amount and direction of shift - and with a good sample of this lens). I do sometimes need to make some linear distortion corrections during the editing of photos of buildings with strong vertical lines, but this usually takes an unexpectedly minor amount of work, if its needed at all. This lens is rather large and heavy, and therefore somewhat awkward to use on small MFT cameras, but it does perform well for this use. It also performs well with infrared photography (and not all lenses do). More lens reviews (with samples) are here: http://www.david-ruether-photography.com/MFT-Lenses.htm --DR

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A great super wide angle lens. This is a good choice for taking shots indoors where you need to get the entire room. Its also great for when youre close to large objects because its view is so wide you can still capture the entire object. It goes without saying that it takes great landscape shots too. Two things you need to be aware of....(1) Because of how wide the view is, you will get stretching / distortion towards to edges of your shot. Sometimes this can create a cool, dramatic effect. However, people will look odd all stretched out. (2) The focus ring on this lens needs to be set to infinity, any other setting and it produces blurry results. No big deal right? Well, the focus ring is actually easy to bump and turn slightly by accident, so remember to check it before each shot. Overall, for the price, this is a great lens to have in your kit.

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Update 5/24/2018: I received the new Rokinon lens after sending back the first one and took the same test chart image in RAW format which was focused using live view in my Nikon D800. This copy of the lens was very sharp across the frame and even sharp in the extreme corners at f2.8. Then I took a night shot of the stars to inspect for lens aberrations and coma in the extreme ends is very well controlled unlike my first copy where stars looked like little crosses. This lens performs much better and as expected than the first copy. I’m impressed and very happy. It also confirms other reviews that state that QC control for this lens may not always be up to par and copies of this lens with poor performance may float around. Ultimately, if you do get a good copy like mine, this is an awesome lens that can run with the big brand name ultra wide lenses but at a much lower price point. I’m looking forward shooting the Milky Way with this lens. ——————— Review of first copy of this lens was only 2 stars. My first copy of this lens was very soft on the left side of the frame and sharp in the middle. I have read many reviews that quality control is poor for this lens and you may get a copy with edge sharpness issues, like mine, or you may get a good one. I’m returning this lens and waiting for my second copy which I hope will be better. I’m using this lens mainly for night sky and Astrophotography so for my purpose it needs to be sharp at f2.8. So far I’m not impressed by the quality but I will revise my review if the next copy is of better quality. I know the good ones are out there but it seems to be a luck of the draw so far.

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I just got this lens, and tried it out. It will only work at F22 (smallest apperture). At all other appertures the camera blinks the error code FEE. It does not matter what mode the camera is in (A,S,P,M) and the manual lens settings for CPU type lens and non-CPU type lens also do not work. Dont buy this lens unless you want an F22 apperture wide FOV lens. I am returning it. Incorrectly listed and I submitted a correction request for that too.

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Amazing lens! I use it on my T4i mostly for astrophotography and the lens performs very well. I love the full manual nature of the lens. When you pull it from the box and remove it from the included lens sack, youll be struck by the monster slab of glass the greets you. Be careful as this thing makes your rig very front heavy so take appropriate precautions to ensure your tripod doesnt take a tumble. If youre just getting into night photography, grab this lens and spend a few nights under the stars to see just how amazing the images you can get with this baby are. The lens profile was easy to install for lightroom and corrected any distortion though my crop sensor takes care of most of it.

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