bioteacher Loc: Brooklyn, NY

B&H is having a special on the Rokinon 14mm lenses and was wondering if anyone has used the following and their opinions. I will use this primarily for astrophotography.

1. Rokinon AF 14mm f/2.8 Lens for Canon EF
2. Rokinon SP 14mm f/2.4 Lens for Canon EF
3. Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC Lens For Canon EF
4. Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC Lens For Canon EF with AE Chip

Thanks in advance.

Tomfl101 Loc: Mount Airy, MD

I recently purchased the ED AS IF UMC and am very happy with the resolution and contrast of this lens. I haven't done any astro-photography with it yet but I'm certain it will perform well. The great thing about this lens is the price. $285 as apposed to the Canon 14mm at $2000! This is a manual focus lens but at 14 mm there is virtually no focus anyway. Everything is sharp unless you're shooting extreme close-ups. The old style manual aperture ring takes a little getting used to. Your camera controls will not adjust f-stops as with a dedicated electronically controlled lens. Good Luck!

IR Jim Loc: St. Louis

I have the #4 version for Nikon and use it mainly for astrophotography. I'm am quite pleased with it. It has the distortion you would expect from a wide angle lens but it is sharp to the corners. For landscapes the AE chip is nice to confirm focus.

This was taken with that lens. 5 landscape oriented photos stitched together.
http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-486197-1.html

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

None. They are not fast enough for decent astrophotography without higher ISO and more noise.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Actually there is a group of night sky photographers that suggest you get the Rokinon for Nikon, chipped, and an adapter for Canon EF. I've got a friend that has the Canon version (#4), manual focus, chipped, and has used it for night sky on a 5D Mk III.

At F2.8 this lens is sharp into the corners, no coma, but it does have considerable vignetting and complex distortion. Luckily there are some good lens profiles that deal with that. There are QA concerns with some samples being better than others.

Here are two of her shots:

https://untamednewyork.smugmug.com/Galleries/Night-Shots-Gallery/i-g9bChfx/A
https://untamednewyork.smugmug.com/Galleries/Night-Shots-Gallery/i-vdsSb5G/A

Using the 500 rule - where you divide 500 by your focal length to get your exposure time to avoid getting trails, you can do up to a 36 sec exposure, making it, or any other F2.8 lens with similar corner to corner sharpness ideal for starry sky stuff. ISO is usually between 500 and 1600, but sometimes higher.


Here is the results of a Flickr search for "14mm Rokinon night sky photography"

https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=rokinon%2014mm%20night%20sky

I would dismiss any advice that says that you can't do night sky with no star trails using an F2.8 lens because it is too slow. Many photographers seem to be doing just fine. In fact, using a faster lens at this focal length - there are only two options - the 14mm F2.4 and the very excellent Sigma 14mm F1.8. Faster ultra wide lenses tend to be software in the edges and corners and have more aberrations, like coma, that are usually diminished by closing down to F2.8 or F4, so for night sky, a faster lens doesn't really hold any real advantage.

A review for the Sigma:

https://photographylife.com/reviews/sigma-14mm-f-1-8-dg-hsm-art (note the comments about the Nikon 14-24 being a favorite among night sky photographers)

A review of the Nikon 14-24

https://photographylife.com/reviews/nikon-14-24mm-f2-8g/3

A review for the Rokinon for night sky

Here is a guide to post processing the Milky Way. The easy part is taking the shot, but the image really comes alive with solid and careful post processing. Straight out of the camera, star shots are usually pretty dull.

https://improvephotography.com/39977/ultimate-guide-editing-milky-way-photo/

This is a guide for selecting lenses for astrophotography. It introduces the concept of "clear aperture size" in selecting lenses as well.

https://petapixel.com/2014/01/29/picking-great-lens-milky-way-photography/

A good overview:

https://improvephotography.com/46266/best-lenses-milky-way-photography/ (note the words about Samyang/Rokinon/Bower build quality and QA inconsistencies)

You can draw your own conclusions.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Number 4 chipped lens I use the Nikon version with the chip

bioteacher Loc: Brooklyn, NY

Thank you Gene51 for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate the time it took to do the research.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

Yup. Good, advise. Others just babble on and offer zero advice.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Thanks!

Actually, it was easy - I had helped my friend (Untamed NY) last year when she was looking at buying a lens for exactly the same purpose. She didn't want to spend the $$$$ for the Canon, and even though the least expensive option would have been to borrow my 14-24 and buy an adapter, she did not want the responsibility. So I suggested the Rokinon, she bought it and took some really good images with it. I saved my research just in case it came up again. I just added the material on the Sigma 14 F1.8 which was not under her consideration last year.

saidel42 Loc: NJ

I can only point out that the accompanying picture was taken with the Rokinon 14mm, f2.8 and Nikon D-7100 last Fall (Perseid meteor shower) at Cape May, NJ. The image after this showed the smoke left after the meteor burnt in the atmosphere. I caught several other meteors (~20s x-posure) but none as good as this. I bought the lens from B&H. Be warned about Rokinon. Reading on the web, I learned that Rokinon did not have the quality control the name brands do, so when I received the lens, I tested it by taking a random sky image at midnight and expanded the stars at high magnification(~10x) in PS3x. The dots were clearly asymmetrically distorted. I had no problem exchanging for a different lens with B&H and the second was excellent. So....