Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: Cornfield on June 02, 2016, 07:41:33 am

Title: Samyang (AKA Rokinon, Bower) 12mm and 14mm for full frame Nikon.
Post by: Cornfield on June 02, 2016, 07:41:33 am

Would appreciate some feedback from users of these wide lenses.  The 12mm seems to be getting great reviews from some reviewers.

Title: Re: Samyang (AKA Rokinon, Bower) 12mm and 14mm for full frame Nikon.
Post by: Paul2660 on June 02, 2016, 07:51:21 am

Never used the 12. The 14 has an excellent history one of the best deals out there. Only issue I have is the long throw to get to infinity as it takes a lot of turning.

Great hyper focal range, no coma wide open, light weight. Several filter solutions out there.

Paul C

Title: Re: Samyang (AKA Rokinon, Bower) 12mm and 14mm for full frame Nikon.
Post by: Simon Garrett on June 02, 2016, 09:52:00 am

I've been very impressed by the 14mm f/2.8 full frame (on a Nikon D800). 

Very sharp, little chromatic aberration.  Some vignetting and quite a bit of geometric (barrel) distortion, but the Lightroom lens profile for the lens deals with both almost perfectly without significant edge cropping.  What I mean: sometimes when you correct for geometric distortion you end up with a curved edge to the image, and have to crop quite a lot off to end up rectangular.  Lightroom (or ACR) correction  loses little from the edges.

Manual focus, but the very wide depth of field on a 14mm means that focus often isn't very critical.  On Nikon, there is meter aperture coupling, I think I read that there isn't meter coupling on Canon, but I might be wrong. 

At the price, it's a bargain.

Title: Re: Samyang (AKA Rokinon, Bower) 12mm and 14mm for full frame Nikon.
Post by: Conner999 on June 02, 2016, 01:44:31 pm

Have the 14. Would echo the prior posters. Great optics, focusing somewhat of a PITA at distance. Up close, no worries. Well worth the $ if find nice copy.

Title: Re: Samyang (AKA Rokinon, Bower) 12mm and 14mm for full frame Nikon.
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on June 02, 2016, 02:03:45 pm

There is a very enthusiastic review of the 12mm by the late Michael Reichmann, here, on this site:

https://luminous-landscape.com/rokinon-samyang-12mm-f2-8-fisheye-defished/

Title: Re: Samyang (AKA Rokinon, Bower) 12mm and 14mm for full frame Nikon.
Post by: drmike on June 02, 2016, 02:16:26 pm

I have the 12mm on APS Fuji and it's a lovely lens. A bit big but apart from that it seems to have few problems. Full frame I wouldn't know.

Title: Re: Samyang (AKA Rokinon, Bower) 12mm and 14mm for full frame Nikon.
Post by: azmike on June 03, 2016, 12:02:35 pm

I have the 14mm and love it with my D810, both for landscape and astrophotography.  It's a great value.

Mike Coffey
Prescott

Title: Re: Samyang (AKA Rokinon, Bower) 12mm and 14mm for full frame Nikon.
Post by: Cornfield on June 05, 2016, 08:05:24 am

Thanks for the feedback. 

I had forgotten that Michael and posted about the 12mm and the defish software.  Also good to know Samyang lenses can perform well on the d800 series.