SAMYANG

I have owned the original Samyang
14mm F2.8 ED AS IF UMC ultra wide-angle lens for a few years,
and recently got my hands on the MK2 version of this lens.

I loved the first version of the lens and was eager to test out the new and improved version. Samyang market this lens as ‘Classics Evolved’, and have introduced 2 very important features which the original lens lacked, these are weather sealing and the opportunity to lock the focus ring.

This lens is particularly popular with both Astro and Landscape photographers due to its wide angle of view and wide aperture, but most of all, because of its great value for money. This is not a fancy lens, in fact, it is a fully manual lens, meaning it has an aperture ring and can only be focussed manually, but this is not a problem for either Astro or Landscape Photography. However, the feature that matters most for most ultra wide-angle photography, image sharpness, is there and the very affordable price makes this lens a very attractive option for landscape and Astro photographers.

Image Quality

One of the most important parameters for any lens is it’s sharpness, the term commonly used to describe how much detail / contrast a lens can resolve.
This lens is slightly soft in the corners when shooting at F2.8, however it improves significantly as you stop down to F4 and F5.6. By F8, the lens is incredibly sharp across
the frame, making it ideal for landscapes. Sharpness is also great at F11, but by F16 and F22, diffraction starts to have an impact and reduces the crispness of the image.
When shooting landscapes, I am most interested in the sharpness in the corners of the frame, as this tends to be a weak spot for most lenses. For this reason,
when shooting landscapes, I stop down to F8 or F11. At these apertures, this lens performs superbly across the entire frame.

All lenses / optics have some forms of distortion and aberrations, these tend to be most pronounced when a lens is shot wide open (In this case, at F2.8) and in the ｃorners
of the frame. The Samyang 14mm F2.8 MK2 displays some coma and astigmatism, but not much. The coma and astigmatism are less of an issue when shooting landscapes
than they are for Astrophotography, where stars need to be pin point and round. I have found the best results for Astro shot at an Aperture of F4. When tracking,
I even stop down further to F5.6 and get some great results.

The Samyang 14mm F2.8 MK2 does lead to some vignetting, but this is nothing that can’t be fixed in post processing.

The bulbous front element results in some minor flares when shooting directly into the sun, these can sometimes by managed by blending frames together or cloning out
unwanted flares, but its best to try to avoid these to begin with when picking a composition.

The biggest optical weakness of this lens is the radial distortion, also know as ‘Moustache Distortion’, this means that flat lines across the frame (Such as a horizon line)
become wavy. This might be worrying at first, however it is easily correctable in Lightroom using profile corrections, and in the worst of cases, can be manually correct in
Photoshop using the warp tool.

Focus Ring

This is a manual focus lens, which is another reason that Samyang have managed to keep this lens so lightweight, compact and affordable. Not including an autofocus
motor means the design and construction of the lens are simplified significantly. Some people may struggle to adjust to a manual focus lens, however I have always used
manual focus when shooting landscapes and astrophotography, even with my autofocus Nikon lenses, to ensure I nail critical focus, so this is second nature to me.

Having a lens which can only be focused manually is not really an issue on a lens with such a wide angle, simply because of the impressive depth of field, meaning that
in most cases, everything in the frame that is more than a few feet away will be in focus .

Zooming in to the screen on Live View is the best way to focus this lens, both at night, by finding a bright star or distant light source, or during the day, finding an area of
high contrast / detail in the frame. I have not tried focusing whilst looking through the view finder as the low magnification means it’s hard to discern detail and find
critical focus.

The focus ring has a long throw, roughly 90 of rotation from nearest focus (0.28M) to infinity, this makes it easy to smoothly find the exact point of focus. On the Samyang
14mm F2.8 ED AS IF UMC MK2, Samyang have introduced a lock for the focus ring, this is particularly useful when the user wants to ensure that they do not accidentally
bump the focus ring half way through capturing the frames, such as when shooting a star trail over several hours.

The focus ring’s rotation is silky smooth, it is very nicely damped and has no play, there are hard stops at both the minimum focus distance and at infinity. Focus distance
markers are printed in bold on the focus ring in feet (Yellow) and meters (White).

Focus Stacking

Objects in frame do not change size significantly as the focus point changes, this is particularly useful when focus stacking images as it makes it easier to merge them in
post processing.

I frequently use focus stacking when I am super close to my foreground (Less than 30cm) and want a tack sharp image from front to back.