Rokinon AF 14 24mm F 2 8 Review | 54 Data compared

The Samyang AF 14mm F2.8 FE is a compact and lightweight ultra-wide-angle prime lens designed for Sony E-mount cameras, retailing for an affordable price of around €500. In real-world testing on a full-frame Sony Alpha 7 III, the lens delivers a highly impressive build quality with a smooth focus ring that rivals much more expensive Sony lenses. It is Samyang's first wide-angle lens to feature autofocus, which operates quietly, quickly, and accurately even in challenging lighting conditions. Image quality stands out with exceptional sharpness extending all the way to the frame edges, alongside excellent control over lens flares, minimal distortion, and negligible chromatic aberration even during high-contrast backlight photography. The core strengths (pros) highlighted in the review include its great build quality, excellent sharpness, wide F2.8 maximum aperture, lightweight form factor, and highly aggressive pricing compared to Sony-native alternatives. Additionally, it features a very short minimum focusing distance of 20 cm, enabling unique close-up perspectives. However, the primary drawback (cons) lies in its physical design: the lens features a permanently integrated lens hood and a bulbous front element, meaning it...

The Samyang 14mm f/2.8 AF for Canon is a solid, lightweight ultra-wide-angle lens that offers significant design and performance upgrades over its manual predecessor. The reviewer praises its excellent center sharpness even at f/2.8, minimal barrel distortion, and reduced weight, making it highly portable for travel and wedding photography. Its electronic aperture control now saves full EXIF data directly to the camera. Additionally, the lens mount features a weather-sealing rubber gasket for moisture protection. It is especially recommended for astrophotography; the enhanced sharpness at f/2.8 makes focusing on stars via 10x Live View effortless compared to the older version. The integrated autofocus motor is quiet and fast, though it may require standard micro-adjustments on DSLR bodies to achieve perfect accuracy. Despite its high performance, the review highlights several distinct drawbacks. The most notable optical downside is strong vignetting when shooting wide open at f/2.8. There is also some expected softness and loss of sharpness along the outer edges and corners, which is typical for extreme wide-angle lenses, though it is still an improvement over the older model. The physical design...

The Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 FE is a compact, lightweight ultra-wide-angle lens (weighing 499g) designed for Sony E-mount cameras, though also available for Canon and Nikon. Featuring a modern, minimalist design, it sits securely on bodies like the Sony a7rII and boasts weather-sealing against dust and splashes. A major upgrade from Samyang’s older manual lenses is its autofocus system, which performs exceptionally well across both live-view and phase-detection systems, delivering fast, quiet, and highly precise focusing. For night and city photographers, the lens produces highly desirable, sharp "sunstars" around light sources, which become intensely defined and elongated when stopping down from f/8.0 to f/16.0. In terms of optical performance, the lens delivers impressive sharpness in the center of the frame even wide open at f/2.8, reaching its peak crispness at f/8.0. It successfully controls classic wide-angle flaws, showing no severe barrel distortion or noticeable vignetting (corner darkening) in standard shots. On the downside, some minor edge softness is still visible in the far corners, though it is drastically reduced compared to legacy models and competitors. Additionally, at f/2.8, light sources...

The Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 F for Nikon F-mount is a budget-friendly, weather-sealed lens offering fast, quiet autofocus and excellent center sharpness at f/2.8, with performance optimizing at f/5.6-f/8. While offering a competitive, high-performance alternative to native lenses, the unit exhibits significant barrel distortion requiring post-processing corrections and lacks a front filter thread due to its bulbous, fixed-hood design. Additional drawbacks noted in user evaluations include a less comfortable metal focus ring and the absence of physical distance scales, which complicates manual, precise focusing. For a detailed look at this lens, you can visit the user-provided review on Nikon Fotografie Community.

The German photography blog Krolop & Gerst highlights the Samyang FE 14-24mm f2.8 as an ultra-wide-angle zoom lens that brings exceptional, adventurous perspectives to everyday photography without becoming a burden. A major pro of this lens is its remarkably compact and lightweight design, allowing it to easily slip into small gaps in a camera bag alongside standard gear. Because it does not feel like heavy ballast, photographers are encouraged to bring it along more frequently to experiment with creative, wide-angle viewpoints in landscape, architectural, or human photography. On the downside, the review identifies a significant optical flaw when dealing with direct sunlight. Specifically, when light strikes the front glass at very distinct angles, the lens produces prominent, circular ghosting flares that stretch noticeably across the entire frame. While this weakness does not appear in every backlit scenario, it can actively disrupt carefully planned landscape or architectural shots. Ultimately, the reviewer notes that photographers must intentionally manage these unique artifacts during image composition rather than treating them as a deliberate stylistic bonus.

However, the lens makes notable compromises in corner-to-corner optical clarity. While image sharpness is acceptable at the center when shot wide open at f/2.8, the corners remain noticeably soft and blurry at both the 14mm and 24mm focal ends. To achieve acceptable edge-to-edge sharpness, photographers must step down the aperture to f/5.6 or f/8. Furthermore, chromatic aberrations are present; while in-camera software correction profiles can reduce them, they do not completely resolve the underlying image quality issues. Users should also note minor autofocus quirks, such as focus "hunting" or pumping when framing low-contrast surfaces (like plain walls) in single AF mode, though this is expected to be corrected via a future firmware update. YouTube ·ValueTechTV

The user review on SonyAlphaForum.de highlights the LK Samyang AF 14-24mm f/2.8 FE, developed with Schneider-Kreuznach, as a high-quality ultra-wide zoom offering exceptional center sharpness and a smooth, "3D pop" bokeh at 24mm f/2.8. While designed as a replacement for high-end Sony and Zeiss lenses, it boasts very good overall optical performance, particularly in the center. However, the lens shows a slight decrease in sharpness at 24mm when shooting wide open at f/2.8, requiring stopping down to f/4 for maximum clarity. Additionally, compared to the Sony 12-24mm f/4 G, the corners and edges are slightly softer at f/4, though this is only noticeable upon close inspection.