Samyang/Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC

SLRgear Review
September 24, 2013
by William Brawley

The Rokinon 14mm ƒ/2.8 IF ED UMC is an ultra-wide angle, fully manual lens designed for both full-frame and sub-frame DSLR cameras, and comes in a wide variety of lens mounts including Canon, Nikon, Sony Alpha, Pentax, Samsung NX and Olympus 4/3rds. Introduced as a replacement for the briefly-available “MC” version, this “UMC” models aims to improve issues with ghosting and flare thanks to new multi-layer coatings.

Being a manual lens means there’s no autofocus, as well as no aperture control from the camera. Shooters must manually adjust the lens’ aperture with a clicked ring, similar to early film SLR lenses.

Eschewing typical modern niceties like autofocus, image stabilization and even electronic circuitry for communication with the camera body*, Rokinon is able to focus purely on optics and sell this lens at a bargain-basement price. At around $330, the Rokinon 14mm ƒ/2.8 stands in stark comparison, for instance, to Canon’s $2,200 14mm ƒ/2.8 L-series lens while still producing extremely sharp images.

The Rokinon 14mm ƒ/2.8 IF ED UMC is currently available and ships with front and rear caps, instruction book and soft pouch. Note: the lens hood is not removable.

*Note: there is a version for Nikon DSLRs with a chip that adds support for auto exposure and focus confirmation.

Sharpness
The Rokinon 14mm ƒ/2.8 lens produces very sharp images on both full-frame and sub-frame cameras, even wide open. Although we saw a bit more uneven sharpness across the frame on the full-frame camera, it was overall fairly minor. Stopping down a bit to ƒ/5.6, you begin to see some extremely sharp images from both cameras. In our tests, the sharpest aperture was ƒ/5.6 on the full-frame body, and from ƒ/4-ƒ/5.6 on the sub-frame one. Diffraction softness was very well controlled and even at ƒ/22, it was minor.

Chromatic Aberration
The Rokinon did extraordinarily well at controlling chromatic aberration, on both full-frame and sub-frame bodies. Other than some extremely minor variations, the average CA on a full-frame camera was very low through all apertures. On the sub-frame camera, there was a little more CA on average between ƒ/2.8 - ƒ/5.6, but it leveled off and stayed fairly constant for the rest of the apertures.

Shading (''Vignetting'')
If you’re looking for a lens with good vignetting control, this Rokinon 14mm lens is not the one for you. Especially with a full-frame camera, the Rokinon 14mm exhibits severe vignetting at ƒ/5.6 or wider. In fact, at ƒ/2.8 and ƒ/4, the amount of light falloff is literally off our charts. At ƒ/4, we saw close to 1.5 stops of light loss and at ƒ/2.8, it was closer to 2 stops (1.8). At ƒ/5.6, we get just shy of 1 stop of light loss, and it decreases further as you stop down. However even at the smaller apertures of ƒ/16-ƒ/22, there's still over half a stop of light falloff.

It’s a much better story on the sub-frame camera, although you understandably miss out on the “ultra-wide” framing with this combo. At ƒ/2.8, we see over 0.5 stops of light loss, and it quickly decreases to around a quarter of a stop by ƒ/5.6, and holds steady as you stop down through the rest of the apertures.

Distortion
It appears Rokinon put a priority on chromatic aberration control over both vignetting and distortion. Being an ultra-wide angle lens, some distortion was inevitable, and with this one in particular, the barrel distortion in the corners is off our charts with a full-frame camera. The average distortion for the rest of the frame is still very high at around a full 1 percent. On the sub-frame camera, things are a little better. Corner barrel distortion is just shy of 1.5% and the average is around 0.8%.

Autofocus Operation
There is no autofocus operation with this lens.

Macro
While this lens is far from a dedicated macro lens, it does have a minimum focusing distance of 0.9' (28 cm) for very good close up wide-angle shots.

Build Quality and Handling
The Rokinon 14mm ƒ/2.8 lens has a nice, solid heft in what amounts to relatively small lens, that nevertheless weighs in at around at around 1.2 lbs. The first thing you notice is the big lens cap that surrounds the large, bulbous front element and thick, built-in plastic lens hood. There are no filter threads on this lens due to the rounded protruding lens element, so fans of screw-in filters like circular polarizers should be aware of this.

Optically, the lens is comprised of 14 elements in 10 groups, including two ED lens elements, one hybrid aspherical lens element and one glass aspherical lens element.

The barrel appears to be constructed of metal, and the lens mount definitely so. The large manual focusing ring is silky smooth to rotate with just the right amount of soft resistance. It’s very easy to rotate and does not feel loose. It also has a very long focus throw, at about 250 degrees of rotation, with hard stops on either end of the focusing scale. This allows for much easier fine focusing adjustments. The focus ring is about 3/4 of an inch wide and covered with a soft rubber grip with deep ribs. The aperture ring, which controls the 6-bladed aperture diaphragm, is made of plastic and is much thinner than the focus ring.

Cosmetically, the lens has a matte black finish that looks similar to numerous other DSLR lenses, and overall looks and feels very high quality. The focus ring does have a focus scale, however there is not a depth of field scale. The aperture ring has clicks between the various aperture values, ranging from ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/22, however there are no intermediate aperture clicks between ƒ/16 and ƒ/22.

This lens can be challenging to use and fun at the same time. Being such a wide lens, the depth of field is very deep, even at ƒ/2.8. It can be difficult to see if you’ve manually focused precisely just by looking through the viewfinder. Using Live View makes focusing much easier, but that can be more awkward with a larger DSLR. However, if you’re shooting with a tripod or don’t care about critical focus, this lens can produce some very interesting and unique shots.

Alternatives

There are quite a few options for ultra-wide angle prime lenses for full-frame cameras from the major lens manufacturers, but nothing comes close to the bang-for-your-buck of the Rokinon 14mm. On the Canon side, there’s the Canon EF 14mm ƒ/2.8L II USM, which includes many fancy features like dust- and weather-sealing and autofocus as well as very high image quality and low distortion, however it’ll set you back a cool $2,359.

For Nikon, it’s a similar arrangement with their Nikon 14mm ƒ/2.8D ED AF Nikkor lens. Although not as high a performer as the Canon model, based on our test results, the Nikon nonetheless is priced much higher than the Rokinon with a current street price of $1,718.

Another option for a full-frame ultra-wide, fast prime is the Carl Zeiss 15mm ƒ/2.8 Distagon T* lens. Similar to the Rokinon in that it’s a manual focus lens, the Zeiss does have electrical contacts on the mount, so the aperture can be controlled via the camera. The rub? It’s by far the most expensive alternative with a whopping $2,950 price tag. Although we haven’t tested this lens yet ourselves, the Zeiss 15mm lens seems to get rave reviews based on the user reviews we’ve seen.

Conclusion
The Rokinon 14mm ƒ/2.8 IF ED UMC is a surprising hidden gem of a lens. Producing very sharp images with great chromatic aberration control and good build quality, all for the unbelievably low price of around $330, the Rokinon 14mm lens is a fantastic value. The lens is a bit more difficult to focus without resorting to Live View due to the lack of autofocus and a very wide depth of field. It also shows some crazy barrel distortion and vignetting, which seems like a conscious decision on Rokinon’s part as a trade-off for better chromatic aberration control. Given that the competing lenses cost around 5-9 times as much, and unless you’re a professional photographer or demand weather sealing and autofocus, the Rokinon seems like a fantastic choice for a full-frame ultra-wide angle prime lens that would be perfect for landscapes and astrophotography.

Product Photos

Sample Photos

The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color. We shoot both images using the default JPEG settings and manual white balance of our test bodies, so the images should be quite consistent from lens to lens.

Still Life shot

VFA target

As appropriate, we shoot these with both full-frame and sub-frame bodies, at a range of focal lengths, and at both maximum aperture and ƒ/8. For the ''VFA'' target (the viewfinder accuracy target from Imaging Resource), we also provide sample crops from the center and upper-left corner of each shot, so you can quickly get a sense of relative sharpness, without having to download and inspect the full-res images. To avoid space limitations with the layout of our review pages, indexes to the test shots launch in separate windows.