Originally posted by paulh Beautiful examples, Stefan. Been wanting the Samyang for awhile now, altho the 16-45 would be a major upgrade for me as well.
Thank you, Paul. As I said, I had the DA 16-45mm, which I sold a while ago. It's a very nice lens, light and versatile, and if you want to pull
very good quality out of it, use it with DxO, which
greatly improves the quality of the images produced by the 16-45mm (besides automatically correcting distortion). This being said, I still like the images produced by the Samyang more (even if DxO doesn't support it... yet). They are better. Moreover, for me, most of the time, 16mm wasn't enough. 14mm happens to be my favorite UWA length. (I had the Sigma 10-20mm, also a very nice lens, but not practical for me, because I found 10-12mm too wide. And... the Samyang beats the Sigma in the microcontrast department.) In practice distortion isn't very noticeable with the Samyang, and in the cases in which it is noticeable, it can be easily corrected.
Another thing: the 16-45mm extends a lot at 16mm, which I'm afraid invites decentering in the long run--any hit the lens takes could decenter it. The Samyang 14mm is very solidly built (the Sigma has a very nice build too), and my copy is sharp corner to corner wide open. Decentering is a rather frequent issue with UWA lenses.
My advice is, if you are ok with the Samyang's weight, you can complement it with a nice Tak 28mm f3.5 (or any other cheap 28mm) and, later with a DA 40mm. There are plenty of underrated 28mm... Or you could go Samyang 14mm + DA L 35mm 2.4. (UPDATE: I see you have enough lenses to pair the Samyang 14mm with.)
My current travel kit is made of the Samyang 14mm + an excellent Gemini 28mm, for which I paid $40 (I also have a Tak 28/3.5, which is a bit heavier) + the DA 40. Together, these three lenses weigh about 800 grams, which is some 440 grams more than the DA 16-45mm. At some point, I intend to complement this travel kit with the DA 70mm--light and sharp, and prices are back to normal for this lens.
I'd replace the Samyang with a DA 15mm to reduce the weight of my travel bag, but it seems the DA has softish borders below f8, and even if it has other qualities (an amazing microcontrast), I still prefer my heavy Korean beast.
Last edited by causey; 06-13-2012 at 09:25 AM.