Hi
i am new here and also quite new in photography.
currently i keep eye on one samyang 14mm uwa lens for k30 i use. Lens price is 200+ EURs usedin good condition and 340 EUR new from stock here in Europa. customs make it very hard to buy from Korea or us eBay.
went to shop, and because they have no rentals, could test it only a bit inside and also on street directly near magazine.
have done research last days on 12-24mm range and covered nearly all reviews comparisons possible (took me 6 days). i allready knew several points to look after, while testing, and just wanted "experience".
what i have find out.
Best performers:
1. should be Pentax SMC DA 15 (excellent lens, (DA14 is not even close to it) very beautiful star-efect, hi flare resistance, good details and good color rendering, small size and similar distortion level, no CA)
HD version of it is considered weaker and even priced lower a bit.
price 699 EUR as new
2. Samyang 14 aspherical. Its manual, it's sharp, well built and quite solid lens, weights 550g and is quite heavy in actual use. Yes there is A setting in AV mode. But i was surprised that K30 asked to input focal length, there is no 14mm in menu. I can choose 12 or 15 on dial, no 14mm, stayed with 15.
As people are saying, it is very unreliable to detect focusing. I have nothing against manual, but in all shots i was unsure, is it in focus or not. (and missed a lot, normaly i have ca 80 in focus handheld whatever length to 135)
maybe most annoying for me was "gut feel unsafe" experienced with lens.
As most should be "in focus" on longer than 3 meters (infinity for this one), that should not matter too much on landscape? tried to use live view (i normaly never do on daylight) and found it not helpful at all on focusing.
Colors are good, but i was not after it this time. (had no time to play around with WB situations, without making shop personal too worried)
Now, there are flares, and they are massive. i did specially around 50 shots directly to sun in/close to frame, see images. Yes, you can shot to sun directly, but flare is not rendered beautiful as in DA 15 by far. You can have some kind of artifacts in frame as long sun is close to 10-15 degrees to frame. (personally i liked some of em)(There is possibly flare is present IF you use default lens-hood provided)
In terms of distortions DA 15 and Samyang 14 are quite close, both should be easily (i must learn) correctable by darktable.
3. Samyang 16 mm similar, more rectangular uwa. (not tried yet, but should be very close to above)
4. DA 12-24 uwa. Tried, but did'nt get to it. it's sharp, even bigger than samyang 14. need quite heavy processing on everything below 18 mm. actualy on images i took, most usable were in 20-21 mm range. Experienced one day, so i am sure i could not get use of it well. Expensive 900-1000 EUR-s here.
Now, considering all of above and looking those (not framed not technical made in hurry handheld not balanced and etc - remember i had no time to play thoroughly) samples, is it worth my 200+ euros as used against DA 15 proposed around 700 EUR-s but half the weight? Excamples are reduced, not othervise PP-d
In my opinion it is somewhere 4 or 4- because of physical handling in 5 grade scale. I am worried, that i will spend 2-3 times more effort to have a picture with this lens. Maybe i am wrong.
So, what do you think?
Last edited by Vihmameister; 01-04-2015 at 05:16 AM.