Just looking for some input from folks that have owned/used the Samyang/Rokinon 24mm f1.4. I recently picked up this lens, mostly for nightscapes/astrophotography but this copy has me a little concerned. I've read a bit that it could be a little soft wide open but some quick, preliminary shots seem to be worse than I expected. I will get some more examples tomorrow but this is what I see with just a few quick shots of stars. f1.4 looks really, really soft to the point of out of focus. Stopping down obviously gets better but if I have to go to f2.8 to get decent result, that kinda negates the usefulness of this lens as I have a 14mm f2.8 that has been great for me. I just wanted something faster.
I guess I'm just looking for opinions on whether this is just the limitation of the lens or if it's a bad copy.
In the examples below cropped pretty much 1:1, f1.4 and even f2.0 to a point seem way too soft and blurry. The little halo/bubble thing that is formed just adds to the mess. These were shot at 13s so there is a little star trailing which I'm fine with on a non-cropped image.
Edit: I should also note that nothing was changed between these shots aside from aperture. Focus seems to be pretty good and on the infinity mark.
These aren't fantastic images by any means and there is a lot of light pollution around here. I just wanted to get a quick test after getting the lens.
Examples (untouched aside from cropping):
f1.4
f2.0
f2.8
---------- Post added 05-20-17 at 02:35 AM ----------
Here are the full images so you can get some context of the effect of the issue. I used Lightroom's Auto white balance adjust these. It's not as noticeable but still not something that I'm happy with I don't think.
f1.4- Not horrible from afar but still "fuzzy" and just not quite right.
f2.0 - Better, almost tolerable but not there yet.
f2.8 - I can accept this but again, this voids the speed of the f1.4 lens.
Last edited by colonel00; 05-20-2017 at 12:40 AM.