Rokinon 14mm Lens Review

Over the years I’ve mostly used zoom lenses instead of primes.  The biggest reason was because of the cost.  That’s one of the reasons I bought the Rokinon 14mm 2.8 lens when I was looking for a good Ultra-wide angle lens. This lens is economical and in my opinion is quite a good lens. The one I bought for my sony is just $274, Rokinon FE14M-E 14mm F2.8 Ultra Wide Lens for Sony E-mount and Fixed Lens for Other Cameras. The autofocus is also available now Rokinon 14mm F2.8 Full Frame Auto Focus Lens for Sony E-Mount, Black (IO14AF-E). To tell the truth, manual focus and aperture settings do not bother me.  My Sony has focus peaking that helps me alot with the manual focus.  It shows little red highlights on the sharpest parts of the image while your focusing and you can zoom in to really see the sharp area.  The lens itself is nice and solid feeling and the aperture dial has a nice click to it.  The focus adjustment is smooth and the sharpness is stunning.  For a while I had a problem getting the wide angle distortion that it creates fixed because there wasn’t a lens profile in Lightroom, but now there is.  One click and the image looks normal.  I don’t usually use a 14mm for people shots, but I did with this next shot and I love it.

As you can see, this lens has a unique and very cool sunburst pattern when you shoot into the sun.  That shot was at f22 1/125 and iso 400. She was actually turning so I wanted to freeze her motion. but I wanted the cool sunburst so I needed it at f22. This is why I bumped the iso to 400.  Now I think I should have went higher with the iso so I could have shot faster.

Here’s another showing that cool sunburst effect.

My Astro Photography isn’t perfected yet but this lens is great for it.

One last shot. This is a pasture that gets totally covered with these wildflowers each spring.

Conclusion:  If you need a wide-angle lens and don’t want to break the bank, get this lens. Rokinon FE14M-E 14mm F2.8 Ultra Wide Lens for Sony E-mount and Fixed Lens for Other Cameras .  That’s the link for the Sony, but you can choose your camera from there.