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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my final verdict on the new Rokinon slash Samying
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and this is from their new premium series. In this case, it is their special performance, or SP
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and this is a 14-millimeter F-2.4 lens. Now, if you haven't already taken a look at it, I would encourage you to watch my first look video where I look at the overall build and the breakdown of the handling of the lens
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But after having used it for a little while, here are just some of my overall feedback comments
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One thing I did notice is that I find that the focus ring could be a little bit smoother
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There's just a little bit of almost the feeling of drag that may be copy specific in this, but it almost feels like it's not as
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mechanically, smoothly, mechanically damped as it could be. Overall, it's a shame because it's a very nice focus ring in far as the overall texture
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much like a Zeiss Otis, where it has that rubberized texture, easy to find
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and easy enough to move, but not with the perfect resistance that I would like to see there
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a little heavier than what I would like to see overall. Other thing is, as far as a criticism of the build
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is that I don't understand the logic behind building a premium series lens
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and not including weather ceiling as a part of it. One of the things that Zeiss did when they moved to the new Milvis line
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also their Batisse line, is that they made sure to include weather sealing as a part of the package
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And so you've got this otherwise beautifully built lens. I mean, it's actually made out of an aluminum alloy
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It is a build scale that is in many ways very close to a Zyce
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But particularly with a wide angle lens, to not include weather ceiling, is to me a misstep in that this is a lens
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If you're going to shoot landscapes, you're going to use it for shooting the night sky, often will be used for things like time lapses
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You really need a lens that has some weather resistance because it might get wet along the way
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And so that's kind of my one criticism. Beyond that, however, the build is beautiful and I love them having the full integrated electricity
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like a Zice lens, electronic aperture. All of those things make it a more user-friendly in the real-world type lens
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And one thing I will note, of course, this doesn't allow you to use traditional screw-on filters
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By the way, I have been able to kind of jerry-rig my Wonder Panna system from photodiox that
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will work on that, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have an adapter for this lens in the future
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The one thing when you get a fixed lens hood and a bulbous front element is you get these kind of uncomfortably sized caps that are hard to put into a pocket And so that is the biggest downside
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Of course, I do own a lens like this in the Tamron 15 to 30 VC, but that is kind of a drawback
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when it comes to that. On a positive note, I've had an issue at times with some of these type lens caps where they
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come off too easily. They've actually got a really smart clip system here that means that when that is locked in
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place, you don't have to worry about it coming off. even if you're walking around with a harness or something
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And I've had issues with some lenses where that big lens cap fell off
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And in the case of, in one instance, I was shooting a Zeis Distagon 15mmeter F2.8
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The cap fell off because it was metal and I was out on rocks. You know, it kind of got dented up a little bit, which I wasn't thrilled about
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So this is a good system here. It's not going to come off by accident. The overall size of the lens, I think, is a nice sized lens
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You know, it's not diminutive, but at the same time, it's small enough to bring along and just balance as well on cameras
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And beyond that, if you haven't already taken a look at my image quality segment, I really break down the image quality carefully there and look at all the different things
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I will hit the highlights here, and I will say that, number one, this is an incredibly sharp lens, even at F2.4
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And one thing that I note that is different from the F2.8 lens, which I own for quite a while
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is that that sharpness goes right out to the very edges of the frame. The older lens, or existing F2.8 version lens, I found, was affected by some distortion stretching along the edges
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whereas the resolution was fine, but it didn't look fine because of that distortion
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Much less distortion with this lens, thus you're able to get a more flat plane of focus
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And I found that that sharpness, even at F2.4, went right out to the edges
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And as you stop down this lens further to more traditional, you know
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apertures for shooting landscapes, F5.6, F8, it is brilliantly sharp. And that sharpness is very even across the frame
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Optically, it is a very impressive lens, and it will produce fantastic results for you
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And so in real world shooting, I was really delighted with the look of images
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I love with a wide angle lens when you, of course, you have so much information in the frame
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But to be able to zoom into a pixel level and to see fine detail rendered there, I love it
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And so this lens is really tempting optically. I mentioned distortion. It does have some barrel distortion in it
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And however, I was able to basically eliminate that distortion by just a manual adjustment of nine in lightroom, which is a fairly small value
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And so there's nothing complex about the distortion pattern. And so once there is a standard profile
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I don't think that that will be too much of an issue. Of course the advantage of having such a wide focal length is that even after some correction of distortion you really don lose much of the frame We still got a lot of information there And so overall I was happy with that Chromatic aberrations very well controlled with this lens
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CA is not a problem. And even at wide apertures, there's not lateral CA
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I'm not really seeing much of an issue with longitudinal CA. It really does a great job
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Then, of course, of perhaps of paramount importance, or chromatic aberration correction
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is fantastic. In other words, when you're shooting the night sky, you're shooting the stars
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This is one of the best, if not the best lens that I have seen for controlling coma
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Now, the 14mm F2.8, that was already a strength for it. But Rokinan Slamying, they have taken it a step
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further and it's even better here. And of course, that extra bit of light F2.4 versus F2.8
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allows you to make this just an even better lens for shooting the night sky. And so it really
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does an exceptional job there. And the only reason when I compared, you know, kind of mentally side by
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side between it and the Tamron, the little reason why I think the Tamron would be equally good in
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some situations, even though there's a bit more coma on the Tamron, is that it does a much better
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job of controlling Vignette. And that is the one optical weakness that I found here. Venet is quite
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heavy at wide apertures. And even at F5.6, it's not 100% corrected. And so, again
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at the moment there's no profile for it in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw
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And so I'm having to manually correct for it, which you can do, but it takes a lot of correction
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And so that is the one optical weakness that you're going to discover. And so obviously this impacts you more if you have a body that does not allow you to push shadows very well
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And so, for example, shooting on a 5D Mark 4, and I've even used it on an adapter some on a Sony A7R2
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on those bodies that do quite a good job with shadow recovery, it's not really all that big of an
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impact. But if you are shooting with a body that kind of punishes you, if you push shadows
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that may be a concern for you. But overall, the optics are very, very positive. And so this is a
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manual focus only lens. However, because it has the focus confirmation, and of course it has full
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electronics, it meters properly, there's no issues there. And you do have to manually focus it
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But if you develop any kind of experience with wide angle manual focus lenses, there's
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really not a whole lot of focus involved unless you happen to be focusing down on a very close object
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Most of the time you can kind of just set focus and just kind of use a hyperfocal setting
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and everything's going to be in focus all the time. You don't really have to think about focus
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But overall, this is not a challenging lens. If you concerned about manual focus it not really a challenging lens to manual focus Now manual focus will be a drawback for some people The other thing that has already been a challenge for some in terms of their feedback is the price Now the previous generation
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lens can often be had for under $400. And so it's always been a bargain and I've praised it
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as such for a long time. For those looking for a good quality, wide angle lens, but had limited
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budget. The previous generation lens is one that I've pushed a lot of people before
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Now, I will say that in real world use, this is a much more user-friendly lens
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It is vastly easier to use in every way and everyday use
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I find it a joy to use, actually, overall. However, the price point has jumped in the U.S. market to $999, which means that in other markets
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the price point is even more challenging to people. And so as a result, I think that Rokinan is facing Sammy Eng, they're facing that challenge
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of trying to develop premium lenses and testing the limits of what their brand allows in terms of
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pricing. And I don't know that it extends this far yet for a lens like this. I have noted that
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already there at B&H photo just this last week that it may still be running, there has been an
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instant rebate of $200 off the price. And so at $7.99, I think it's a great value. And you know
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Sammy Yang may find that that's where their price point is for this lens
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and that's what the market will bear. And so that may become permanent
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I don't know or it could just be a temporary thing. But I do think that they'll probably move a lot more units at that price point
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compared to $999, which is getting up close enough to some other competitors
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that people may do some cross shopping. I will say, all of that aside
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that I don't know that I've seen a wide-angle lens yet that performs better than this lens when you consider all the different metrics involved
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It's incredibly sharp. distortion is well enough controlled that you can make it work
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The only downside really is the vignette. It's a great night sky lens, and if it didn't have the heavy vignette, it would be even better
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But it still provides great results. So overall, I have no problem giving this a recommendation, particularly if you can get it at that $799 price point
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I think it's well worth your money. It's a beautifully built lens. It's going to hold up
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I wish it was weather sealed. But beyond that, I think that it is a great lens
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and I've enjoyed shooting with it. I like the images that I'm getting from it. I'm Dustin Abbott
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If you look in my linkage down below description, you can find a linkage to my full written review
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also to the image gallery, different images I've been shooting during this time. You can follow me there on social media
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