I originally purchased the Samyang 14mm f2.8 a few months ago with the intention of using it for astrophotography. I was immediately impressed with the performance of the lens and this is something I wrote about in a blog post on my first impressions of the Samyang 14mm f2.8. What I had not anticipated was using the Samyang 14mm f2.8 for landscape photography.
My go to landscape lens on my Canon 6D has always been the 24-105 f/4 but I knew lenses like the 16-35 and 17-40 were popular with landscape photographers. Over the last 3 months I have had the chance to use the Samyang 14mm f2.8 for landscape photography and I’ve been very impressed with the results. I can see why landscape photographers like these ultra wide angles; 24mm no longers seems wide to me!
The sharpness is excellent as you would expect from a prime and so is the colour rendition. The corner sharpness is also excellent and there are several articles / forum discussions that you’ll find with a quick Google search that compare this lens to the Canon 16-35 and find the corner sharpness to be better, particularly wide open.
The reasons some people may hesitate to use the Samyang 14mm f2.8 for landscape photography, and probably the reason you are here reading this, is because of concern over the lack of auto focus and barrel distortion. My experience with this lens on the Canon 6D is that the lens is easy to focus for landscapes. Focusing through the viewfinder is hard because everything looks so small at this angle, but I find the majority of landscapes I’ve taken over the last three months are sharp when focused back slightly from infinity. Live view works really well to confirm everything is in sharp focus. Barrel distortion affects all ultra wide angles lenses and is easily corrected in Lightroom or Photoshop.
I thoroughly recommend the Samyang 14mm f2.8 for landscape photography. Below are some of landscapes I’ve captured with this lens since purchasing it a few months ago. I am no longer pining over the 16-35mm so this lens has also saved me a small fortune! I have a couple of trips arranged this year where I’ll be doing mostly landscape and astrophotography so I’m expecting the Samyang 14mm 2.8 to be glued to the front of my camera for most of those trips.
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