Samyang XP 14 mm f/2.4 review - Summary

Have you rated your lenses yet?

Samyang XP 14 mm f/2.4

25 September 2017

Arkadiusz Olech

11. Summary

Pros:

Solid casing and good build quality,
Very good image quality in the frame centre,
Good image quality on the edge of the APS-C/DX,
Sensible image quality on the edge of full frame,
Very low lateral chromatic aberration,
Lack of any serious problems with longitudinal chromatic aberration,
Moderate astigmatism,
Lower vignetting level than in the case of the rivals.

Cons:

Some minor problems with spherical aberration,
A bit too high distortion level,
Work against bright light could have been better.

The results of the Samyang 14 mm f/2.4 Premium have to be compared to those of its very well-done and cheaper 2.8/14 brother. With the price of the new lens being three times higher I bet even without reading our test many people will consider the more expensive device not worth the additional amount of money. Perhaps they will be right. Still, in order to be completely unbiased you should compare the Samyang’s strategy to the moves of Nikon, a company praised for vigorous development of their primes line-up. Currently Nikon offers several pairs of f/1.4 and f/1.8 lenses which feature the same focal length and have similar optical properties. Apart from their aperture fastness they also differ in build quality and price, often 2-3 times higher. As you see Samyang just took a leaf out of Nikon’s book in the 14 mm class.

Please Support Us

If you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - advertisement - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I won’t say anything new by stating that it’s better to have a choice than not to have one. If you think the Samyang 2.8/14 meets your demands you’ll enjoy sharp images that lens is able to produce without spending a lot of money. However, if you want to have a faster device with a superior build quality, without high moustache distortion level, and with a resolution performance the most even among all full frame 14-15 mm models it’s obvious you’ll have to pay more.