LK SAMYANG 14-24mm F2.8 FE – Lens review

LK Samyang recently released a new auto focus wide angle zoom lens, the 14-24mm f2.8 FE for Sony full frame mirrorless cameras. LK Samyang sent me a pre-release copy a while back to capture images for the release and put together a review, thanks LK Samyang for the continued support of this site.

This new lens is a little special, it was jointly developed by LK Samyang and Schneider-Kreuznach, the lens combines Schneider-Kreuznach’s renowned optical expertise with LK Samyang’s advanced technology and as you will see in this review it seems like a great collaboration that has produced a really nice lens option for Landscape and Nightscape photographers.

Here’s some quick lens specs,

Model Name		AF 14-24mm F2.8 FE
Model Name		WIDE	TELE
Aperture Range		F2.8 ~ 22
Lens Optical	Construction	15 Elements in 11 Groups
Lens Optical	Special Lens	ASP 3, HR 5, ED 3
Coating		UMC
Minimum Focusing Distance		0.18m (0.59ft)
Magnification Ratio		x0.17 (1:5.84)	x0.26 (1:3.92)
Number of Aperture Blades		9
Filter Size (mm)		Φ 77
Maximum Diameter (mm)		Φ 84
Mount		Sony E
Angle of View	Full Frame	114.2˚	84.1˚
Angle of View	APS-C	91.7˚	62.0˚
Length		98.63mm / 3.9in	88.8mm / 3.5in
Weight (without Lens Cap, Hood)		445g / 15.7oz
Weather Sealing		O
AF/MF Mode Switch		O
AF Motor		Linear STM

Initial thoughts etc.

The lens is a well built solid design, it is light at 445g and fairly compact for a fast wide angle zoom. I like the look of the lens, it’s black with a blue ring behind the filter thread, it looks modern and clean.

The lens has a metal lens mount with a weather sealing gasket around it, a plastic lens hood and comes with a pinch type front lens cap and standard rear lens cap.

The rubber zoom and focus rings feel nice, easy to grip and are smooth to rotate, although I would like them to have more or a dampened feel as they move very easily, I could see the focus or zoom being bumped very easily when shooting Nightscapes.

I love that the lens has a 77mm filter thread, this makes using filters for landscape photography, video etc nice and easy. 77mm is a very common size filter that most landscape photographers would already own and they are pretty easy to find/source if you forget or break your filters while travelling.

The lens has and Auto/Manual focus switch on the side along with a custom button that is preset to focus lock, enabling you to lock the focus while the button is pressed. You can also customize it’s function at any time through your camera settings, I don’t use this button myself but it’s a nice addition for those that do like having an extra custom button.

Underneath the lens there is a USB-C port for firmware updates through a direct cable connection, I like this so much better than lens stations, nice! Unfortunately this port is left uncovered, I can see dust, dew and water entering it. It’s an easy fix though as rubber USB-C port plugs are cheap on Amazon, but i’ll just borrow one from one of my other lenses.

The lens however does feature weather-sealing, providing protection against water droplets, light rain, snow, and dust. But according to the LK Samyang information ※The lens is not guaranteed to be dust- and drip-resistant in all situations and under all conditions.

Not a lot to fault, it is a nice lens, let’s look at some pics.

Above – Lens branding and the nice grippy rubber focus and zoom rings.

Above – Manual and Auto focus switch along with the custom function button. Note the peek of blue just behind the filter thread.

Above – USB-C port for firmware updates.

Above – The 77mm filter thread allows you to easily attach screw on filters and filter systems for landscape photography like this Haida M10 holder and polarising filter.

Above – At 14mm the lens extends making it slightly larger.

Image Quality.

Overall I have been impressed by the image quality, distortion although there is easily correctable and I see you can download lens profiles already from the LK Samyang website, here. Sharpness is great, the corners are nice and detailed without a lot of stretching and distortion and coma performance when photographing nightscapes is also fantastic.

I’m not going to share distortion tests etc like usual I’m just going to get straight into sharing real word images. For these images I’ve used no lens profiles and have just used simple corrections and post processing in Lightroom and photoshop.

Here’s some pics.

Crop of the image above to show a little more detail.

As you can see from these images taken around Melbourne the image quality is pretty good and the lens makes a great walk around lens capable of photographing many different subjects, paired with the Sony A7c2 it’s a great combo.

Auto focus.

The auto focus performance is fast, snappy and accurate. Unfortunately I didn’t get to photograph any sports events before writing this review but I did use the auto focus in a lot of different situations and also grabbed a few shots of my son hitting one of the jumps at our local MTB park, the auto focus kept up in all situations well.

Landscape Photography.

The LK Samyang 14-24mm f2.8 covers some very popular focal lengths for Landscape photography and the fact it has high image quality and accepts screw in filters makes it a fantastic option, I can see it being very popular.

Let’s look at some Landscapes and talk about the image quality.

Got lucky with some fantastic light while out testing the LK Samyang 14-24mm f2.8!

The above is a crop of the bottom half of the image above it showing the detail and distortion in the extreme corners. There’s very slight distortion if you look hard and a hint of vignette but the image quality is really good, impressive even.

Got to love the detail this lens shows in the foreground. The weather gods were on my side this day, perfect light, stormy clouds, a rainbow! This has to be one of my favourite landscapes I’ve ever shot.

The above images were all taken on one afternoon, I was really impressed with the image quality from the LK Samyang 14-24mm f2.8 and I can’t wait to get out more with it shooting Landscapes, there’s really not a lot to fault with this lens.

Nightscape Photography.

I know this is what you are all interested in, is this lens going to be good for Nightscapes, Astro and milky way photography? Well let’s have a look!

Above we have a crop of the top portion of the image above it. The image was taken with the following settings iso6400, 14mm, f2.8 with a 20 second exposure. If we look at the stars in the corners we are seeing really good performance, we do see a tiny amount of distortion/coma if you look very hard but you would absolutely be nitpicking, this is one of the better performing lenses I’ve reviewed for nightscapes, at least at 14mm.

In the top right we can see some coma in the brighter stars, this looks a little isolated to me and feel the heavy fog could be responsible, check out the next image also taken at the same settings.

The above image was taken earlier in the night than the cropped image when there was less fog around, the stars in the extreme corners look pretty good to me! This image also gives you an idea of the amount of vignetting this lens has agin this look pretty good also to me.

Above we have a crop of the top portion of the image above it taken at 20mm. The image was taken with the following settings iso6400, 20mm, f2.8 with a 20 second exposure. I decided to grab examples of the same subject at 14mm, 20mm, 24mm to see how the lens performs at popular focal lengths.

As you can see in these images at 20mm the stars are really good, this is excellent performance, there’s really not much more to say.

Next we have a crop of the top portion of the image above it taken at 23mm. The image was taken with the following settings iso6400, 14mm, f2.8 with a 20 second exposure. I’m not sure why, but in Lightroom the settings are showing as 23mm rather than the 24mm that the lens was set at in the field, this was on for images taken at 24mm.

Anyway looking at the performance at 23mm, the stars again are looking pretty good, there is some coma but it’s really quite minimal, again it might be getting exaggerated by the heavy fog and I’d also bet a shorter shutter speed would improve performance again. This is still very good performance regardless.

This lens really does perform well for Nightscapes, Astro and Milky way photography, I can see this being very popular with Nightscapers using Sony mirrorless cameras. It literally replaces three popular lenses in a small light and reasonably compact package, pair it with the Sony A7c2 like I have and it’s really makes for a small combo that is all you need for this type of photography.

One more!

Conclusion.

The LK Samyang 14-24mm f2.8 FE is a versatile lens. You could use it for Street photography, Landscape, Cityscapes, Travel, Nightscape, Milkyway photography and be very happy with it’s performance across all these genres and then some.

The size when paired with the Sony A7c2 makes for a powerful, super capable combo, this lens will be a staple in my bag this season.

If you are looking for a new wide angle zoom lens with auto focus for your Sony mirrorless this might just be it, you should definitely put it on your list to consider.

Fingers crossed we see more collaboration between Lk Samyang and Schneider-Kreuznach as they have produced a really nice lens for Sony mirrorless camera users, can’t wait to see what they have for us in the future!

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