鏡頭評測 施耐德三陽14-24mm F2.8 FE超廣角變焦鏡頭評測

Hey everyone, how are you doing? Well, that's enough small talk, so let's get straight into reviewing something really quite interesting, the new Schneider Crowsnatch Samyang AF 14-24mm f2.8. It's a full-frame, ultra-wide-angle, bright aperture zoom lens, currently just for Sony E-mount mirrorless cameras. Interestingly, it's been co-developed by the Samyang and the famous Schneider Crowsnatch companies. I wonder if we'll see similar co-developments in the future? Well, I guess it depends on how well this lens manages to perform. The lens is actually manufactured in South Korea. Its price of US$1,199, or £1,049 here in the UK, is obviously a lot of money in absolute terms, but for a lens of this kind, it's actually a potential bargain. Well, if its image quality is any good, of course. It competes with the Sigma 14-24mm f2.8, which is US$1,400, or £1,320, and the Sony 12-24mm f2.8, which is way more expensive at US$3,000, or £2,900 in the UK, although in fairness, it offers a wider angle. I'd like to thank Samyang's UK distributor for loaning me this lens for evaluation, although as usual, this is a totally independent review. We'll be looking at both its strengths and its weaknesses. And a lens like this could make itself unbelievably useful to all kinds of photographers. It could perfectly complement a 24-70mm standard zoom lens by offering you an extremely wide angle, paired up with zoom capability. Its bright aperture means that it could also be used for a bit of astrophotography, as well as being easier to shoot with when indoors or in darker situations, and when you zoom in, you can get noticeably out-of-focus backgrounds when shooting smaller subjects at f2.8 as well. Despite costing less than the competition, this Schneider Samyang lens actually offers a couple of standout features. Firstly, it can accept front filters in 77mm diameter. That is fantastic news for anyone wishing to use this lens for landscape photography and get their polarising or ND filters out, although you'll have to use thin filters to avoid extra vignetting at 14mm. I like Marumi fit and slim filters myself, and that worked perfectly for me. Secondly, at only 445g, this thing is not only unusually small, but lovely and lightweight. The Sigma and Sony lenses weigh nearly twice as much, which means that the Schneider Samyang lens is simply more fun to work with. It really is quite nice and light. But that doesn't mean the build quality has any problems. The lens is mostly made of plastic, but it has a nice fit and finish to it, feeling solid, and Samyang states that it's protected against moisture and dust, including snow and light rain, but as usual, try your best to keep it dry. There is indeed a narrow weather sealing gasket around the rear mount, and a USB-C port as well, for future firmware updates. On the side, we get a customisable focus hold button, and an auto manual focus switch. Then we get a nice rubberised zoom ring, with a tactile crosshatch texture to it. It turns only averagely smoothly though, with a touch of stickiness to its action. As you can see, the front of the lens extends as you zoom in and out. Then comes the rubberised focus ring, which turns extremely smoothly, and I found it to work very responsibly with the lens's focus motor. I like that it has a different size and texture than the zoom ring, to help you to find the right control when your camera's up in front of your eye. Whether you're zoomed in or zoomed out, the lens suffers from only a small amount of focus breathing here, not that it's really such a great concern on an ultra wide angle lens. When it comes to autofocus, well, whether you're shooting in autofocus single or continuous modes, it's lovely and quick, silent and accurate. I had no problems here at all. As I mentioned already, the lens has a very useful 77mm filter thread. It also comes with a narrow hood. Overall, the lens's build quality is actually quite lovely here. Its smaller size, surprisingly lightweight, and filter thread give it a real edge over its competitors. More importantly, though, comes image quality. A small lens size combined with a low price is normally bad news for image quality, and to make the challenge even harder, I'm going to be testing this thing on an extremely demanding camera, my 61-megapixel Sony A7CR. In-camera corrections are turned on. If you'd prefer images zoomed in to the 42-megapixel ratio of my older reviews for comparison purposes, then you can find a link to a special unlisted video in the description below. At 14mm straight from f2.8, even on a 61-megapixel sensor, we're right away seeing razor sharpness and excellent contrast. It's the image corners I'm more worried about, though, but, wow, just look at that. Considering the resolution we're shooting at, this is fantastic. Corner sharpness is virtually as good as the middle, except right in the very edges. Contrast remains great. Chromatic aberration is low. The only real issue I can see is some corner darkness due to vignetting. Stop down to f4 for more brightness and a little extra resolution right in the edges, and f5.6 looks excellent from corner to corner. On such a very high-resolution sensor, if you stop down to f8 or as far as f11, then softness begins to creep in due to diffraction. But at 14mm, that's a way better performance than I was expecting, which is valuable at the lens's widest angles, where corner resolution is all the more important for the end user. OK, let's zoom in to 24mm, then. All right, at f2.8, it's a bit of a different story here, as in the middle of the image, we're still seeing impressive sharpness, but contrast has dropped right down, leaving us with a bit of a washed-out picture. However, simply stop down to f4 for absolutely perfect image quality in the middle again. Anyway, let's open back up to f2.8 and take a look in the image corners. Interestingly, sharpness is still very good there, but contrast is way better. It's unusual to get better contrast in your image corners, but I have seen it before on probably about four or five other lenses I've tested. Stop down to f4 for an improvement in brightness, and at f5.6, we get a small improvement in sharpness and contrast in the corners too. At f8, we get a slightly cleaner image with any hints of ghosting or false colours completely gone, but softness is beginning to edge its way in due to diffraction. And for anyone interested, here's f11 and f16. Overall, while it is a shame to see that low contrast in the middle at 24mm and f2.8, everything else about this lens's image quality is seriously impressive, even on Sony's highest-resolution sensor. And on a 42- or 33-megapixel camera, it'll look just spectacular, so a big pat on the back for Schneider-Krausnach and Samyang here, especially as this is a comparatively low-priced option. All right, let's turn off in-camera corrections and take a look at distortion and vignetting. As you can see here, at 14mm and f2.8, both are quite a serious problem, and your raw images will 100% need correction here. At f4, f5.6 and f8, those corners begin to brighten, but without corrections, they never get fully bright. By the way, here's the image at 14mm when the lens is focused to infinity, instead of close up to my chart. Anyway, zoom in to 24mm, and that distortion straightens out nicely, although vignetting is definitely still present. Here's f4 and f5.6, where it mostly clears up. This lens has another little useful feature. It can focus as closely as 18cm to your subject for some really creative images, something I always appreciate. At f2.8, the close-up image quality seems to lose a little more of its contrast. However, like before, simply stop down to f4 to see a fantastically punchy close-up picture, which is pretty delightful to work with, actually. Next, work against bright lights, and here we come across a major slip-up. While flaring is actually surprisingly low here, at the widest angles, we get a giant internal reflection encroaching into the image. What a shame that couldn't be fixed. Perhaps one of the internal helicoid parts needed some extra flocking? Anyway, if you zoom in, then those big rings disappear, but flaring becomes a little bit worse. By the way, here's the 14mm footage, but stopped down to f5.6. Those bright rings are still present, though, unfortunately. While we're working in the dark, let's take a look for coma and sun stars. Good news! Coma smearing is very low here, even at 61 megapixels, and stopped down to f4 to see a perfectly clean image again. Let's zoom out and look for sun stars now. They begin to noticeably emerge at f5.6, just about. Stopped down to f8 to see them better defined, but at f11, f16 and f22, they get nice and strong. And now, bokeh. As I mentioned before, if you get close to your subject, then you can get a little background separation with this lens at f2.8, and its bokeh always looks lovely and soft, which is not to be taken for granted on an ultra-wide-angle zoom lens. Finally, related to bokeh comes longitudinal chromatic aberration. At f2.8, there is none really visible here. We get a clearer picture at f4, where again, we see none at all. Overall, well, however it is that Schneider-Krausnach and Sam Yang have collaborated on this one, it worked. They have managed to put together a small-sized, bright aperture, useful ultra-wide-angle zoom lens, which is fantastically sharp at its widest angles. It also manages to correct chromatic aberration, both lateral and longitudinal very effectively. The presence of a 77mm filter thread is warmly welcomed as well, although make sure you use a thinner filter to avoid any additional vignetting at 14mm. On top of all of that, it comes at a relatively low price. It's all quite brilliant, frankly. I've thought about my rating for this lens quite a lot, though, as it's not a perfect optic. Its flaring problem and its contrast weak spot at 24mm and f2.8 are annoying, to be sure. Its uncorrected distortion and vignetting is strong as well, although that is easy to fix. But the overall package, when taken into consideration, is undeniably brilliant value, and it's also such a useful lens. So, despite those niggles, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it still comes highly recommended. It's nice to see a team bonus emerging when two lens companies work together, stacking buffs. Thanks for watching, everyone, and a special thanks to my Patreon supporters and channel members, who make such a difference to keeping these sponsorship-free reviews coming. Patreon supporters and channel members get all kinds of exclusive bonus content, so check it out in the description below, and ciao for now.