I’ve gone on a lens shopping spree! Yes, I have another new lens in my bag and it’s the Samyang MF 14mm f2.8 ED AS IF UMC.

Here’s the story.

I have a love-hate relationship with my Tokina 16-28mm lens. I love the pictures it gives me, but I hate the size and weight of it and the fact that it doesn’t take any filters. I’m going to do my once-in-a-lifetime trip to Iceland next year and I have to sort out my lenses before it, so I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over my options. In the end I came to a conclusion that I just simply must have a wideangle that accepts filters, I know it’s not a good idea to polarise the sky when using a wideangle, but I have to be able to kill the glare on water and other shiny surfaces. Plus that anything that’s lighter than the Tokina brick is a bonus.

My first option was to get the Canon 16-35mm f2.8 which accepts 82mm filters but after a while I gave up on that as well. It’s an expensive lens and I would need to buy an expensive 82mm polarising filter for it. Then I came up with a two-lens solution which might sound a bit crazy, but hear me out… I need the f2.8 aperture for night sky shooting, and nothing else. For everything else, the aperture doesn’t make a difference. And that’s where the 2-lens solution comes in. I will use the combination of the Samyang and Canon 17-40mm f4L (which I will get next year), where the Samyang is used for the night shooting (and for other landscapes if I need an extreme wide angle) and the Canon for other landscape work. I do regret a little bit that I will lose the 1mm (as compared to the Tokina) but then again, I loved the Tokina 11-16mm lens I had last year and it was almost 18mm on my 40D. So this will work out fine. The Canon 17-40mm takes 77mm filters, of which I have plenty.

One option could’ve been to just get the Canon 17-40mm and skip the Samyang and leave the Tokina in the bag, to be used for night photo. But the temptation of getting an even wider lens, plus shedding some of the weight, was too much to resist! And besides, having two lenses with similar focal lengths is just a bit… silly. Which can be said for wasting all this money on switching gear every year, as well. All because I got myself a full-frame camera so I no longer could use my beloved Tokina 11-16mm which was a perfect one-lens solution!

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I will write a review type of thing later when I have a bit more experience with the lens.