Rokinon 24mm f/1.4

Shooting star over the Brooks Range. Canon 5D Mark III, Rokinon 24mm f/1.4, 25 secs. @ f/1.4, ISO 1600.

After writing and talking a lot about the aurora recently, I finally vacated the office and spent a few nights trying out some new lenses on the northern lights. I’ll be testing these lenses more thoroughly over the next few weeks, but at first glance I was happy with the results. More specifically, when my Canon 24mm f/1.4 II was stolen, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out another f/1.4 version. The Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 is what I picked up, and the first round of results are pretty satisfactory. It is a little unfortunate that I no longer have the Canon to do a side by side comparison of the same scene, but here is a shot I took the other night. The 25 second time indicates that the aurora was not super bright, but considering the exposure value with an f/2.8 would have been nearly two minutes, it shows the value of an f/1.4 aperture. While there is some comatic aberration in the outer edges, there appears to be less of that compared to the Canon counterpart. Sharpness is in the league of good acceptability. More on this lens to follow in the next few weeks. The Rokinon is about $650 and the Canon is $1750.