ROKINON Super Wide Angle Lens - Canon AE

So when I saw all the positive reviews, I wasn't sure if it was about the value or the lens itself. Here is my take: 1) Construction: I would give the construction a 4 star. It feels solid and was a nice surprise. It didn't look weatherproof or anything nor was I expecting it to be. 2) F2.8 and aperture: A lot of vignetting at 2.8 in low light situations (indoor). There is an aperture ring around the lens and you will control aperture from there not the camera which is actually cool because you will see in real time how lower/higher aperture would impact your light. But that means you can only use Manual mode which didn't bother me. I would give it a 3 mainly for vignetting. 3) Filters: No front-side filters... which means I can't use any of my existing filters. Annoying but not a deal breaker by any means. 4) Focus: This is where this lens gets a 0 star. Yes I was aware that this is a manual focus lens when I purchased it. And yes I am a pretty serious hobbyist so manual focusing is not a challenge for me, and yes you can produce semi-sharp photos with this lens. In reality, the combination of manual focus and less than sharp photos (maybe I just got a bad copy), and wrong distance metering on the lens kills this for any real professional use. Problem is when manual focusing, you will never get a confirmation from the camera that you have the correct focus which means you have to rely on the little viewfinder to make sure you have a right focus. Now since digital cameras don't have the split image in viewfinder anymore (Now I miss my AE1), and since at 14mm you can hardly see enough details thru the viewfinder, it is almost impossible to be sure about a razor sharp focus at the time of taking the shot. I tried with tripod and was able to get sharper shots using digital zoom in live view, but that makes the use case much more limited. So what are you going to do as a safe bet to avoid blurry objects in your image? you are going to step down from f2.8 to 5.6 or more just to give yourself more cushion (which defeats the purpose of being a F2.8 lens) and you are going to take many shots and review one by one in the playback to finally settle on one only to be later disappointed when you see it on a large screen. I'd love to think that I got a bad copy but I am not convinced to give it another shot. In all fairness, the sharpness and focus limitations may not be as much of an issue if you are printing 8x11 or smaller, but will show itself for large canvas prints! That to me makes this an unusable lens for any serious photography. If you are doing milky way shots and such, it may not be as much of an issue. Overall, I decided to return this and will just stick to my 16-35mm to do the job. I thought I had found a good solution to go wider than 16mm without breaking the bank but I was disappointed. Overall, I would give the lens 2.5 star as a lens but gets a 1 star from purchase perspective.