Just plunked down on the 14mm f/2.8 II

I haven't been around here much lately. Relocating to Maine and buying my first house has eaten up all sorts of time. Trying to figure out the market here in maine while processing a years worth of work/soon-to-be-travel-stock from my trip throughout southern and SE asia is also certainly vying for my time.

Ok, chit chat aside, let's get to the meat of all this. I just forked over the credit card to Abes of Maine (I'm a Maine-ite now dammit! who cares if Abes is actually located in New Jersey?!)...that, and b&h was out. resellerratings listed Abe's as being just fine...but I haven't bought anything from them since my Rebel G "back in the film days." so hopefully this will be snafu free.

More importantly, I'll do my best to get at least a few more shots taken with this lens as soon as I get it. there is an appalling shortage of samples shots taken with this lens from what I could find. I believe the lens archive thread on this lens is utterly devoid of any samples. I'm hoping to use this lens for landscape/nature photography as well as play with architecture too, so i'll post some shots as soon as I take some that are worth it

So, it ships overnight, so it will hopefully arrive in the next few days, as the weather right now is darn purty...

Cathpah,

I checked out your gallery from the link in your signature and I must say I am truly impressed with your skills as a photographer. You have a tremendously good body of work based on what I saw of your travels to south East Asia. My brother went there 20 years ago with a Nikon SLR and a couple of decent lenses and your stuff looks a lot better!

I don't know much about the EF 14 2.8 but I'm sure if anyone could put it to good use, it's you!

Best of luck with your continuing work.

Cheers!

The Ghost of FM wrote in post #5337415
Cathpah,

I checked out your gallery from the link in your signature and I must say I am truly impressed with your skills as a photographer. You have a tremendously good body of work based on what I saw of your travels to south East Asia. My brother went there 20 years ago with a Nikon SLR and a couple of decent lenses and your stuff looks a lot better!

I don't know much about the EF 14 2.8 but I'm sure if anyone could put it to good use, it's you!

Best of luck with your continuing work.

Cheers!

thanks for the kind words. I very much appreciate it

Now I'm kicking myself. I had a better look at resellerraings for old abesofmaine.com, and it although they have a good 6-month rating (8.6), their lifetime rating is less than stellar (6.5). When I read the bad reviews, they were pretty darn bad, so I'm thinking their recent surge in positive reviews might be from employees adding fake reviews. Who knows. Either way, I'm going to call and cancel my order as soon as customer service opens up tomorrow morning and go with calumet instead. doh!

happy to report in that ol Abes of Maine let me cancel without too much of a fuss. However, I did call at 9:45am to there customer service, and got a message saying we open at 9:30am, please call back when we're open. huh? I also got both a voicemail AND email from one of their sales guys (which i didn't respond to...figured I'd just deal with cust servie straight away). They asked why I wanted to cancel and I blamed it on the wife....haha...most guys can at least understand that. They really seem to be the classic bait and switch shop...

luckily "the wife" was nice enough to let me order it again from calumet as soon as I hung up the phone. Overnight shipping and a same-day shipping policy....should have this bad boy in my hands by tomorrow afternoon!

//sweaty palms

That's too bad you cancelled... I bought my A-1 w/50mm f/1.8 from them back in 1983(ish). They've been around quite some time. Never had a problem to report, personally.

As for the lens, congrats - that's a choice lens.

Double Negative wrote in post #5340322
That's too bad you cancelled... I bought my A-1 w/50mm f/1.8 from them back in 1983(ish). They've been around quite some time. Never had a problem to report, personally.

As for the lens, congrats - that's a choice lens.

Yep, I was a bit reluctant to cancel considering my order about 10 years ago went just fine...but i read too many stories of fake warranties, no refund, etc...so i figured when buying this lens new, given the price I'd prefer to not have any doubts. Just heard from calumet that it'll ship tonight. can't wait.

just a couple quick shots from sunrise on the beach this morning. Can't use grad ND's, so it's either filterless or maybe HDR. here are a couple ones I was happy with this morning.

so far I'm really liking this lens. Flare is an issue, but that's true with any lens this wide, especially with a bulbous end on the lens. Certainly nothing to cause concern, it's just part of UWA's.

Lens looks to be pretty darn sharp. Very pleased with my new lens.

edit: oh yeah, this was shot on my 5d (so full frame sensor)

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Wow!

Those shots look great! ...especially the first one; looks like something from another planet all together.

Enjoy your new baby!

Cheers!

beautiful shots!

Very nice shots!

Lovely shots - I especially like the jetty one.

thanks for the good feedback. Yeah, I'm pretty darn stoked about this lens. It's a scary amount of money to spend to get a liiiiiittle bit wider and a good amount sharper in the corners....but i think it'll be worth it. If nothing else, I just moved to southern maine, where the real estate market is always interesting (loads of vacation homes and other interesting properties), so I may try to do some real estate photography for some of the nicer homes out here. The ability to get that little bit extra of the room in the frame is huge....especially since it's not going to be as distorted as a UWA zoom or a fisheye. I also feel like I'm very often at the 16mm end of the 16-35, and it's never advantageous to be at an extreme in the zoom, so I think this will also really help my image quality on the wides.

Have had some hazy days the past few mornings, but I'll try to get out and get some more samples soon.

beautiful. Worth every cents of it.

For low (or really, no) distortion in real estate photography, that 14mm is worth every penny! Especially on interior shots - as sometimes you just can't back up any more to get more in the frame.

Double Negative wrote in post #5374021
For low (or really, no) distortion in real estate photography, that 14mm is worth every penny! Especially on interior shots - as sometimes you just can't back up any more to get more in the frame.

yes indeedy. I figure this lens, coupled with my 24mm tilt shift....I'll be set!