Rokinons vs Leica R: anyone used both?

M

mcbob

Veteran
I've had a set of L-R primes for a while (28/2.8, 35/1.4, 50/2, 90/2) and have been saving up to have them cinevised by Duclos. I should hit my goal by Christmas.

BUT...

I'm a somewhat cheap bastard with 3 growing kids and it hasn't been lost on me that I could sell the whole set, buy a full set of Nikon-mount Rok Cines (8, 14 or 16, 24, 35, 85), wind up with more lenses, and still have a lot more money to pay for things like dentists and milk and Legos. Utilizing my Speedbooster, I could potentially even sell off a few m43-specific primes (17.5/0.95, 25/1.4) if the Roks perform well enough and be further in the black.

I've sampled the Rokinon 35/1.4 and 85/1.4 at a local camera store and was delighted but have heard mixed reports on the rest of the Rokinon lineup. There don't seem to be too many places renting Rokinon Cines for me to evaluate myself. Anybody out there have experience and opinion with both?
 
I have a full set of Leica-R primes (24/2.8, 35/2.8, 50/1.4, 90/2.8, 135/2.8, 180/2.8) and they are gorgeous indeed. I have also played with some RokiBowYang primes, but only the ones known to be really really good: apart from the two you tested, the 8mm fisheye is a no-brainer. The others (14 and 24), from all I have researched, are nowhere near that good. The 14 is fine on APS-C but not so much on FF (or with a SB), and the 24 is kind of a lottery: lots of copy-to-copy variation, some are great, some are awful.

Also, they're out of the list now because Rokinon complained that they were put together with Samyang and Bower, but the trio was right at the top of LensRentals 2013 repair data, by a very wide margin. It seems they are ok on the outside, but the internals are mostly cheap plastic, so they don't live long.

If you want some cash, you can sell the 17.5/0.95 (you've got that covered with your 35/1.4) and the 25/1.4 (covered by 50/2).
And you can also do a cheap DIY cinefy.
For my lenses, this is what I did:
* declick the lens (most are very easy to do, some, not so much; 180mm I'm looking at you)
* put a semi-permanent gear on each of them (these, with thin rubber below, and tied with wire instead of zip tie)
* glue a step-up ring in front of every lens, so they are all 67mm now and the ring doesn't move when I take filters out; buy cheap caps to match
* put a white strip over the focus markings, and add my own measurements instead (this took me about 5 hours for 5 lenses)
 
I already did DIY cinevising (with screw-cinch lens gears) and conversion to Nik-F mount, but there are foibles with that I'd like to alleviate, like declicked iris creep and looseness, I didn't glue any of the step-up rings so they keep coming loose... little stuff. Disappointing to hear about fragility of the Rokinons... while I'm nowhere near as rough as a rental house on my gear, maybe I just soldier through and grow old with these lenses vs. some spiffy Korean glass that winds up being sadly temporary.
 
* I have no remorse gluing those step-up rings. Best thing I did in years.
* To get the stiffness you want in the declicked iris ring, put some tape around the barrel, between the barrel and the ring; the longer the strip, the stiffer the ring. Choose tape that will last, if it breaks down under friction, it will be a problem.
* Lensrentals was getting something like 12 to 18 weeks between repairs on the RokiBowYang primes. You won't be nearly as rough as a rental house, but it was a really, really scary number. And it matches other comments from around the web. It is very nice glass and it is really cheap (8mm and 85mm particularly), but you might want to think of it as disposable.
 
I got a PM with a request to post a pic of my pseudo-cinefied Leicas. Here it goes:

leica_cinefy.jpg

As you'll see, "glue a step-up ring" is easier on some lenses than on others. On the 90mm I had to use hot glue and it doesn't look great, but it works :)

The zip-tie gears are using wire instead of zip-tie, because zip-ties get longer with time and need to be replaced, it seems. Wire works great for me.

As for the scales, it is just a brute force thing: you spend an afternoon moving a lightstand around, then you have perfect focus marks.

Finally: I got the Leica-R speedbooster, so that's the original mount on all of them. You may need and adapter or a replacement mount.
 
I was talking to a guy recently that has a RokiBowYang cine set, and he said one of the primes' internal element came loose and was wiggling around inside. Great price for the set though. Just not really something I would use in a demanding workflow were everything needs to operate without fail.

However, I am so glad the roki cine's exist. A great option.
 
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