Southwell Workhouse NT Property

I posted a couple of days ago about how we had visited the Southwell Workhouse National Trust property and also how it gave a proper workout for my Fuji X-T1 and new Samyang 12mm lens. In this follow up post I’m going to show the rest of the pictures I took and give a few more impressions of using the combination.

As I said in the last article, this type of photo opportunity was exactly the reason I bought the Samyang. Because interiors are difficult to capture unless you have a really wide angle, and they have a tendency to be quite dark, the 12mm f/2 Samyang is a great choice. Although I have a Tamron 10-24mm Zoom for my Pentax K5 which I could use with an adaptor, it isn’t a good choice with the Fuji X-T1 because it isn’t possible to set the aperture on it.

The pictures below show the images I captured with this combination. Not all of them are interior shots, but quite a few show a technique I’ve found I use quite a lot with the Samyang – get low and shoot upwards to give a different perspective to the picture. I think this works particularly well with the first photo in the series when the guide was explaining about how bodies were stored after inmates died – the roof beams give a nice pattern in the shot.

Another thing I discovered about the lens is it’s ability to focus to really close distances. The picture of the window handle was taken only about 2 inches away from the front of the lens and the aperture was set (from memory) on about f/11. If the aperture had been f/22 i suspect most of the background would have been in focus as well.

Southwell Workhouse Pictures

So here are the other pictures I took on our visit. Once again I’m impressed with the quality of the Samyang 12mm, especially considering the great price it’s available for. I had a few issues with focusing which I need to work on, but even the slightly soft images still have the impact that you get with very wide angle lenses.