Fisheye/wide angle for 1.6x crop

Hi guys,

Been doing a lot of searching and looking through this forum and I need some advise. Can't really find what I'm looking for...

I'm after a very wide lens, fisheye distortion is a good thing. I like the look of it. My choices are (as far as I know)...

Canon 10-22 EF-S - non-fisheye, so not distortion, but a good all-rounder
Canon 15mm f2.8 - fisheye, large aperture, not very wide on 1.6x crop
Sigma 8mm fisheye - really wide! Really bad vignetting??
Tokina 10-17 fisheye - hard to get hold of, does it fit Canon EF?

Whats your thoughts? Thanks!

If you want really fish, then you have to get the 8mm on a 1.6x cropper. You will have dark/black corners though, no avoiding that.

EF-S and 10-17 wont fit on Canon EF, only EF-S.

There's also the Peleng 8mm which is a cheaper manual focus alternative.

The Peleng 8mm is an awesome lens. My friend has one and if i had the money right now, I would have one. Manual focus is not really a problem with it. Because it is so distorted it is hard to tell where the focus point is anyway, so he tends to not attempt to focus. All his pictures look great.

Ok, thanks guys. Whats the difference then, between the Peleng and the Sigma? Both at 8mm, apart from the Sigma as AF and is more expensive?

Thinking more about it, I don't mind too much about black/dark corners, I can just crop, or make it a feature of the photograph.

I didn't mind the dark/black corners. I'm always too intrigued by the fishy distortion and the awesome perspective to worry about the corners. It almost expected to see dark corners...

The difference is that one is that the Peleng is made in Belarus and the Sigma is made in Japan. Optical formulas are quite possibly different but I know the Russkies aren't bad at making fisheyes!

The Sigma is *possibly* sharper but I don't think it warrants the extra money. And in this case, it's a lot of extra money. AF is nice, but you can just stop it down to f/11 and the DOF is *so* wide that it's really hard to miss focus.

Dazecoop wrote in post #2530159
Thinking more about it, I don't mind too much about black/dark corners, I can just crop, or make it a feature of the photograph.

does anyone think it would be a cool idea to try making a circular crop? im not sure of any image formats that would do that but its more important how you publish it, no?

Peleng is made in the former USSR and is MF only. Sigma is AF and costs a lot more. Both the 8mm will cause heavy vignetting even on a 400D. Here take a look at how your images will look like.
http://www.photozone.d​e …ses/peleng_8_35​/index.htm
A 15mm fish made for a cropped sensor doesn't look that fishy. Neither do ultrawide zooms such as the 10-22.
I'd recommend the Toke as it's the only fish made for cropped with a 180 degree diagonal field of view at 10mm which makes for a real fishy look and when you zoom back it look more like a wide angle lens.

Thanks for the replies so far guys. Over here in the UK, the Tokina is £370 ish, which is about £100 less than the Sigma. I am swaying toward the Peleng, since I don't want to spend too much money on a "fun" lens, I'm not sure how much I'll use it as yet.

Therefore, I'm thinking about the Peleng, but I can't find anywhere to buy it over here in the UK (apart form Japan eBay'ers)...

Ebay in UK doesn't have it? I'm surprised.

Ive been looking for the peleng for quite a while now, but cant find it here in UK..

i have the sigma 8mm f/4 on my xt. At first i hated it, was not what i expected. But this was based on a single pic that was taken really really fast cause i was running out. But 2 days ago i went out and actually took my time with the lens to see what it can do and i must say, i take everything back i sad bad about it. Once you crop out the black portion around the circular image it is 100% better.

Here are 2 pics i took with it. I was nearly touching my truck when i shot this one.

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I fisheye defined as anything smaller than a particular focal length? or is a fisheye of let's say 10mm the same as a UWA 10mm lens? Is it possible to have an 8mm lens that is not fisheye?

If you want something less extreme than the Peleng there is also another russian lens, Zenitar 16/2.8. I just bought it and tried it for the first time today... It seems really sharp and nice.

Both lenses are available from www.rugift.com

TMR Design wrote in post #2533869
I fisheye defined as anything smaller than a particular focal length? or is a fisheye of let's say 10mm the same as a UWA 10mm lens? Is it possible to have an 8mm lens that is not fisheye?

No. I don't think the fisheye definition includes focal length (though generally wider focal lengths are fisheyes).

There are 15mm and 16mm fisheyes also. There is also a 30mm fisheye for medium format, and I'm sure longer focal lengths for larger formats.

I think the definition of a fisheye is a lens that covers 180deg field of view, and not rectinlinearly corrected (fishy).

KevC wrote in post #2535757
No. I don't think the fisheye definition includes focal length (though generally wider focal lengths are fisheyes).

There are 15mm and 16mm fisheyes also. There is also a 30mm fisheye for medium format, and I'm sure longer focal lengths for larger formats.

I think the definition of a fisheye is a lens that covers 180deg field of view, and not rectinlinearly corrected (fishy).

Thanks Kev