Samyang/Rokinon 8 mm f/3.5 Aspherical IF MC Fish-eye

pkilla wrote in post #15080480
495 so your saying this lens is not good for video a lot of people say its great for video...

I bought mine pre-owned from a videographer who said that it is too wide and horrible distortion .

One man meat is another's poison.

When I look on these pics, I see distortion on objects close to the camera, but things far away see to be distortion-free. This would work great for me, however, I do not know if the poster corrected for distortion in post processing.

Did he correct for distortion , or is this how it looks out of the camera?

awilli1715k wrote in post #15081137

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professorman wrote in post #15082849
When I look on these pics, I see distortion on objects close to the camera, but things far away see to be distortion-free. This would work great for me, however, I do not know if the poster corrected for distortion in post processing.

Did he correct for distortion , or is this how it looks out of the camera?

Looks like those shots were straight out of the camera. If you hold the camera level on a landscape your horizon will remain straight across. If you twist or change viewing angle on the horizon, you can end up with distortion. Hense...the fisheye effect.

WIth this lens, distortions do not depend on the distance - they rather depend on the angular size of the object. Anything occupying more than say 1/3 of the frame height will look distorted; anything smaller will not look distorted, even at the very edge of the frame. This is due to the unique stereographic projection used by this lens, and makes it very sutable for things like portrait of a large group of people in a confined space, street photography etc.

Planning on getting one of these at the end of the month. I love the oddness of the aspect of the shots. A fellow photographer told me it would be a bit of a gimmick lens, but for the price I reckon I might use it a lot. He does weddings and glamour, I do live bands and abstracts, so he is correct for his type of shots, and wrong for mine.

Pat McGuire wrote in post #15085015
Planning on getting one of these at the end of the month. I love the oddness of the aspect of the shots. A fellow photographer told me it would be a bit of a gimmick lens, but for the price I reckon I might use it a lot. He does weddings and glamour, I do live bands and abstracts, so he is correct for his type of shots, and wrong for mine.

Some people just don't care for it. I looove mine and have been using it far more often than I'd thought I would have...and for the price - you can't beat it!

professorman wrote in post #15082849
When I look on these pics, I see distortion on objects close to the camera, but things far away see to be distortion-free. This would work great for me, however, I do not know if the poster corrected for distortion in post processing.

Did he correct for distortion , or is this how it looks out of the camera?

No I didn't correct for distortion... Shot the pics the unploaded in Lightroom 4

Excuse the colours etc in the film below, still figuring that part out.
But video shows what the FOV is like to film with the 8mm, pretty good in my experience for some circumstances:

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=tYC6N7Fzz7U

(The zoomed in shots are not with this lense)

In my opinion this lense looks a lot more natural for filming stuff than for pictures...

The only thing thats strange is that you have to get the subject so close, and they still look far away.

I was a bit dissapointed with picture quality with this lense at first.
Well, at least I thought so when I first got it, as it's not immediately apparent how to make it work well compared to 'normal' lenses.

Stop it down to at least F8 and quality increases a whole heap.
I use liveview + Magic Lantern to get some crosshairs on the screen so you can line up the horizon dead flat, or there abouts for pictures, and you can get some fantastic results.

If you avoid dead straight vertical or horizontal lines near the edge of the frame, it can look great!

Just takes a bit of getting used to, for how to frame a shot to minimise the look of distortion:

@roman is 3.5 usable for video

if its very soft for pics, i assume it's gonna be as soft on video, but then again, you dont pixel peep on video, or do you?

Yeah it is, but not as noticable because it's such a smaller resolution video, and compression on top, etc.

Even more so when it's uploaded to youtube or something

Some of my lenses that take utterly crappy photos make for some reasonably nice looking video.

IAt home I've got some other examples of things I've filmed with it at various apetures.

(I can upload them for you guys to look at a little later)

Firstly I did an in car night time time lapse using Magic Lantern, so recording at 5fps and playing back at 30 while driving on the highway.

On F3.5, the street lights etc are blobby and not very sharp, although with a fair bit of motion blur this looked alright... But again stopping down to F5.6 or F8 made them look a lot sharper, and raising ISO a little to compensate still looked good.

Also this video was the first thing I filmed with it, at F3.5:

(again excuse the colours, still experimenting with that part)

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=YT_yTwjctIY

I wanted it wide open for sake of slowing the shutter speed to the minimum.

If I was doing it again I would stop it down to F5.6 or F8 for sure.

As I still had heaps of headroom for increasing shutter speed to compensate for brightness without motion blur etc at 60fps.

Also I've taken some night time photos, and stars just dont come out well at F3.5, but drop it down a little and looks great, just need a slightly longer exposure. Which is no problem, seeing how with an 8mm lense you've got heaps of time until star trails start to show.

To be honest for video stopping it down hasnt really been a problem, as with this lense the depth of field is so massive either way, its not like it changes anything regarding that.

And with Magic Lantern even at shutter speeds of like 40 degrees or less at 60fps I could still use ISO 100-200-400 during the day.

If I was shooting video for a very low light scene then yep I would shoot at F3.5, because the noise from higher ISO etc would be more noticable than the clarity difference.

If there were street lights or something in the background which you wanted to look good though, I'd stop down and trade it for ISO or shutter speed instead.

I'll post some more examples up later if you guys are interested to see, I've got some comparable examples of video at various Fstops at home.

It's definitely fun to use for video though, really happy I bought it.

I would hope that someone would not be deterred from buying it because it's not 100% sharp at F3.5.... It's not too bad at that setting, its just that it gets so much better from there!

Here are some still frames from video samples at various apeture / conditions/

F3.5 daytime:
http://iforce.co.nz/i/​2pothkm0.lgg.png
http://iforce.co.nz/i/​1jnnphqf.wx4.png
F8 daytime:
http://iforce.co.nz/i/​ohgmxcat.xo1.png

F3.5 night time:
http://iforce.co.nz/i/​cvlfiu0o.syz.png
F8 night time: (notice difference in lights/highlights)
http://iforce.co.nz/i/​xo1t02v2.zzm.png