Is it worth trying a fisheye for <£100?

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alanmossdan

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Dan
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Hi all,

Toying with the idea of buying one of these cheap fisheyes for £50, see below:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_i=B002HXEBIK

Just wonder if it is even worth it. I'm not expecting miracles and know it will come with blurred edges and CA, but is it worth the money for a bit of a play? Can I get anything good out of it if I use it to apply only a modest fisheye effect (not the full circular view as in some of the example pics).

Essentially, I want a bit of wide-angle versatility but like many cannot afford the £1000+ options. Is there anything in-between of any use? Say £150ish?

For info, I'm shooting with a Canon 60D using a Sigma 17-50mm f2.8.

Thanks.

Dan
 
alanmossdan said:
Hi all,

Toying with the idea of buying one of these cheap fisheyes for £50, see below:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_i=B002HXEBIK

Just wonder if it is even worth it. I'm not expecting miracles and know it will come with blurred edges and CA, but is it worth the money for a bit of a play? Can I get anything good out of it if I use it to apply only a modest fisheye effect (not the full circular view as in some of the example pics).

Essentially, I want a bit of wide-angle versatility but like many cannot afford the £1000+ options. Is there anything in-between of any use? Say £150ish?

For info, I'm shooting with a Canon 60D using a Sigma 17-50mm f2.8.

Thanks.

Dan
Click to expand...

If you could up your budget to around £250 you could get a Samyang 8mm fish eye, I don't have this lens but I have the micro four thirds equivalent and it's very good for the money.
 
There's a caveat with such cheap lenses. They're cheap for a reason, and another caveat is that if you buy a nasty piece of equipment, and you get nasty results, you'll be put off.

Fisheyes are kinda like toys anyway, and you may get tired of the extreme perspective / distortion as they're just one trick ponies most of the time. You can get some really excellent snaps with them if used carefully and have thought about composition.

The cheapest decent quality Fisheye is probably the manual focus Russian 16mm Zenitar at around £165 new on UK Ebay ( MF is not a problem with FE's due to the huge DOF )

The Samyang 8mm is also a very decent FE, and somewhat better built than the Zenitar and even more fishy due to its 8mm lens, but it around £250 +

I'd forget that rubbish on Amazon and spend the money elsewhere or save for a FE with decent optics
 
Dont wate your money. Its not a fisheye lens, its a super distorted peice of glass that screws onto an exsisitng lens.

I can gaurentee you will use it maybe twice and then realise how bad it is and never touch it again. Save the money for a few months and buy a proper fisheye like the Samyang. They come up here and ebay pretty often once the novelty factor has worn off and people move them on cheap.
 
dont bother with the bolt on garbage if you want to retain any image quality.

Personally diagonal fisheyes look much better than the 360 ones anyway, having the entire image in the frame and not black corners looks much better for me and you still have a wide view.
 
Yes, I agree Ryan, hence my question - I am hoping I don't get the 360 view images. Can you confirm?

Also, I am thinking about an upgrade to full-frame soon - how does the Samyang cope there? As I've read it is designed for cropped bodies.
 
alanmossdan said:
Yes, I agree Ryan, hence my question - I am hoping I don't get the 360 view images. Can you confirm?

Also, I am thinking about an upgrade to full-frame soon - how does the Samyang cope there? As I've read it is designed for cropped bodies.
Click to expand...

The samyang is optimised for being on a cop :thumbs: though it is an EF mount not that I'll be putting it on my 5D it lives on my 450D and allows me to get photo's like this one from a few days ago :thumbs:


252/366 (617) by mwhcvt, on Flickr

As you can see if used carefully you'll hardly see any distortion though I'll confess I'm a big lover of my sammy fisheye :D and distorted shots too :D

and when you hit focus it's the sharpest lens I own :D you'll cut yourself on it :suspect:
 
alanmossdan said:
That's a beatuy Matthew - just the kind of shot I'm hoping for. You use it close up as well then? Anybody tried it with an external flash?
Click to expand...

That was at f/16 :thumbs: as you can see the DoF is wonderful :D
 
alanmossdan said:
Matthew - I notice the image is a bit square - was there more width to the image which you cropped?
Click to expand...

That is purely a composition thing, that I felt that it worked better as a 8:10 aspect ratio :thumbs:
 
..and when i mentioned careful composition makes excellent Fisheye snaps, you posted some beauties. ! :cool:
 
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