Fisheye Lens???

R

RuthS

Suspended / Banned
Messages
10
Name
Ruth
Edit My Images
No
My husband has a Canon EOS-1.

I've heard him talk about buying a Fisheye lens. I know nothing about these or camera's and need some advice on which is the best one to buy him. This years birthday present!!

Please help. Thanks.
 
Probably no more than £350. But don't want to compromise on price if its the best lens.

He's done some semi professional sports photography, but now he just takes pictures for fun.
 
I will have a fisheye lens for sale and it will go up in the for sale threads shortly. I just need to find the old ebay/thread to see how much I bought it for. Its a sigma 8mm canon fit
 
norahbattie said:
I will have a fisheye lens for sale and it will go up in the for sale threads shortly. I just need to find the old ebay/thread to see how much I bought it for. Its a sigma 8mm canon fit
Click to expand...

Ah man gutted, I can't get in to classifieds just yet :-(
 
RuthS said:
I've heard him talk about buying a Fisheye lens. I know nothing about these or camera's and need some advice on which is the best one to buy him. This years birthday present!!
Click to expand...

Wide angle lenses are expensive by nature. And although it can get a decent bit of kit still your budget is at the low end of the scale.

Now, essentially a fisheye is an extreme wide angle lens. Whilst there are some very useable wide angle lenses, a proper fisheye tends to be more of a novelty, vastly distorting images and producing vignetting around the edges. So I'd do a little research first..

XXmm is the focal length of a lens. In brief terms, 20mm is fairly wide. 200mm on the other hand would be considered telephoto. Firstly, I'd see what he's already got. Quite commonly people will have a couple of zooms - something like an 18mm - 55mm, and 55mm - 200mm, which covers a fairly big range. If he's done sports from a long distance (football for example, he'd probably have some huge telephoto lenses, 500mm+).

If the widest he has is around 18mm, then I'd say something like a 10-20mm zoom, which is very versatile. You can get offerings from Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, etc.. Something like the 8mm will be on the very extreme end of the scale and risks going to the back of the cupboard after it's been used a couple of times.

You may find they're slightly over budget, but I'm sure you could pick them up second hand if it's not possible to stretch the extra.
 
Thank you so much. This is great advice, gives me some ideas to do some research on. He does have some pretty impressive lenses already from taking photo's at football matches, so really appreciate your help.
 
my general advice would be dont buy a lens as a suprise - if you want to suprise him take him to a camera shop on his birthday and buy the lens he wants. Photography is a very personal thing and he probably knows which one he wants to buy already, and you dont want him to say "thank you darling" but then never use it (or worse sell it on here after a decent interval so he can buy the one he wanted)

(for example aren't samyang lenses manual focus and manual exposure ? - I'm not knocking them i understand they are great and affordable , but is that what hubbie wants ? etc)
 
Last edited:
If the Op is talking about a film camera, a 1D or a 1Ds then the tokina zoom mentioned might not really be ideal. From a discussion on flickr

BennehBoy said:
on the 5D I get full frame coverage with no vignette from 14.5mm, and from 12.5mm on the 1dmkii (thus giving 16.5mm equivalent fov on the mkii)
Click to expand...

So going from that on a film/1Ds/5D its just a 14.5-17mm zoom
 
nano said:
If the Op is talking about a film camera, a 1D or a 1Ds then the tokina zoom mentioned might not really be ideal. From a discussion on flickr



So going from that on a film/1Ds/5D its just a 14.5-17mm zoom
Click to expand...

No, the Tokina is full frame fisheye at about 14-15mm on a full frame camera. It is still fisheye but the difference is the size of sensor. 10mm is full frame size of the Tokina and also the Sigma 10mm. The longer end of the Tokina on a full frame is equivalent to the 15mm Sigma or Canon, or indeed the 14mm Samyang
 
samagroma said:
Wouldn't it be better to get samyang 14mm 2,8?
Click to expand...

in a word no

a) it isnt a fish eye lens

and

b) ken rockwell describes it as "Optically the worst 14mm FX lens sold today"

(also could you please make your mind up whether you actually own this lens or not as on differing threads you have claimed both to own it and reccomend it, and also to not own a WA and be looking for advice)
 
Blimey - this thread is like the blind leading the blind!!

I don't own a fisheye, but my first thoughts are there are a lot of people giving advice on lenses they don't own and have never used.

The second thoughts are that there are two types of fisheye lenses; circular and full frame.

Circular lenses give a circular image, like this:
n516134928_1805458_708224.jpg


and full frame like this;
Full_Frame_Fisheye_2.jpg


As has previously mentioned, I would recommend taking your other to the shop and allowing him to choose a fisheye. Trust me, if he wants one he will already have an idea of which lens he would want. :)
 
DaveKing said:
Blimey - this thread is like the blind leading the blind!!

I don't own a fisheye, but my first thoughts are there are a lot of people giving advice on lenses they don't own and have never used.

The second thoughts are that there are two types of fisheye lenses; circular and full frame.

Circular lenses give a circular image, like this:

and full frame like this;

As has previously mentioned, I would recommend taking your other to the shop and allowing him to choose a fisheye. Trust me, if he wants one he will already have an idea of which lens he would want. :)
Click to expand...

Only bit I'd disagree with is the last part. You'll be very hard pressed to fond anywhere that stocks several brands of fisheye.

This topic comes up all the time and I recommend the same lens all the time. For the money and quality samyang wins everytime for me.
 
Charlatan said:
Only bit I'd disagree with is the last part. You'll be very hard pressed to fond anywhere that stocks several brands of fisheye.

This topic comes up all the time and I recommend the same lens all the time. For the money and quality samyang wins everytime for me.
Click to expand...

Again, I have not used this lens. But this lens would not work correctly (without modification) on a full frame camera. Look at this link below:

http://www.360pano.de/en/samyang_5D_1D.html

Someone spending £200-300 might be annoyed to find out it doesn't work correctly (without modification) on their camera.
 
Again the Samyang I am wrong about, read a few places it was fisheye, but obviously not (should have checked their own site first).

If it is full frame then the options for full frame fisheye boil down to the Sigma or Canon 15mm or the Tokina 10-17.

Personally I have the Sigma and find it delivers excellent results.

Most of the shots here are from the Sigma 15mm

http://www.carlspring.net/gallery/skate/
 
Last edited:
Wow, so much advice, thanks everyone. I have plenty to think about! really appreciate all your thoughts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top