Thrilled with my Samyang 8mm fisheye lens!! - Fogo Island

camperbc · Feb 25, 2011

It is a very rare occasion when the cheapest really just may be the best. I did a LOT of research prior to deciding upon the Rokinon (Samyang) 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. There was hardly a negative comment anywhere on the Net, as most of the reviews were very positive indeed.

Well, we finally had a nice day yesterday, so I went out exploring with my Sony A500 and fisheye in tow. Needless to say, I am pleased with the results. This manual lens is VERY sharp at f/8, and by keeping the distance set to about two feet, everything from a foot to infinity is razor sharp. And it renders the colours beautifully, reminding me of the old Minolta lenses. The images turn out very nice, even when pointing the camera directly into the sun, as you can see in the shots below.

I love that I have the option to distort things as much or as little as I choose, depending on how I frame the shot. It is a terrific lens for my Fogo Island landscapes, and even a very pricey ultra-wide angle lens would have a tough time covering this much real estate! (180 degrees diagonal)

I am equally thrilled with the Fisheye Hemi PS plugin. When you want to defish an image, it's just a matter of one click to straighten things out, with no notable degradation in IQ, even at the edges, unlike most other defishing software. By far, the best program of its kind that I have ever come across.

These images were captured close to my home, in the nearby towns of Fogo and Joe Batt's Arm (yup, that's the real name!) on Fogo Island, a one hour ferry ride off the northeast coast of Newfoundland.

It is worth mentioning that this lens sells for under $300. It is manufactured in Korea by Samyang, and also branded as Rokinon, Polar, Falcon, Pro-Optic, Opteka, Vivitar, Bower, and probably a bunch more, though they are all identical. It's just a matter of finding the brand with the absolute lowest price; in my case $259.

(taken handheld with my A500 and Rokinon 8mm, ISO200, f/8 and 1/1,250th sec.)

Glen
Focus On Newfoundland : about my photography:

Brenda Lee · Feb 25, 2011

Gorgeous -- great colors.

ghache · Feb 25, 2011

WOW, i love these shots,

colors are great. 8.5mm gives a really nice perspective. for the price its tempting
seems like glare is really well contrlled?

JAntonio777 · Feb 25, 2011

Beatifull shots, especialy the first.

Ricardodaforce · Feb 26, 2011

Awesome and what a bargain!

DxAxN · Feb 26, 2011

nice shots... I like the anchor and canon most

mswiech · Feb 26, 2011

Excellent shots, I do like the colors and crispness that this lens produced. For that price you can't go wrong.

TwoRails · Feb 26, 2011

Those shots are making want one of those lenses!

mhk1058 · Feb 27, 2011

All really great shots, colour, depth, sharpness - perfect, love 'em.

altitude604 · Feb 28, 2011

great work once again!

kind of tempts me to get one of those lenses...

inaka · Feb 28, 2011

Beautiful shots and thanks for the heads up about the Rokinon (Samyang) 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens.
Great work and I've been in the market for a fisheye for a while now.

Excellent work!

tyler_h · Feb 28, 2011

With a distortion correction program working that well then I guess it becomes a more valid option for crop users looking for ultrawides... how much did you have to crop out after correcting the distortion though?

camperbc · Feb 28, 2011

Tyler, these are not cropped. That's the beauty of this lens... and of the Fish-eye Hemi plugin! Depending on how you frame your shot, you can have as much, or as little, distortion as you want. If your image does have some distortion and you want to straighten things out, that's where the plugin helps out. There is no need to crop out heavily distorted edges from the plugin's processing, because this plugin does not cause the image to have any edge deterioration. All the rest of the programs that I have tried do degrade an image.
Glen

imaphotofans · Mar 3, 2011

If the morning or afternoon time will be better

inaka · Mar 3, 2011

camperbc said:
Tyler, these are not cropped. That's the beauty of this lens... and of the Fish-eye Hemi plugin! Depending on how you frame your shot, you can have as much, or as little, distortion as you want. If your image does have some distortion and you want to straighten things out, that's where the plugin helps out. There is no need to crop out heavily distorted edges from the plugin's processing, because this plugin does not cause the image to have any edge deterioration. All the rest of the programs that I have tried do degrade an image.
Glen

Sounds great.

Are you using the plugin with Photoshop or Aperture, etc?
Just wondering if there are any pros/cons of the plug-in based on the source application. (For example, I know with the Color EFex plug-in, it's somewhat limited in Aperture, but has full functionally of brush in effects in Photoshop, etc.)

Just wondering since I have this lens on my wish list....thanks for sharing.