What is the angle of view when used with a dSLR with a 1.5x crop factor?
I've been using a 8mm Peleng on my E300 and it's a pretty good lens, especially for the money. It has the typical ex-soviet build quality (stiff focus) but optically seems very good and the diaphram works well. It has a "preset" ring to compose wide open then stops down to the preset fstop for shooting. On 4/3 it covers the whole frame, sorry not sure what it does on other size sensors. This was shot is some pretty bad light but still is kinda neat. BTW this wasn't "unfished" as some people have assumed it was. http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-1/937049/lakewide.jpg
Maybe it's my eyes or the fact it isn't "unfished" but that doesn't look like a wide angle of view. Greg
Interesting - and very distortion-free. The smaller sensor size of the Oly certainly shows up here - to advantage. Here are three full-frame shots using the Peleng 8mm on a Pentax 1st: http://mendosus.com/jpg/3sisters.jpg http://mendosus.com/jpg/wyangala-wetside.jpg http://mendosus.com/jpg/wyangala-dryside.jpg (all three reduced to 900px wide, but not cropped at all) I'm having a ball with this lens - accepting and working around the limitations. A little judicious cropping can yield quite respectable results (as your Oly shot shows).
Ah, that's better as I now have a frame of reference since I've used a 28mm lens on a 35mm SLR there. Greg
Just one minor caveat, Greg. That shot was taken at one of the "secondary" lookouts, a couple of hundred metres down the track from Echo point (hence the cheap fencing). Not a *direct* comparison with a shot from the top.
I think it's pretty close to a "full frame" fisheye on an E300 and this is the same focal length olympus is making their fisheye. The trick to controlling the distortion is the camera MUST be level, avoid anything with straight lines away from the center of the lens and the horizon has to be centered in the lens, crop to move it after shooting. I think you could crop a really cool shot from that first one you posted. This is another fisheye shot, using the ex-soviet 30mm arsat on medium format.. http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-1/937049/duck3web.jpg
G.T. wrote: In some ways the "fisheye perspective" isn't as distorted as a normal wide angle lens is. With careful use on certain subjects, I almost like the look better than you get with a superwide normal type lens. People assume the only thing you can get with a fisheye is shots like this. http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-1/937049/lunch.jpg BTW here's another fisheye shot done with a 30mm Arsat on medium format. http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-1/937049/duck3web.jpg
Hi TW, If you are looking for a fish-eye lens on a digital camera go for the 8mm. There were a couple of them from a couple of places. KievUSA is a really good dealer, and there is a dealer in Canada. Saul at KievUSA normally runs a quality check on the stuff he sells. The dealer in Canada will arrange for direct shipment from Belaruis. The dealer in Canada is a little less money. KievUSA, or is it KeivUSA (I forget which way that goes...) normally has the stock on hand, but is more money. I almost bought from the dealer in Canada, but found out it was a direct shipment from Beleruis. I was not sure if the folks at Customs would add money to the shipment. The dealer said they wouldn't, but this is our government we are talking about here, so you never know what they are going to do. If you do a search on Google for the Peleng 8mm Lens the dealers for it come up. Both of them sounded like they were okay to deal with. I also bought a Kiev 88 years ago from Saul at KievUSA. So I had dealt with them before. They seemed fairly good then. They seem to know a bit about what they are selling. The other dealer, and I don't remember the name of the other dealer did know a bit about the lens, he just had to have it shipped from overseas. I was not real sure about this. As far as the lens, the glass on the Ukrain/Belaruis/Russian lenses is really clean glass. These factories are converted soviet arms factories. They used to make equipment for the soviet military. When the old soviet union fell, they converted the factories to making cameras and camera lenses. The Kiev 88 and the lenes for it are really high quality. When I found out they had a fish-eye lens for the Digital Rebel, I was really happy that I could use this quality of glass on this camera. The down side to the Kiev Cameras is the mechanics in the cameras. They jam a little bit, and have a 1/30 second flash sync. I have shot some photos with the 8mm fish-eye with the Canon Digital Rebel. These were just playing around photos, and not anything really great. Send me email at roland [remome] at readytek.net and I can email you a couple of them. An 8mm lens is going to give you something in the 15mm range if you compare it to 35mm, and a 16mm is going to be somewhere close to a 24mm lens. The 8mm and 16mm only work in the all manual mode on the Canon Digital Cameras. The instruction manuals are in Russian, so you have to have a little understanding of how the lens works in order to use the lens. The markings on the lens are not the same as here, they are a bit different. roland
That shot looks cropped from the full 180-degree angle of view, probably due to the smaller sensor, but it's definitely fisheye, she's not pulling a fast one. When you get a fisheye shot that doesn't present the "expected" fisheye effect, it actually does create a mental illusion that it's not nearly as wide of a view as it is -- this is because you're used to the "stretch" effect you get in the corners of a rectilinear wide-angle shot, and you don't get that in a fisheye. A fisheye projection is more natural and less "distorted" than a rectilinear one, to the eye, *if* the shot avoids lines that your eyes expect to be straight that aren't straight.
They are good people. That's what I did and was able to get mine in native OM mount which was a bonus for me. They didn't for me, never had that issue and have bought a BUNCH of stuff from eastern europe over the years. I can say DO NOT under any circumstance purchase anything from Kievcamera. He's not a honest person to deal with. It's "East Wave Products Inc" <>
That's the key, you have to avoid straight lines or compose in the finder so they stay straight and crop later to move the horizon or whatever is straight. I actually like fisheye projection when it can be applied this way, most people never get to try this because they assume it can only be used for "gimicky" shots so they never buy one..
