Photography

Samyang 8mm F3.5 fish-eye

Generally this lens is great value for money. After using it for just two days, I've taken lots of great photos already, and I'm not gonna get rid of it.

This is pretty much a worst case scenario test of the Samyang fish-eye. I've cropped out a fairly small section from the middle of the image and applied sharpening once. The aperture was entirely open (F3.5) to stress the lens as much as possible. Stopping it down to just F5.6 will get rid of all the weird glow.

One weird drawback of this lens is that infinite focus is not where you would expect it to be. The glow on objects very faw away is mostly reduced when focusing at appx. 1 meter, but the best detail level is when you focus at 0.5 meters. At 0.4 meters objects at infinity are still very sharp. If you leave this lens at 0.4m and F5.6 or F8, you won't have to focus at all. Everything is sharp. Oh, and forget about getting that "cool background blur". You won't get any bokeh at 8mm anyway.

Focus 0.3 meters, F3.5

Focus 0.4 meters, F3.5

Focus 0.5 meters, F3.5

Focus 0.7 meters, F3.5

Focus 1.0 meters, F3.5

Focus 1.5 meters, F3.5

Focus 3.0 meters, F3.5

Focus at infinity, F3.5

The entire image, just for reference

Example Image

Just to show that this is not a bad lens, I've included an example image of what it can do. Click the image to view the full size image.

Final verdict

Despite the weird focus issue and the lack of auto-focus, it's a great lens. It's cheap, very sharp when stopped down to F5.6 or less, small, well built and surprisingly cheap. I recommend it.

Website by Joachim Michaelis