 This lens is a complete 180° field of view circular fisheye lens on a full frame camera such as the Canon 5D Mk II or Canon 1Ds Mk III, and a lesser fisheye on a crop frame camera like the Canon 7D or Canon T3i. Circular fisheye means the image is a circle in the center of your frame, it does not cover the entire frame. If you don’t understand what this is, please don’t rent it. You’ll be unhappy. It gives interesting (bizarre, some say) effects and is sometimes used for scientific applications because it provides a consistent angle throughout its 180° field of view. OK, well it could be used for scientific purposes but mostly it’s used to give weird ’cow’s eye view’ scenics: think about it—you take a picture, turn around and take another picture, and now you’ve got a 360° panorama. Roger’s take: Full disclosure here: I’m not a fan of the fisheye look, especially the full circle fisheye look (if you don’t understand what a full-circle fisheye is, it gives you a circular image in the center of your rectangular picture, with black edges all around it). But I will say this is a sharp lens with a huge depth of field. And the images are incredibly panoramic when ‘defished’ in software, which is what I do with them mostly. The depth of field makes autofocusing almost unnecessary, and the image is very sharp in the center (not so much on the edges, especially after software defishing if that’s what you choose to do). There’s some chromatic aberration and edge vignetting to deal with in software also. I guess you can tell I’m not overly enthusiastic. To me, circular fisheye lenses are the asparagus of photography. Some people have acquired the taste. I’d rather go hungry. We get asked a lot (and even worse, not asked by people who don’t know) what the different focal length fisheyes look like on different cameras. Here’s the short summary:
The image below should give you an idea of what you get with each type of camera.
Try and Buy Program: Lensrentals is pleased that our friends at SuperdigitalCity have made a special offer for our customers renting this item and considering purchase. Simply email your Lensrentals Invoice number to SuperdigitalCity and they will email you back a coupon code good for $26 off of the purchase of the Sigma 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye lens. Please note: Screw on filters will not fit on this lens due to the curvature of the glass. This item does NOT include a lens hood because it would block the light – it’s a 180° lens. Specs:
Links:MTF Chart:
Red lines indicate 10 lines/mm; green lines 30 lines/mm. Solid lines are Sagittal, dotted lines meridional. If you are bored and don’t understand MTF charts, you can read about them HERE Lens Construction:
PricingLensRentals.com offers rentals of every length between 4 and 90 days. Some common selections are:
The shopping cart will automatically update the quoted price as you adjust the length of your rental. LensRentals also offers an optional damage waiver on this product, limiting your expense should it get damaged while in your possession.
ShippingLensRentals.com ships via UPS 2-day service, unless your rental requires faster shipping. Return shipping is included in the shipping price, and we include a prepaid return label with your order—all you need to do is bring it to a UPS drop-off location when your rental is complete. The shopping cart can automatically quote shipping, even for multi-item and oversize orders. Shipping multiple items together offers significant savings over shipping them individually. |
