8mm fisheye or 12mm?

[marcelo_valente]

So, I'm in the following dilemma.  Should I buy the Samyang/Rokinon 8mm or the 12mm lens?

 

I'd like to have a wide angle lens.  I might be going to Europe in September and having a very wide lens will be great to shoot historical buildings, inside churches, etc.

 

Now, I don't know if I should get the fisheye or the non fisheye.  I've read many reviews and both lenses are good, but if I get the fisheye, would it just sit in my bag once I come back?

 

Please help with your thoughts.  If you can also share images it would be nice.

 

Thanks!

[Norseman]

Why not have both (in the 8mm Fisheye)?

 

CS6 and CC have a special way to correct the fisheye to straight lines.

[Older versions of PS have more complicated ways of doing similar adjustments.]

 

Watch this video to see how it works:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/adaptive-wide-angle-filter.html

 

There are lots of other demos of techniques. But, I have used this with my X-T1 and the 8mm Samyang.

[Maurice]

That's a nice experiment once or twice, but i don't think you could keep that up for every shot. Norseman.

 

One should really only get a fisheye if they're specifically looking for that effect, not for its wideanlge. If you ask me it only works for 'Fun' things like with a bunch of people in tight spaces:

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/reviewsamples/albums/olympus-8mm-f-1-8-fisheye-samples-gallery/slideshow

 

Maybe the odd church can be fun with a fisheye once or twice. But i don't think you can really take architecture seriously without a normal planar lens.

Samyang's 12mm F2 i assume you're talking about it superb, and not to mention the F2 that might come in really handy without a tripod inside buildings.

[Trenton Talbot]

Fisheye is a special effects lens. While you certainly can "defishise" it with plugins like Fisheye-Hemi (which is much better than PS/LR, by the way)… this is just silly. Like removing the aberrations from a Lensbaby shot. In short: there's no dilemma at all. Get a fisheye if you want a fisheye, and vice versa.

[milandro]

Get both, they are very different animals and actually the 8mm will astound you with its sharpness.

 

I have an 8mm 2.8 I ( the first generation of the 2.8 variety, you don’t need the II which is made to cover larger sensors)  and it makes a great pair with the 10-24 which is a very different lens.

 

I use the zoom a lot and they are not alternative lenses but complementary ones.

 

You can de-fish the 8mm, some software does that better than other software , if you de-fish and the software crops the shot, what’s the point? Fisheye Hemi, as I understand, doesn’t crop the shot with the 8mm.

 

Here you can see what I am talking about

 

http://www.fotozones.com/live/index.php/topic/56032-to-fish-or-not-to-fish/page-2

 

There member Alan 7140 has done these two shots where you can compare the same shot with the 10-24 ( at 10mm) and a de-fished ( with Hemi) 

 

This article convinced me to buy the 8mm and use it NEXT to the 10-24mm ( which I already had).

[marcelo_valente]

Thank you all for the valuable anwers.  I guess defishing would be easy, but a lot of work.  It does make a good point that you can defish, but in the end, there might be limitations I think.

 

Unfortunatelly my budget will only alow me to buy one of them.  I forgot to mention that I recently purchased the xf 18mm which is wide, but not as wide as the 12 or the 8mm.

 

So, would the 12mm be more of the same in relationship with the 18mm (I'm guessing no) and then it would make sense to get the fisheye.

 

I'll just keep on looking at images to see if I like the fisheye effect enough to use it a lot if I get it.

 

Thanks again!!

[Norseman]

You have to answer the question-What are you going to do with it?

I have the XF 14 for real estate shots. and the 8mm for just for fun.

[milandro]

they are different enough, but how necessary to own both would depends on what kind of use you would make of them.

I bought the 10-24mm exactly to cover all bases but I find myself more often than not shooting at 10 or at 24, sometimes to correct some perspective , a would shoot between 12 and 14mm.

[dv.]

i use both Samyang 8mm fisheye and Samyang 12mm. Fisheye has distortion effect which can be fun to use. I just posted some test shots for my Samyang 12mm which is great for landscape. You have to decide your usage and needs first. Wouldn't hurt to have both. Cheers

 

http://www.fuji-x-forum.com/topic/169-samyang-12mm-f20-ncs-cs-x-mount/

[milandro]

If I only had to have one wide-angle It would probably be the Zeiss 12mm if I felt the need to use the autofocus or alternatively the Samyang 12 mm if I was on a budget and didn’t care for the autofocus. When I shot 35mm on film I loved the 15mm.

 

The 8mm is NOT a jack of all trades and only really masters a limited amount of shots but if you let yourself use it too much it will rapidly take over the look of your pictures and bore you and everyone else to death.

 

Besides, you will learn to appreciate its value better once you have explored the limits of the 12 and know what the 12 cannot give you and why you need an 8 for those shots that the 12 cannot make. But even then it will be a challenge to use the lens appropriately and to not let it dominate you.

 

Many years ago (1987) I had an assignment with my business partner to shoot pics for a brochure of the Achille Lauro ( the famous ship that had been hijacked few years before) and to do so I went from Italy to South Africa on a beautiful 15 days trip ( it was a transfer trip for the ship to spend the winter season in an other hemisphere rather than a cruise). The cameras with which we were shooting were Pentax 6 x 7 cm.

 

Normally one of my favorite wide-angle lenses on that camera would have been the 45mm but we had managed to acquire a 35mm fisheye ( with a similar angle as the 8mm !). So we were happily shooting away but my business partner had to disembark in Tenerife ( and I went all the way to Capetown) because there was some other work to be be done back home. He took the film that we had shot until them with him and went back to Milan which was my base at the time.

 

Few days after I get a telex (  some might not even know what that was, since It no longer exist in most countries) saying : “ Good shots, use less fisheye! “. I never for got that!

[Antony]

I love the 12mm and find it very flexible, from people to architecture. The 8mm is a special effect lens that I may one day buy ( but I'm sure I'd seldom use it, unlike the 12mm)

[marcelo_valente]

If I only had to have one wide-angle It would probably be the Zeiss 12mm if I felt the need to use the autofocus or alternatively the Samyang 12 mm if I was on a budget and didn’t care for the autofocus. When I shot 35mm on film I loved the 15mm.

 

The 8mm is NOT a jack of all trades and only really masters a limited amount of shots but if you let yourself use it too much it will rapidly take over the look of your pictures and bore you and everyone else to death.

 

Besides, you will learn to appreciate its value better once you have explored the limits of the 12 and know what the 12 cannot give you and why you need an 8 for those shots that the 12 cannot make. But even then it will be a challenge to use the lens appropriately and to not let it dominate you.

 

Many years ago (1987) I had an assignment with my business partner to shoot pics for a brochure of the Achille Lauro ( the famous ship that had been hijacked few years before) and to do so I went from Italy to South Africa on a beautiful 15 days trip ( it was a transfer trip for the ship to spend the winter season in an other hemisphere rather than a cruise). The cameras with which we were shooting were Pentax 6 x 7 cm.

 

Normally one of my favorite wide-angle lenses on that camera would have been the 45mm but we had managed to acquire a 35mm fisheye ( with a similar angle as the 8mm !). So we were happily shooting away but my business partner had to disembark in Tenerife ( and I went all the way to Capetown) because there was some other work to be be done back home. He took the film that we had shot until them with him and went back to Milan which was my base at the time.

 

Few days after I get a telex (  some might not even know what that was, since It no longer exist in most countries) saying : “ Good shots, use less fisheye! “. I never for got that!

Great story!

I 

guess I'm deciding towards the 12mm, and then see, as you said, why I would need an 8mm fisheye.  I'm not so sure I like the fisheye effect that much.

[marcelo_valente]

i use both Samyang 8mm fisheye and Samyang 12mm. Fisheye has distortion effect which can be fun to use. I just posted some test shots for my Samyang 12mm which is great for landscape. You have to decide your usage and needs first. Wouldn't hurt to have both. Cheers

 

http://www.fuji-x-forum.com/topic/169-samyang-12mm-f20-ncs-cs-x-mount/

 

Great set of images!! 

[milandro]

Hello, Marcello,

 

the fish-eye effect of the 8mm is rather different from the one of other fisheye lenses and if you don’t include too many straight lines at the edges of the frame you can actually have a very wide shot which won’t look necessarily a fisheye one.

 

I will show what I mean with a couple of shots

 

 

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[milandro]

this is a second shot with the 8mm

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[milandro]

of course you can used the fisheye this way too! 

 

 

 

 

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[marcelo_valente]

of course you can used the fisheye this way too! 

 

hehe, great shots Milano.  I'd be using it a lot for shooting historical buildings, so the fisheye effect would probably be mostly there all the time.  I think I'm deciding towards the 12mm.

[erreflower]

I ordered my Samyang 12 mm f 2 last week and I'm waiting for it any day now. 

When I shot 35 mm I used to have, and have a lot of fun with, a Nikkor 20 mm, so when I decided to buy a new lens for my X-E2, I actually looked at the 8 mm fisheye as well, but my decision toward the 12 mm f 2 was almost immediate: as far as I'm concerned, more versatility, more ease of use for an amateur photographer as I am, in the end, more fun... 

I'll let you know my impressions on the field after it arrives and I start using it! 

Ciaooo, 

R

[KwyjiboVanDeKamp]

I would prefer the 12mm. It's very wide, wide enough!

As said before the 8 mil is more a "fun" lens.

[x-tc]

of course you can used the fisheye this way too! 

This last one is a good example of both properties at the same time.

[marcelo_valente]

I ordered my Samyang 12 mm f 2 last week and I'm waiting for it any day now. 

When I shot 35 mm I used to have, and have a lot of fun with, a Nikkor 20 mm, so when I decided to buy a new lens for my X-E2, I actually looked at the 8 mm fisheye as well, but my decision toward the 12 mm f 2 was almost immediate: as far as I'm concerned, more versatility, more ease of use for an amateur photographer as I am, in the end, more fun... 

I'll let you know my impressions on the field after it arrives and I start using it! 

Ciaooo, 

R

Cool!!!

 

I'd love to know your impressions! I guess I'll go with the 12 also, it will look great on my X-E2.  

 

Thanks

 

Ciao

[marcelo_valente]

I ordered my Samyang 12 mm f 2 last week and I'm waiting for it any day now. 

When I shot 35 mm I used to have, and have a lot of fun with, a Nikkor 20 mm, so when I decided to buy a new lens for my X-E2, I actually looked at the 8 mm fisheye as well, but my decision toward the 12 mm f 2 was almost immediate: as far as I'm concerned, more versatility, more ease of use for an amateur photographer as I am, in the end, more fun... 

I'll let you know my impressions on the field after it arrives and I start using it! 

Ciaooo, 

R

 

Hey, you may want to look at this article I came across. http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-use-ultra-wide-lenses.htm 

:-)

[milandro]

except that the link is “ dead” 

[marcelo_valente]

except that the link is “ dead” 

Weird. I copied from the url address and pasted here. Let's try again

 

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/how-to-use-ultra-wide-lenses.htm

[nazeddie]

I agree with Vandekamp. I have both but the 12mm gets more use.