I'm coming up on my fifth anniversary at Adobe in a couple weeks (5 years - wow) and as recognition for this, Adobe generously gave me the opportunity to pick a thank you gift. I chose a gift card from Amazon.ca, and using it, I made a couple purchases for my Panasonic Lumix GF7 camera. One of those purchases was a very cool lens, the Samyang 7.5mm fisheye lens. Totally manual focus and no electronic connection to the camera, so as far as my Lumix is concerned, there's no lens on the camera. This also means there's no exif data for the lens, but I can still use the camera meter for exposure.
Despite the manual focus requirement (much like my 14mm Rokinon for my Nikon D750) I'm really enjoying this lens. it is very sharp and for landscapes, I can shoot at f/5.6 or f/8 and still get amazing depth of field.
Style note: I went with the silver make of the lens, to tie in with the retro look of the camera.
How wide is this lens? Well, let's just say you have to keep an eye on your feet and your fingers to assure they're not in the frame. This lens gives 180 degrees of coverage.
I get that lovely fisheye effect from this lens, but vertical or horizontal lines that run through the centre of the field of view stay very straight. As you get closer to the edges of the frame, the curve becomes quite pronounced. While most of the point of having a fisheye lens is exactly for that curved effect, Lightroom also does pretty decent job of correcting the issues if you prefer. All you have to do is use the Adobe Lens Profile Downloader (free) to download the profile for the Samyang lens, and you can make corrections quite easily. In this project, I'm including images that are both corrected and not corrected.
A quick shot of my backyard, minutes after unboxing the lens. Uncorrected, the curvature is very noticeable and perhaps from an architectural perspective, not all that appropriate. Corrected, things look better, but cropping is significant. Notice though, in both images, how little the tree in the background is distorted. That's because it's near on centre to the lens.
Take a close look at the padlock in the foreground. It's tack sharp. I was shooting at either f/8 or f 5.6, less than 3 inches away from the lock. Lens correction not applied.
This example has lens correction applied.
Perhaps not the best choice for architectural images, I was still able to get pleasing results by employing the Samyang lens profile.
This is my favorite shot for the city shoot. I love the composition, curvature effect, lighting and processing. All it needs is a train!
Look closely at the bottom of the frame, and you'll see what I mean by watching out for your feet.
Northeastern Exposure
This weekend has been the first truly nice spring weekend so far. Sunny, decent temperatures, and we took advantage of it by spending a couple days on Rice Lake, at Elmhirst Resort. Naturally, I brought my camera(s), and I've shot some more landscapes using the Samyang lens (as well as many images with my Nikon). Below are both corrected and non-corrected shots. Should I let you decide which is which? Often, it's pretty easy to tell!
Obviously exaggerated beyond normal perspective, I still like the effect that the fisheye has on this shoreline shot.
Tranquility Base
This morning around 8am, the water was almost like glass. So peaceful and serene. Only one dock is in place at Elmhirst right now and it's an important one; this is the dock for the watercraft aerodrome, the only one on Rice Lake. Elmhirst has the water aerodrome, as well as a sod landing strip near the main building. In the summer, they can get 15 small personal aircraft a day on the landing strip alone!
In fact, on this beautiful sunny weekend, I had the good fortune to meet three pilots who flew in for breakfast from Kingston, Ontario, in their ultra-light aircraft. I managed to get some decent shots, and those images will likely be the subject of another project
Curse that one little sapling! This image may end up with a visit to Photoshop to remove the little tree.
The Samyang handles lens flare pretty well, in my opinion. While I did retouch it from a couple other shots, I left this one - the most extreme - alone so you could see for yourself.
The uncorrected version of these land-locked docks just looked - well - odd; so I opted to correct the distortion for this image, and the one below.
Wrap Up
Sometimes the fisheye effect is great, other times not. It's likely a lens you will use on occasion, moreso than regularly. I've got a large collection in this project simply to show a variety and what is possible. In reality, my 12-42mm kit lens will get more use than the fisheye, but for those times when I really want something different - or simply can't back up far enough to include what I want in the frame, the Samyang gives me the coverage I need, at a price that is very reasonable.
