Cheap fish-eye lens for Canon?

[rottie102]

What are reasonably good CHEAP fish-eye lenses for Canon fitment?
Since I will probably use it once a month at most, I don't want to spend too much money on it. There's quite a few of less known brands on ebay around £100-£150 , ideally I would like to spend below £100. 2nd hand is fine.

[Oxygen2k10]

Hey mate. Have a look for the Rokinon 8mm (it comes under lots of different names such as Samyang but they are all exactly the same). I have one and it's a great lens. As you can imagine it's super super wide. It's also fully manual so takes a while to get used to as you have to focus manually and adjust the aperture manually using a ring on the lens. It's pretty sharp though and compared to the Canon fish eye its an absolute steal!

[Craikeybaby]

Are we talking Canon cropped sensor or Canon full frame?

[rottie102]

Cropped. I'm assuming fish eye is fish eye, either in 8 or 12mm, isn't it?

[LongQ]

Oxygen2k10 said:

Hey mate. Have a look for the Rokinon 8mm (it comes under lots of different names such as Samyang but they are all exactly the same). I have one and it's a great lens. As you can imagine it's super super wide. It's also fully manual so takes a while to get used to as you have to focus manually and adjust the aperture manually using a ring on the lens. It's pretty sharp though and compared to the Canon fish eye its an absolute steal!

I would agree with this is you have a little price flexibility.

I have the 14mm Samyang and it's a great lens once you get into the swing of using it.

Or, to put that another way, there will be a collection of settings that give the best results for the majority of your specific needs. Once you have identified them just make sure you use them without fail and the results will be extremely good.

[Craikeybaby]

rottie102 said:

Cropped. I'm assuming fish eye is fish eye, either in 8 or 12mm, isn't it?

There are actually two types of fish eye lens, ones which produce a circular image (usually about 4mm on a cropped sensor) and those which produce an image which fills the frame with a 180 degree view, they are about 10mm on a cropped sensor. For full frame its about 8mm for a circular image or 15mm for a 180 degree image to fill the sensor.

If you get a fisheye designed for full frame you will either get black corners of the image or less than 180 degrees field of view as you will effectivly be taking a crop out of the middle.