fbpx

DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

Search

 

Submit A Story

Laowa’s new super short 4mm f/2.8 Circular Fisheye lens costs less than $200

by 4 Comments

It was first teased back in April, but now the Laowa 4mm f/2.8 Fisheye from Venus Optics has been officially announced, along with availability and pricing. Designed for Micro Four Thirds, and taking a break from their “Zero-D” wide-angle lenses, this one offers a super-wide 210° field of view with some pretty crazy distortion.

A lens built to basically see behind itself offers up a lot of great advantages for interesting perspectives, but one of its primary uses will no doubt be for creating 360° content. That ability, according to Laowa, is one of the key benefits of this lens, providing the ability to shoot a 360° panorama with only 2 photos.

[Read More…]

This 4.9mm Hyperfisheye prototype lens is so wide it can see behind itself

by 1 Comment

LensRentals has posted some fantastic teardowns with impressive regularity over the years, but it’s rare that we see them put something together. They thought that it was about time to show off building a lens, after shooting timelapse of tearing down the massive C-4 Optics 4.9mm f/3.5 Hyperfisheye prototype lens from scratch, LensRentals founder, Roger Cicala posted a detailed write up of the lens being reconstructed from scratch.

Unlike most of the lenses today, this lens is all mechanical. There’s no fancy autofocus, image stabilisation or electronics to deal with. And that short 4.9mm focal length offers an insane 270° field of view. Yes, it can see behind itself!

[Read More…]

Canon patents EF-M 10mm f/2.8 APS-C fisheye for the EOS M mirrorless system

by 4 Comments

Canon has stated that their new full-frame mirrorless line will sit alongside their existing systems in their product lineup. That an APS-C format mirrorless in the EOS R is essentially not possible, and that EOS M will continue to live on and see development.

True to their word, a new patent has just surfaced for a potential 10mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens design. The short backfocus distance suggests that it is for a mirrorless camera with an APS-C projection size. Given that it’s APS-C, it won’t be for the EOS R, but for the EOS M line.

[Read More…]

Meike announces a 180° 6-11mm f/3.5 fisheye lens for Nikon & Canon DSLRs

by Leave a Comment

Meike has just announced their new 6-11mm f/3.5 fisheye for full frame and APS-C Nikon and Canon DSLRs. It’s a manual focus lens offering a 180-degree field of view on both full frame and APS-C sensors. There isn’t much information on it besides that, though, and there are no sample images yet.

[Read More…]

A hands on first impression with the $139 7artisans 7.5mm F2.8 APS-C Fisheye Lens

by 6 Comments

I held the curiosity of having a fisheye lens in my camera bag since I first used the Nikon 10.5mm APS-C Fisheye. Though fisheye lenses serve a very niche market, it’s a fun lens to have and most of those lenses are not that big or heavy to bother your shoulders.

There are reasonable alternatives available in CaNikon world, but since I shifted to Fujifilm, the only highly reviewed option I could find was Samyang 8mm f2.8 Fisheye, which I did go to purchase but (un)fortunately only the demo piece was available in stock and the seller did not agree on any discount for that lens.

[Read More…]

Nikon 14mm vs Nikon 16mm Fisheye + Lens Correction

by 6 Comments

I have been using both the Nikon 14mm f/2.8 and the Nikon 16mm f/2.8 fisheye for a while now, and I have been noticing that the images from the 14mm are very very similar to the images from the 16mm fisheye after a lens correction has been applied.

Of course, there is one very big difference between these two lenses: the Nikon AF Nikkor 14mm f/2.8 ED lens costs $1891.95…while the Nikon AF Fisheye Nikkor 16mm f/2.8D lists for $996.95 – so the big question is: is the 14mm f/2.8 really worth nearly a grand more than the fisheye?

In this article I will post a few sample photos along with my thoughts on the differences and similarities of the Nikon 14mm f/2.8 vs the Nikon 16mm f/2.8 fisheye.[Read More…]

This 250° fisheye lens is so wide it can almost see behind itself

by 5 Comments

Entaniya’s fisheye lenses for GoPro cameras have proven to be quite popular since they were initially released. They led to the creation of something Entaniya calls “One Shot VR“. This is essentially footage shot with a single 250° fisheye lens and then mapped into a VR sphere. It doesn’t contain the complete surroundings, but as long as you don’t need to look directly behind you, it does a pretty good job.

Now, Entaniya have scaled up the lens and announced the new Fisheye 250 for micro four thirds cameras. This allows you a much higher degree of control over your fisheye video footage, as well as the ability to shoot raw stills. It’s quite a large lens, weighing in at 1.6kg, but it still weighs a lot less than Nikon’s legendary 6mm f/2.8 which only offered a mere 220° field of view.

[Read More…]

Meet Facebook’s futuristic-looking 360º virtual reality camera

by Leave a Comment

Some might pass virtual reality off as nothing more than a fad, much like 3D televisions that left the world almost as quickly as they came into it, but the reality is, it’s here to stay.

Nokia, Lytro, Google and Facebook have all dipped their toes into the metaphorical pool, and with the amount of R&D going into it, it’s safe to say virtual reality has plenty of room and capital for growth.

Today, Facebook unveiled the next component in its virtual reality endeavors, the Surround 360, an open source 360-degree video camera designed to capture immersive VR content.[Read More…]

A DIY Guide For Fixing The Rokinon/Samyang MFT Fisheye Focus Issue

by 6 Comments

The internet has quite a bit of reports that the Rokinon/Samyang/Walimex MFT Fisheye has some issues with its focus scale. The reports range from the annoying”Infinity is at the 0.5ft mark” all the way up to “not focusing to infinity at all“. My lens had the latter issue. That’s why I started to look around the net for a solution. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a real tip on how to fix it. The only hint I got was from the rear lens element becoming loose on some lenses.

In fact, the rear lens element was also the issue of my not focusing to infinity problem. I was able to fix it by unscrewing it a bit. Here is a DIY guide on how to fix your lens in case you have focus issues as well. (of course, this is all very informational, if you end up bricking your lens by following this guide, we are not taking any blame for it)

[Read More…]

Recent Posts