- Digitally-optimized, circular fisheye auto-focus lens
- Produces circular images with an angle of view of 180-degrees when attached to a full-frame digital or 35mm film SLR camera
- Maximum aperture of F3.5, a minimum focusing distance of 5.5 inches, and a maximum magnification of 4.6x
- Super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting
- Gelatin filter holder at the rear, allowing the use of gelatin filters
Product Description
This circular fisheye lens produces circular images with an angle of view of 180? when attached to a full-frame digital SLR or 35mm film SLR camera. It has a fast maximum aperture of F3.5 and a minimum focusing distance of 13.5cm (5.3″). Sigma’s super multi-layer coating and Special Low Dispersion (SLD) glass provide excellent image quality for digital and film SLR cameras. The special fisheye design allows maximum creative expression.This lens is perfectly suited for low light conditions indoors or at dusk. Special Low Dispersion (SLD) glass offer effective compensation of color aberration. Sigma’s super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting, a common problem with digital cameras and also creates an optimum color balance.Due to the quantifiable angle/area relationship it produces, this lens can be used for scientific applications such as solid angle measurements of cloud distribution over the sky, or vegetation distribution of the rain forest canopy.
D. B. Smith @ 8:44 am
I got mine about a month ago and am just back from 10 days in Italy, where I used this extensively.
Sharp, good flare control, lots of fun. The previous reviewer says something about the AF being slow– which, while true, is only half the story. You’re almost always going to be focusing at or near infinity, so it’s actually very rare to have to wait. Because this lens has such wide depth of field, I actually usually keep it on manual focus and leave it near infinity.
Actually, the biggest challenge with this lens is composition– it can be surprisingly hard to find a scene with interesting things in all directions. That said, this lens is *excellent* for inside buildings and crowded city streets. Be aware that outdoors, finding the correct exposure can be difficult for a number of reasons. I did significantly better in M (manual) mode than my camera was doing in A (aperture) mode. (reasons for difficulty include the dark corners in the frame which mess up the camera’s metering in some modes, and the probability that the sun will be in the frame and/or there will be both very light and very dark areas in the frame)
This lens is excellent for making spherical panoramas, and for realllllly wide angle shots (I’m de-fishing a lot of my pictures with software).
(I use this lens with a Canon 10D)
A. Ko @ 10:18 am
Optical quality of this fish eye is very good. Flare control is excellent. However, AF speed is very slow. Takes 2+ seconds to move from closet distant to infinity. THe slowest AF speed lens among my other 14canon lenses. Also, during AF, the AF ring moves. I would like to be internal focus or at least the AF ring doesn’t move. They didn’t design a clutch to disengage the AF ring.
Pros: optical quality
Flare control
Cons: AF speed
AF ring moves during AF
Uncle Rocco @ 12:46 pm
This Sigma lens is like a working piece of art. The build quality is high, the images are bright and sharp with excellent color saturation. I use mine to shoot full-screen 360 by 180 panoramas and the results are breathtaking! The best part is that this lens costs 1/3 to 1/4 of what the Canon 8mm lens costs. It’s an awesome deal, no matter what way you look at it. The Sigma 8mm is definitely a professional grade lens.
PrOxY @ 2:17 pm
I also bought this lens to use with my XTi (400d) on my 360 panorama rig. Its fantastic for not only that purpose, but lots of creative work as well. It is a great addition to my lens collection and I know a few pros using it for pano work as well.
Enjoy!
Dennis Muren @ 5:08 pm
Good quality but on my Canon 5D, the circular image is pretty small. I was hoping it would be snug top-to-bottom to maximize pixel count. the lens may have been made for a 1.3 or 1.6 crop factor DSLR. That said, it’s a HUGE improvement from my Nikon FC-E8 on a 995.