Super Fisheye Review

October 10, 2011 lenses No comments

I’ve searched all over the place for a cheap alternative to a fish-eye lens.

I know this isn’t meant to replace a real lens, but other reviews on Amazon for similar products(*) gave me hope that it was remotely useful for my purpose (shooting panorama pix, shooting ultra-wide angle pictures and canceling the 1.6x factor of my Canon 40D). Boy was I disappointed!

Anyway, here’s the good:
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Everything that was promised to be in the package was there, the conversion rings proved useful to try this lens out on different lenses I own. The quality seems solid.

The bad:
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Was not expecting much, but it even didn’t match those expectations. This product is utterly useless.
- SHARPNESS: Not much more than the absolute center of each image is sharp. Everything else is blurry. The only shot I like made with this gadget is a close-up of my keyboard and my two cats.
- TESTS: I own a Canon 40D, tried this lens on my 17-55mm, my kit xx-125mm lens, and my 50mm and 85 mm prime to offset some of the 1.6x factor (1.6 x .25 x XX mm). Useless for that purpose too.
- HEAVY: This is a heavy object, which affects the speed of auto-focus and general movement. I bet mounting this for prolonged time will not be beneficial to the life span of your good lens.
- PANOS: Even the faint hope to use this for panorama pix turned out to be in vain (stitchers will not detect much overlap, even after ‘defishing’ the images).

Tips:
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- INSTALLATION: If you do have/get one, do not forget to install the converter ring before you try to mount this thing. You can seriously damage your lens.
- SHOT TIPS: In my experience (100+ shots) the only shot that works well is extreme close-ups of small objects or animals/people where their nose is exactly in the center of the lens.
- DIY: If you’re aching for “fun pictures with a wide angle” take the $60+ and save it towards a real fish-eye, or build something yourself for $11 (google for $11-Super-Wide-Angle-Digital-Camera on instructables) and call it a day.

What’s next (for me):
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I hate returning things. Unfortunately I ordered this from a third party vendor, so to avoid the hassle I’m just gonna keep it and try to mount on my old video camera, where the wide angle may be beneficial in small spaces.

I’m probably going to buy a Tokina 11-16MM F/2.8 ATX 116 Lens for Canon EOS AF Digital – Tokina ATX116PRODXC or take another risk and get a Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 Aspherical Fisheye Manual Focus Lens for Canon EOS 50D, 40D, 30D, 20D, 10D, Digital Rebel (300D), Rebel XT (350D), Rebel XTi (400D), Rebel XS (100D), Rebel XSi (450D) & Rebel T1i (500D) Digital SLR Cameras (aka the Samyang 8mm) as my main purpose is panoramas, and this lens got decent reviews on dpreview as well as lenstip

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(*) (the Pro Optic 0.25x Super Fish-eye Auxillary Lens for 62mm Filter Threaded Lenses and Precision Design 0.25X Super AF Fish Eye Lens for Film & Digital SLR Lenses by Canon – which is the exact same thing as this one, under a different name)

Opteka 72mm 0.4X Fisheye Lens fr Sony HDR-AX2000 FX1000

US $199.95

The Camera Lens & Filter Shop

Super Fisheye Review

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