Samyang 7.5mm f3.5–The Fisheye Solution

It has been a while since I started to consider going for the ultra-wide path instead of the 70-200mm equivalent which covers the longer focal lengths. The goal was a specialized toolset that would enable expansive documentation for spatial subjects. With luck I was able to procure a Samyang 7.5mm Fish Eye (FE) – a lens that I’ve tested twice already during tradeshows.

Completely manual with a focus and aperture ring in a solid metallic body, its on the heavy side as far as m4/3 lenses go. Comes with an integrated petal hood and a cap which covers all of it and the front lens element.

It features a 180 degree field of view with a maximum aperture of f3.5 and an equivalent focal length of 15mm.

Coming from lens converters to get that wider field of view, the sharpness and detail that comes out of this lens is simply incomparable. The edge-to-edge sharpness borders on crazy and allows for clean defishing though it really isn’t intended to be utilized in such fashion. You can see below through a simple test how much more coverage this thing gets. The following set of images were shot from about a meter and a half away from the subject with the center of the frame set where the top of the TV frame meets the wall:

Shot with a 14mm lens.

Shot with a 0.45x conversion lens attached to the 14mm

Shot using the 7.5mm fish eye

The information that is gathered inside the frame is far too great compared to the converted setup and there isn’t any blurring on any part of the image nor is there chromatic aberration on the high contrast areas (top right of photo above). Functionality is extended via software called Hugin which is one of the more popular defishing solutions for this particular setup:

On the right we find the original image while on the left is a vertically corrected rendition

I cant wait to try this out on our projects, the images that it churns out create a spatial awareness to rival the 7-14mm UWA solution on the M4/3 system. This Samyang 7.5mm FE comes in at around 12,000Php available in select carriers of third party lenses alongside Sigma and Tamron.