List Price: $399.00
Sale Price: $279.00
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Fisheye lenses are very fun they give a totally different perspective compared to just about any lens out there. The most common type seem to be the "circle" type, which product a big circle in the center of your image (with the fisheye image inside of that). On digital cameras with a crop-factor (like the Canon Rebel series, XXD series and even 7D), this can sometimes result in what looks like a circle with the top and bottom cut off.. not the most enjoyable image.
That's where this one comes in the Rokinon produced a rectangular fisheye image there is no "circle" as with other types of fisheye lenses, but you still get that great fisheye look (distortions and all).
You might see other similar looking (and priced) Fisheye lenses available out there.. Bower, Pro-Optic, Samyang, Rokinon, Vivitar, Falcon. These are ALL THE SAME LENS Samyang, the manufacturer, simply re-brands it and changes the colors a bit (For example, look at: Vivitar Fisheye lens 7 mm f/3.5 Canon EF Pro-Optic 8mm f/3.5 Manual Focus, Fish Eye Lens with Canon EOS Mount ). With that said, be sure to check out the others to find the most affordable. The Rokinon is often 50-75 dollars less than the Vivitar.
The lens is a Canon EF mount (I only mention this because it's not listed in the description, only that it's "For Canon" I wasn't sure if it was EF or FD mount before ordering). It WILL fit onto any EF Mount (meaning it will work on a 5D) but because it's SO WIDE, the hood will show up in images on a fullframe camera (it will not show up on images on a 1.6x crop camera like the Rebels, 7D or XXD line). The hood is not removable, but some people actually cut it off to use with full-frame cameras like the 5D.
The lens is rounded like a traditional fisheye, so you cannot use lens filter in front of this.
The angle is VERY WIDE probably 180 degrees.. I have the lenscap on a leash (capkeeper) and it shows up in images if I don't move it. Things right to the side of the lens will appear in the photo.. it's hard to hide from it!
The low price comes because the lens does NOT make electrical contact with the camera. It's a MANUAL LENS there is no autofocus, and the camera will not recognize it as a lens. You change the aperture by turning the manual aperture ring on the lens itself. You focus using the larger ring. Since the lens is so wide, if you set it to infinity (on the focus scale), then bring it back to just before that mark, most of your image will be in focus. It's actually tougher to get stuff out of focus than in focus (great for those like me who can't manual focus at all)
If you set your camera to AV mode (haven't tried the others) it will automatically determine exposure for you (I was worried about this, figuring a manual lens had to be set manually (including exposure)) You can, of course, still set it manually. And while it does meter, it's not always perfect so be sure to review your images once in a while to make sure everything is turning out. One of the problems is that with such a wide angle of view, there can often be very different lighting conditions. Taking a photo indoors, for example, will often result in a darkened room and very bright light sources wherever windows are. You almost need to "HDR" these to get usable images. Outdoors or in even lighting conditions, it works great.
The price is much less than other wide angle lenses (because those have name-brands behind them and features like autofocus and probably better optics). The only cheaper alternative are the poor screw-on fisheye filters that attach on top of an existing lens, but these will often produce near unusable photos. The photos from the Rokinon are surprisingly sharp.
The downside to it is that quality control on the distance-scale can be poor a number of people are reporting getting this lens (or the other rebranded variations) with a distance scale that is "off" meaning that the 2 foot mark might actually be "Infinity", but I think it is something you can learn to deal with after a few uses. It doesn't make the lens unusable by any means.
The other negative is that this lens is about 300 bucks for a manual-only lens made by Rokinon (or Samyang, etc..) that's almost the same as you'd pay for a Canon 50mm 1.4 lens (or similar). With that said though, I still really enjoy it and would re-buy it again if I had to make the choice again.
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