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7mm lenses that you would recommend?
  • Hi all, I want to achieve a 14mm look. In GH13 language that would translate as 7mm lens. Has anyone come across a decent 7mm or even a 6mm lens that could be used without vignetting?

    Many thanks!

  • 72 Replies sorted by
  • @kronstadt - Samyang m43 7.5 f3.f. Amazing little hockey puck of a lens. Sharp, all manual, cheap as chips.

  • @bheath - Is that the same as the Rokinon?

  • Are there any UWA rectilinear options? (full 4/3 coverage).

  • @rockroadpix - yes it is. Samyang just sounds better. hhh I rarely use fishy glass, but this is fun.

  • Pricey but the Panasonic 7-14 is a good albeit slow lens. I use mine for stills & video.

  • @bheath - I may have to test that one out. I tried the Roki Nikon version (8mm) at Beards and Hats, recently and I wasn't as keen on it as I would have hoped.

  • @rockroadpix

    He is telling about other lens. M43 lens is completely different from their 8mm one :-)

    It is smaller and sharper.

  • @rockroadpix - Vitaly is right. it's the Rokinon 7.5 mm m43 lens. It's really good for a fisheye. Great portrait lens - huge noses and tiny ears:)

  • In Lightroom, choosing

    • Canon EF 15mm f/2.8
    • Canon EOS 5D Mark II

    from lens correction option will make the images from Samyang 7.5mm rectilinear :)

  • Adorama sells it as "Bower 7.5mm f/3.5"

  • bower, samyang and rokino 1:3.5/7.5mm are the same lens. I've read the Bower and Rokinon are just rebranded Samyangs.

    If you use software to make the image rectilinear, please be aware that you will loose spatial resolution! @stonebat can you use lightroom to process movies or do you have to make an image sequence first and batch process?

    @athiril did you see the $ 400 Olympus 1:4/9-18mm? Or indeed the Panasonic 7-14 mm. I also read something about a full sensor C-mount lens on this forum once, but can't find it now.

  • @bheath - lolz!

    @Vitaly_Kiselev - I didn't know the qual was different from the m43 to the nikon mount 8 mm. I thought that it was only the .5mm ...

  • @dirkvoorhoeve I'm getting this lens for photo only.

  • The Samyang/Rokinon/Bower 7.5mm is a spectacular lens. I've got one for about 10 days now and I'm addicted.

    There is a LR profile in dpreview forums: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1041&message=40689446 but I haven't tested it. Has anyone?

    However yesterday I've finally managed to get an After Effects/Hugin workflow that allows a much wider choice of projections which preserve a lot more resolution when compared to full rectilinear.

    Let me know if any of you is interested. I could publish it.

  • @duartix I'd be happy to see some of your tests with rectilinear correction. I'm mainly thinking of the 7.5 as a cheaper and more organic alternative to the 7-14mm. Not sure if it would do it...

  • @duartix - It IS a fun lens that's for sure. I'd love to see your process for defishing these images in AE. I was just messing around with lens distortion in the distort menu. Thanks.

  • @ttancredi :

    You'll loose a lot (and I mean a LOT really) of corner resolution if you go full rectilinear. From a few preliminary tests the goods news is that are some other projections (namely the Panini http://wiki.panotools.org/The_General_Panini_Projection and some of it's derivatives) that work with a lot less frame crop and less expansion on the corners. These will also look a LOT more natural.

    The main advantages of the Panini projection is that it keeps vertical and radial lines straight. So if you protect your camera from tilt and make sure that the strong horizontal lines (such as the horizon) crosses the center of the frame (sorry but no free lunch here) then you won't even notice it's a fisheye because almost every thing will look straight. :)

    @bheath :

    Basically I load the MTS into AE, export it as a TIFF sequence, then I run a batch script that defishes those TIFFs (~@1/3rd real time @50% CPU) into a subfolder with ZERO human interaction and finally reimport the defished TIFF sequence. Very painless. :)

    Since I see there is some interest in this matter I'll work on a sample over the weekend and run some tests to see which of the projections is a best overall fit. I can also attach the adjusted script here when I get home. If you are impatient to try it, the original work was done here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/fish-eye/discuss/72157622921262553/72157629468570500/ I just adjusted the scripts for FullHD and TIFF and individualized the projects filenames so that I could run both (Rectilinear and Panini) in parallel (@80-90% CPU).

    Hum,.. it's easy I'll do it right here anyway (this is a Windows batch, those versed in shell could easily adapt):

    @echo off
    set width=1920
    set height=1080
    mkdir panini
    for /f %%a IN ('dir /b *.tif') do (
    echo Defishing %%a
    echo p f16 w%width% h%height% v140 n"TIFF" >> defishPANINI.pto
    echo o w%width% h%height% f2 v140 y0 p0 r0 n"%%a" >> defishPANINI.pto
    echo m i0 >> defishPANINI.pto
    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Hugin\bin\nona.exe" -o panini/P_%%a defishPANINI.pto
    del defishPANINI.pto)
    

    (Sorry for the way I posted but I can't seem to format it in a better way)

    Don't forget to adjust for your Hugin instalation folder. Have fun.

    defishPanini.zip
    394B
  • @duartix - Woo-doggy! I've got some learnin' to do. Thanks alot for that. I'm up for trying this. Ciao for now.

  • @duartix Nice. Thanks.

  • FYI some ebay sellers have listing of the lens with 1 meter focus distance marking.

  • BTW Samyang 7.5mm has its own post thread ;)

  • Thank you all for the input. Unfortunately, as nice as Samyang 7.5mm is, it's definitely out of my budget. I'm more interested in a wide angle lens that would have been made in 1970s or 1980s - so that I could pick it up on eBay for £20-£50, and so that it would be wide enough so that even with GH2's crop ratio of 2X it would still be regarded as a "wide angle" 14mm-25mm).

    I once picked up a Vivitar 28mm F2.0 on eBay for £22, which is giving me a 56mm framing. It's a truly beautiful lens - my favorite lens out of the 9 that I have (and my lenses are generally cheap but nice: Minolta, Konika, Zeiss Jena, Canon FD SCC, Super Takumar - and they give me a very "cinematic" look and feel). But 28mm is the widest that I have. I was wondering if you know of any such "antique" lens in the ultra-wide range that I could pick up for cheap so that I could get that Kubricky 14mm look, or similar???

    Also, I'm wondering if it is possible to have an ultra-wide angle lense without the fish-eye effect?

  • @kronstadt: Panini projections from fisheye lenses are your best bet. Resolution will not suffer as bad as in a full rectilinear defish. BTW I seriously doubt you can get wide enough without going with CCTV lenses.

  • For AviSynth users, this defish plugin might be interesting as well:

    http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152860&highlight=defish

    Seems to work well when I work with 20mm/1.7 connected with 0.5 or 0.7 converter lenses.

  • @kronstadt

    1. ultra wide angle lenses that are not cctv ones are not cheap. Cheapest (non cctv) you will find are cine c-mounts that you have to use in tele-crop mode, but they are not wide enough to get a pronounced wide angle IMO (and they go wider than any full format lens).

    2. There are ultra wide CCTV lenses that can be used in tele-crop mode. You have to trawl through e-bay on a daily basis and keep an eye out for a rainbow 3.5mm lens and possibly others that might work. However, I doubt you'll find any lens which goes as wide as the panny 7-14 zoom.

    Please let us know if you find anything!