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Review / hands on with Canon’s 8-15mm f4L fisheye

August 6th, 2011

So, I got to try out this exotic lens at the Canon workshop in Sri Lanka (Thanks to Roland Poon of Canon Singapore who brought it with him).

I only tested it on an APS-C camera - it is a full frame L lens so it would give much better results on a full frame camera.

When I first fixed the lens and tried it, I could only set it to 10mm - I thought it was stuck! Turns out the lens has a range limiter to limit it to 10mm (optional) on a full frame camera - apparently if you use it at 8mm on a full frame the image is smaller than the sensor area and ends up in a circle, so this can be used to prevent that:

Build quality - perfect, smooth, etc. It’s an L
Size: seems small’ish
Weight - quite light. But not too light, it has L quality build.

So, I guess there isn’t much to say about it - its pretty much perfect.
OK, worst review ever, I know.

A few notes:
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- If you own an APS-C Camera, it may be cheaper to purchase an APS-C zoom such as canon’s 10-22 or sigma’s 10-20?
- 8 MM is pretty wide even on APS-C - I had a hard time keeping my feet out of the image. I’m told that the view is 180 degrees on a full frame.
- The lens hood should probably be removed for maximum wideness - especially on a full frame (can it be removed? not sure, didn’t try!)
- The front element bulges out - and is delicate - as with all fisheyes it should not be touched
- the cap is decent - almost an inch tall and fits over the lens hood neatly.
- Overall it felt pretty small in hand.

Here’s a sample image:

Note black corners on this photo - does that mean it is almost 180 degrees on APS-C even??

Also see dpreview’s article on the 8-15mm f4l:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/1008/10082616canon8mm15mm.asp

Entry Filed under: Photography