You didn’t forget that Panasonic just announced the new 8mmm fisheye lens? As usual Asia (and in particular Japan) is the first that has the lens in Stock. Some of them are already on eBay (one of the auctions ends in 7d 4h 41m) -> [shoplink 14820]Click here to check out all Panasonic 8mm fisheye auctions on eBay[/shoplink]
For reference: Amazon.com has the Panasonic 8mm f/3.5 ED Fisheye Lens available for preorder (but it says “Usually ships within 1 to 2 months.”)
6 Responses
Yipee! The fisheye lens is now available!! I’ve been waiting for this to arrive for the longest… Oh, nvm. I still don’t see a reason for this lens. Is there some unknown market for fisheye lenses somewhere that we’re not aware of? Couldn’t Panasonic’s vast resources in lens design been focused on any of the many other more desirable lens choices (faster UWA prime, faster 35/40mm prime, faster portrait 50/55 prime, etc., etc.)?
Fisheye lenses have been a huge part of skateboard, bmx, snowboard, and other action sports photography for decades. Both in film and still. This lens is exactly what a lot of us have been waiting for. Believe it or not there are more photographers than yourself out there.
Dinky LX5 get a 3.8 optical zoom with f2.0 aperture, but not m43. WHY????
“I still don’t see a reason for this lens.”
Maybe to make spherical panoramas?
@Bert
I agree with Spanky.
Except for artistic purposes of a fisheye, the high quality PTGui Pro programme at around $200 will allow you to get a panorama without the distortion and very rarely (eg a cloud going across between shots) any sign of stitching. You can still get spherical panoramas with this programme, as well as simultaneous HDR if you shoot in manual.. There are very few cases that I can see for a need for such extreme wide-angle.
@Neville
A full frame fisheye like this is the only way you can pull off a spherical panorama using m4/3 without having to resort to a multiple row shooting sequence. With the 8mm lens you will need only 6 around, 1 zenith and 1 nadir to patch the small holes left. Crucial if you are going to capture VR images within a dynamic environment. The only other decent option for m4/3 to do this currently is the Olympus 8mm fisheye for 4/3, which has pretty poor performance in the CA/PurpleFringing department. Additionally it is much bigger and heavier.
A very welcome lens indeed, and from the looks of the samples- better performance than the Oly 4/3 8mm.