Samyang just announced the full specs, price and availability of the new Samyang 7.5mm manual fisheye lens for Micro Four Thirds.It will cost 300 Euro, that’s less than a half of the [shoplink 14820 ebay]Panasonic 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye[/shoplink]. It’s a manual lens only but I like it more than the Panasonic lens because the Samyang is really compact! It will be available in silver and black from mid September.
Here is the press release:
Delta company, the exclusive representative and distributor of Samyang Optics in Europe, is proud to report that the lens announced in March, Samyang 7.5mm 1:3.5 UMC Fish-eye MFT will be available from the middle of September this year. The lens will be available in two colour versions: silver and black. Estimated retail price is EUR 299.
Panoramic photography with Samyang fish-eye lens
Samyang 7.5mm 1:3.5 UMC Fish-eye MFT offers an exceptionally wide angle of view, up to 180 degrees diagonally, which makes it a very useful tool for making panoramic photographs. You can enjoy the example panoramic photos in the form of a virtual tour around Krakow on our specially created website: www.samyang.pl/75mft All these panoramic photographs were taken with Samyang 7.5mm 1:3.5 Fish-eye UMC MFT and PEN Olympus E-P1.
Samyang 7.5mm 1:3.5 UMC Fish-eye MFT is an ultra-wide-angle manual lens with 7.5 millimetre focal length and 1:3.5 aperture ratio, providing 180 degree angle of view. Despite its small size, the new Samyang successfully combines the best features of the popular model with 8 mm focal length offering highest quality optics closed in a compact and visually attractive casing. Samyang 7.5mm 1:3.5 UMC Fish-eye MFT is the first model from the new family of lenses developed specifically for Micro Four Thirds system.
Official news: http://www.samyang.pl/article,8,news
Image smaples: http://www.samyang.pl/75mft/panoramy.html
P.S.: All Samyang lenses for Olympus can be found on eBay only and under seven different brand names (Click on it to see all Four Thirds lenses from the specific brand!):
[shoplink 20647 ebay]Samyang [/shoplink]
[shoplink 20684 ebay]Walimex [/shoplink]
[shoplink 20649 ebay]Rokinon [/shoplink]
[shoplink 20650 ebay]Opteka [/shoplink]
[shoplink 20651 ebay]Falcon [/shoplink]
[shoplink 20653 ebay]Vivitar [/shoplink]
[shoplink 20652 ebay]Bower [/shoplink]
47 Responses
Looks compact. Hope IQ is better than the previous. I have the stop the current lens down to F8 to become acceptable.
whats the difference between the old and new lens?
Old lens is larger, looks like different optics. Was designed for aps-c (1.5) sensors.
This new one is specific to micro four thirds – so 180 degrees corner to corner instead of ~120 or so.
thanx!
I like it! If it gets good reviews, I will certainly buy one. Now they need to come up with a Samyang 25mm f.0.95, to compete against Voightlander. 🙂
I have the Olympus 4/3 8mm f.3.5 fisheye, and it does very well at f.5.6, though it’s most happy at f.8. All fisheyes, that I know of, regardless of make, have to be stopped-down in order to be at their best, none look good wide-open. But there’s a simple reason for that if you think about it…
Olympius
For comparison, the genuine Olympus 45mm costs less than 260EUR at amazon.de.
Samyang probably has a terrific profit margin at 300EUR.
Why do you think so? 300 euro for a native uwa is pretty low.
You really don’t need auto focus for fish eyes, price a bit high though.
“Fish-eye MFT is the first model from the new family of lenses developed specifically for Micro Four Thirds system”
Is this the third party manufacturer that Admin expects to release new lenses? It is great news they will be MFT specific – the compact size of this lens shows the benefits of this approach rather than the cheapo adapted lens route.
MF is AOK with UWA lens!
It is encouraging that Samyang may have more lenses for MFT in the pipeline. The MFT fisheye seems to be the same price as the APS-C one as well. There are still plenty of niches which they could fill e.g. a 17mm f1.4, a 45mm f1.4 or a cheaper 25mm f1.4. It would be nice to see another lens or two from Voigtlander as well.
This is the deal with either the 25mm f1.4 panaleica or a 17mm f1.4 oly – the 20mm f1.7 sits right slap bang in the middle of both focal lengths and it is quite clearly excellent, I like 35mm equivalent, it is my favourite focal length but the 20 is really close and has really good distortion correction (really, really good). The only issue I’ve had with it is some strange blue spectrum abberations shooting into sunlight within a shaded space – this is probably due to the CA correction done in software.
Any 35 or 50 equivalent lens is going to have a really hard time pushing an upsale, and that is clearly the only market for such a prime lens. What I’m looking at at the moment is the 7-14 for interiors and a better alternative to the 45 macro – a 65/75 macro would be quite nice. I would have bought an Olympus 50mm f2.0 m4/3 macro but they still didn’t make one, I’m not interested in the 50mm f1.8 oly because I have a better nikkor 50 f1.4 circa 1975 (with aperture and focus stop and metal and everything) for portraits.
Would LOVE Voigtlander to flesh out their native MFT ‘Nokton’ line with a 16/f1.2 and MFT version of the M-mount 50/f1.1. The three Noktons would make a hell of a powerful manual kit…
MFT versions of their Ultra-Wide Heliar and Color Scopar lenses (think 6mm/f5.6 and 10mm/f4) would be amazing too!
I know they aren’t exactly logical lenses, but I’m happy for Oly/Pana to do the ‘mature’ releases, and Voigtlander to do the interesting stuff 🙂
Since all the Voigtländer lenses are manual, there’s not much advantage to having them as native M4/3 lenses. My Nokton 35mm f1.4 is perfectly fine with a Leica M mount adaptor on my GH2. The adaptor is only 9mm long, unlike Nikon and Pentax adaptors which are 25mm long.
The biggest advantage is I can use it on other format cameras besides M4/3, along with my older Pentax and Nikon 35mm film lenses. It’s almost unfortunate that the Nokton 25mm isn’t an M mount lens in that respect. The flexibility is nice to have.
You can get a 1.1 Nokton in 50…
I don’t find mycelf using non m43 lenses on my camera, although I do have adapters, and did tried it before, the benefits of auto focus and ability to control aperture and exposure compensation, without moving my hand off of camera (shooting one handed), have spoiled me with a 20/1.7 being smaller, lighter and less expencive than leica glass
There’s a huge advantage if you want to go wider that the 35/f1.4 you mention…
The main advantages would be size and close focus ability. Personally, I have a hard time with the 70-100 cm minimal focus distance of range finder lenses.
On top of that, because of the 2x crop factor there aren’t any good WA options (i.e. reasonably fast and sharp on mft).
The 25mm Nokton would not work on anything else than MFT. This is not unfortunate – this lens could not be designed for FF, at least not for this size or price.
On top of that… this is one of their best selling lenses. You may not see the need for other native MFT lenses from Voigtländer but they probably can.
Great little lens.
The best type for a manual focus lens TBH.
Anyway, I think you will be able to buy it under other brands such as Falcon/Rokinon/Bower etc for 300$ or under, so that’s around 200€.
I wish Panny/Oly would copy Sony’s focus peaking to make manual focus much faster. Of course perhaps maybe they don’t want manual focus to be easy because then more people might simply choose to use cheap MF glass instead of buying AF lenses…I know I would for a number of things (ultra wides and portrait lenses for example).
I actually consider that feature and Sony’s Nex-7 viewfinder very tempting given my large collection of legacy Minolta glass. And if I’m not mistaken, the Nex also has in body stabilization.
If only Sony’s Nex cameras weren’t styled that badly. Also, the Nex-7 carries a hefty price tag.
I’ll wait until Panasonic and Olympus come with something comparable.
Sorry, you are mistaken, the Nex left the SS in body stabilization behind. That is why sony produces OIS lenses for its NEX system.
Same here. The viewfinder and pivot-LCD are mighty tempting!
Except I have Nikon, Pentax and Voigtländer manual lenses.
Buy a NEX-7 (or NEX-5n) plus a few adaptors from Rainbow Imaging and swap lenses between M4/3. My Nikon 20mm f2.8 AI lens might actually get some use!
admin is this the lens from third party mft you were talking about?
No, I heard from other lenses. But it’s a rumor from unkown sources I have to verify.
Neat! With lens like this, you won’t need autofocus anyway. Nice distance scale and aperture ring.
Does the hood remove? Is there a lens cap available for it?
I wonder if you could use distortion correction and use this like a non fisheye wide angle as well. http://www.sunex.com/News/dewarper.htm
Anyone know if something like that is available for video?
The Panasonic 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens is more expensive, but it’s also a very good lens. Very sharp, very fast focusing, and it focuses down to about 2cm from the front lens element, which is quite impressive.
http://m43photo.blogspot.com/2010/11/lumix-g-8mm-f35-fisheye.html
300 euros?
Have they gone crazy?
150$ is a top price anyone can pay for it, it has no AF, and it works only with a small m43 sensor….
Panasonic put millions more towards R&D and design of their pancake, and panasonic brand also makes me a lot more confident and adds to the value- and right now it costs the same!
“…only with a small sensor”?!
Leica M-Lenses were very expansive and extremely good, but they work only with the small “Kleinbild-Film”.
24x36mm, the so called “FX” or “fullformat”, was the smallest format at the early years of the last century and it was a sucsess because the superb quality AND the small size.
now, nearly 100 years later, you can buy superb quality AND small size with the mft,
or you can buy even better quality
with “little format”
or again even better with the middle format like hasselblad or pentax.
but with all of them you can shoot bad pictures.
Janie, just in case you’re serious, which lenses do you know that you can buy for US$ 150 new?
Alright, forgive my ignorance, I see you’re just kidding!
2Jerome
That’s why most of portrait photographers and wedding photogs were shooting with some Hasselblads and Rolleis…
I love my m43 camera, but not nearly as much as I love my Leica 2…
To me m43 is a “lesser” camera, you don’t even need that much glass, to create a lens for a smaller sensor =)
2nobody
You can get Russian Fisheyes for $200, and they work for full frame + I believe in Russian manufacturing quality a bit more, then in Korean.
I just got a Super Wide Heliar for my Leica for $400, and that’s a lens that is 100 times harder to develop, has almost no distortion, has a brand name, that you recognize, and is made in Japan, on a Cosina factory, famous for its quality.
If voigtlander would have made a fisheye for m43 for $250, I would have gotten it no doubt…
I would have payed $300 for the autofocus one as well…
What makes you think that Voigtlander would/could make a fisheye for $250?
+100
And why would they bother?
The cheapest new Voigtländer lenses are about $410±.
Why does M4/3 need yet another novelty lens?
I could see playing with a fisheye for a few shots… and never using it again.
I am not saying they would develop it.
please, read my post again, if it costs $400 for Voigtlander to develop and produce in Japan a super wide heliar, that I am enjoying right now, then the noname korean fisheye lens for a smaller sensor (read less glass) should cost less than half of it, and not $370 as it is now.
I see playing with a fisheye for a bit too, but there is no way I would get a korean made noname lens for that $$
But its not a no name lens… Its a Samyang.
it is sold under 10 different names, and this name says to me even less then tamron
Regardless of the brand name, this Korean lens maker has shown he is able to come out with some very good lenses for much cheaper than the competition.
Well it doesn’t seem to be much cheaper in this case, and this is all that I was trying to say.
Sigma brand, that is a known a lot better then Samyang produces a fisheye for a full frame camera with autofocus for $600, as I said earlier, russian non autofocus full frame fisheys have been on a market for a while, and cost around 200$, personally I see m43 lenses costing cheaper to build, then their full frame counterparts (I mentioned it earlier)…
I hope the street price is much lower. I can get the Panasonic 8mm for around 505 Euros. I like how small it is and the sample pics look good. I’d like to see a side by side comparison of the Samyang and the Panasonic. But for that much money, I might just pay a little extra and get the Panasonic.
The silver one with red ring looks cool
It looks much better then the previous Samylang lens.
“… is the first model from the new family of lenses developed specifically for Micro Four Thirds system.”
This is my favorite part 🙂
+1
Hopefully we’ll see some more soon.
Bring on the 12mm. 7.5mm is just not worth it.
For anyone questioning “What the heck is this “Samyang”?”. It is the manufacturer has recently built an impressive reputation by producing fast and well built MF lenses with low price tags. It is improving Korean quality! Just check out some reviews:
http://www.photozone.de/canon_eos_ff/483-samyang_85_14_5d
http://www.lenstip.com/160.11-Lens_review-Samyang_8_mm_f_3.5_Aspherical_IF_MC_Fish-eye_Summary.html
http://www.photozone.de/canon_eos_ff/532-samyang14f28eosff
No one needs Peleng anymore, since the “large” Fisheye is already available for DSLRs with even better quality!
As the announced mFT fisheye is concerned, hell, 300€ for a fisheye, that´s cheap!
And by the way, a lot of panorama photographers can´t await this ultra small package, but don´t retell it… 🙂
https://www.facebook.com/groups/panoramicphotographers/?view=permalink&id=244963115547807
https://www.facebook.com/groups/panoramicphotographers/?view=permalink&id=230464140331038
I realy don’t see how having to stop down the 8mm version to F/8 is any kind of drawback, it’s not like you can achieve shallow focus at any aperture with that kind of lens and you only need a shutter speed of 1/16 to avoid blur!