Samyang 8mm - Is 180 deg diag. = 180 deg field of view.

[Stephan J]

Hi,

I hope someone can clarify this for me. Am looking at purchasing a Samyang 8mm lens. At the moment I am comparing it to a Nikon 10.5mm. The manner in which they project an image on the sensor apparently differs.

Now, I know the Nikon 10.5, although 180 deg, does not give a full 180 deg field of view on a 1.5 crop. I also know Canon users shave the lens hood and then get a full 180 deg cirle on full frame.

Can anyone tell me what field of view horiz and vertically I would get with a Samyang 8mm on a Nikon APC 1.5 crop? (It will be used on a D90)

Yes, I know. No metering. No exif. No autofocus.

Am doing research between Samyang 8mm, Nikon 10.5 and Sigma 8mm for creating virtual panos.

In fact, if anyone has any experience with this lens I would like to hear about it.
Thanks!

 

[spectra]

BUT the Nikkor is a better lens overall.

I still really like the Samyang 8mm lens for MY intended purposes.... but truth is the Nikkor 10.5mm fish is far sharper and much better for general purpose photography.

I find the Samyangs colour and contrast to be pretty good and flare resistance seems to be excellent. No problems with the build quality either.

I have shot several timelapse sequences on my motion control panning head. I had it pointed straight at the sun and it coped extremely well in that situation with very little evidence of flare but the Nikkor also displayed very little flare. The aperture ring has prevented the exposure variance and "flickering" issues I had with the Nikkor 10.5 fisheye when using it for time lapse shooting.

Its biggest problem is overall sharpness but especially near the edges. I also use it on a Panasonic GH1 as an extreme WA lens for shooting HD video (the aperture ring will allow full manual exposure control on the GH1). When downscaling these sequences to HD video resolution the lack of sharpness isnt really an issue for me and in fact I have had some aliasing issues on certain lenses sometimes being too sharp!!! But the Nikkor is clearly superior in this area.

Not sure about viewing angle....sorry.

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Spectras Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spectrapix/sets/72157594150842281/detail/?page=1

 

[Stephan J]

Thanks for your reply!

 

[badders]

It's similar to the Nikon 10.5mm. Here's some samples images from this lens taken with a Nikon D300. also included are the stitched panoramas in spherical JPEG and QuickTime QTVR format:

http://bit.ly/cP780

Andrew Baddeley
http://www.360tacticalvr.com
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/360tacticalvr

 

[SeeRoy]

Hi - the distributor of the Samyang lens has quite a lot of info on the web page http://www.lenstip.com/index.php?test=obiektywu&test_ob=160 . In case you haven'ty already seen it. This lens uses a slightly different projection model to most fisheyes, however given that every pixel is remapped when making VRs that's irelevant (although someoone may correct me on that: I'm guessing)

The Nikkor 10.5 is what I use on a DX body and it gives excellent results for VRs. I've also shaved the hood for use on n FX body (D700) however on balance I think this was a mistake as I don't use it in this way much.

The Sigma 8mm is widely used for VRs although the circular format (as with the 10.5 shaved on FX) means you get less resolution in the final result - which may be irrelevant for most website use. Of course 8mm means you only need to shoot 4 round instead of 6 round using 10.5 mm FEs

Roy
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Trying...

 

[Stephan J]

Thanks Andrew, I've visited that link found it very informative. Have also downloaded about 50 others - both hi and low res and have developed a sort of 'feel' for the lens.