Thinning the herd: am I dumb to sell my most valuable lens?

jmiller2032 wrote:

8mm Rokinon- I haven’t mounted this on my camera to do anything but take samples since I got it for Christmas. I should at least try to do something with it before selling it, but it appears its days are numbered. But before I get rid of it I’m going to latch it to my X-Pro2 and not take it off until I get at least one keeper.

If you use it to shoot fisheye clichés, it grows boring quickly. If you use it as a panoramic and super-wide lens with the camera as levelled as possible, it opens astounding views. Forget that it is a fisheye and use it as an ultra-wide.

Stand in a corner of the room and get all four walls in the shot. Use it as a panoramic lens, cropping the middle strip out of the frame—very dramatic. Even more dramatic is using it to shoot sweep panoramas. My X-Pro1 does an excellent job of stitching. I tried an overlapping series with Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) doing the stitching and it also worked well. ACR has a preset for the lens and my camera and turns it into a rectilinear with this preset. It does crop a bit but still yields an extremely wide image.

Even more dramatic is using it to shoot sweep panoramas. My X-Pro1 does an excellent job of stitching. I tried an overlapping series with Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) doing the stitching and it also worked well. ACR has a preset for the lens and my camera and turns it into a rectilinear with a single choice. Get over playing with distortion and learn the lens well. It can produce powerful images that really can not be easily done otherwise. Once mastered, it provides great return on investment.