Samyang 8mm f2.8 XF

First impressions of the Samyang 8mm f2.8 fish-eye

Based on the reviews I had read on the Sanyong 8mm fish-eye and the price, it cost me 310AUD delivered from HK, I decided to dive in. This lens seems to also go under the branding Rokinon and also Bower.
The lens fits the X pro 1 well, it has an integrated hood and together they are about the size of the Fuji 18mm lens and hood. Being a manual lens you can add it as an 8mm to your “Lens mount adapter setting” but as you can see from the EXIF data aperture defaults to f1.

 

It does give a wide field of view approaching 180deg. This means that you have to be real careful of your feet and elbows. I didn’t believe this until they started showing up in my shots. Here are a few shots not chosen for technical merit but just to show how it performs in different environments.

For internal shots this means you can get a whole room in one shot. In externals where the foreground is not  that cluttered a greater portion of the centre region ‘appears’ to be undistorted.

Here are some shots of the internals of a train station where the curved nature of the architecture blends with the fish-eye effect.

 

You also gain the ability to capture large structures from very close indeed. The down side of the large front element when it is raining is water drops. Given the other shots I have in this sequence the green blob on the light appears to be water not flare.