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GH4 - Best Fisheye (ultra-wide) Lens for Cine?
  • thebmillzthebmillz

    Hello!

    I'm trying to find something that could translate to 14mm (in 35mm land) without overly fish-eyeing. It seems like a lot of people have shot in 4K and used "De-fishing" software to get it looking nice in 1080p.

    Found a bunch of 7.5 lenses. As far as I can tell these are as wide as the format can go. But, there are so many. And the Rokinon and Bower look kind of the same. I also noticed Rokinon and Samyang label their last two as "cine".

    Any opinions on these lenses?

    Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 Ultra Wide-Angle Fisheye Lens for Micro 4/3 (Black)

    Bower 7.5mm f/3.5 Fisheye Lens for Micro 4/3 Cameras (Black)

    Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 Ultra Wide-Angle Fisheye Lens for Micro 4/3 (Silver)

    Rokinon 7.5mm T3.8 Cine UMC Fisheye Lens for Micro Four Thirds Mount

    Samyang 7.5mm T3.8 Cine UMC Fisheye Lens for Micro Four Thirds Mount

  • 6 Replies sorted by
  • cantsincantsin

    Simple: they're all the same lens (made by Samyang), just sold under different brand names.

  • thebmillzthebmillz

    Wow, really? Even the T3.8 "Cine"? That's hilarious.

  • aldolegaaldolega

    It's the same for all of Samyang's lenses- they're sold under different names in different territories, for tax/importing reasons I believe. Some people call them "manybrand" lenses for this reason. The "cine" version just have built-in gears, clickless apertures, and different focus/aperture markings. Same lens internally.

    Your best and most expensive option for an ultra-wide but non-distorting lens would be the Panasonic or Olympus 7-14mm zooms.

    Next up would be a booster/focal reducer plus an APS-C UWA, like the Tokina 11-16mm, Sigma 10-20, Canon 10-18 or 10-24, etc. This would have the added bonus of being brighter, and most of these lenses will accept filters.

    If you have to go the fisheye route, you could do a native 7.5mm manybrand, as you suggested (cheapest/simplest/probably sharpest option), or for more width, an APS-C 8mm manybrand on a booster/reducer. This is what I use on my GH4 for shooting action-sport stuff. Here's an imgur gallery comparing this setup vs. the 7.5mm:

    https://imgur.com/a/TZKiR

  • davjddavjd

    Upgraded from samyang 8mm to panasonic 7-14. The first benefit is the in camera distorsion correction, the second is autofocus - it is not so easy, sometimes, to guess the right focusing on a fish-eye and yes, images can be completely out of focus! Third: higher, higher picture quality. I guess Olympus is even better Edit: the lens was samyang 8mm for canon, manual focus. I don't know about the m43 version

  • BurnetRhoadesBurnetRhoades

    Wow, really? Even the T3.8 "Cine"? That's hilarious.

    T3.8 = F/3.5

    T-stops measure the actual light that passes through the lens where F-stops is a physical measurement of the opening. A T-Stop will always be a larger, slightly more "stopped down" number relative to F-Stop. T2.0 lenses most likely represent F/1.8 and T3 being equal to F/2.8 and so on.

  • aldolegaaldolega

    The 7.5mm m4/3-specific fisheye is sharper than the 8mm APS-C fisheye, especially wide open, in my experience. By f8 or so they're the about the same.

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