Fast wide angle...decisions

Ben_B

Ben_B

Veteran
I've thought about it and decided that the Lumix 20mm f/1.7 and the Olympus 17mm (f2.8?) are not wide enough (despite their good speeds) compared to my 24mm f/1.8 to be worth getting...so I've got some decisions to make.

I am trying to decide to go for a 14mm Sigma f/2.8, some sort of Russian fisheye (going for wide angle not fisheye but crop factor should lessen the distortion...some, like the Zenitar fisheye, might not be wide enough [16mm]), the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 (which does not have adjustable aperture) or waiting for the Lumix 14mm f2.8 that's in the roadmap.

From what I can tell the Sigma and the Tokina are both around $600 (sometimes new sometimes used), there are Russian/Belarusian fisheyes available at around the same speed for $200-400 but with poorer optics (good build quality though...metal...) and we don't know anything about the Lumix except that it will probably take forever to come out.

Right now for wide stuff I'm using the kit lens @ 14mm or in low light conditions using my 24mm f/1.8 and backing up.
 
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Ben, are you satisfied with your Sigma 24mm f/ 1.8? I might buy a used Sigma 20mm f/1.8 for $300.
 
hmm - ok so against my better judgment check this out

hmm - ok so against my better judgment check this out

I will try to get a better comparison honest - but trust me that this lens can actually focus very sharp - we didn't even look at the screen for more than a second because we were in a hurry...

This is a peleng 8mm lens on a GH1

http://www.purposelabs.com/fisheye/original.mp4 - untouched clip (massive barrel distortion etc)

http://www.purposelabs.com/fisheye/defisheye.mp4 - defisheyed with software (specifically Image Trends Fisheye-hemi plugin)

Here's a link for image trends....http://www.imagetrendsinc.com/products/prodpage_hemi.asp

So I found this quite surprising because we compared field of view to the Canon 5Dmk2 with a rectilinear 14mm L series - and of course that lens was a little sharper - but field of view wise - it was identical...(the difference in price is quite substantial - peleng 8mm is $200 - canon 14mm is $2500 minimum)

Nick

p.s. before people go crazy with the software - note that the software is (at this point) a 32bit only photoshop plug-in...meaning to de-fisheye an entire clip you have to export it as an image sequence - batch process the sequence and then re-import it as a clip.

(you can experiment with this but you will likely also want to resize the frames to 2100x1080 before processing the filter (simply because the horizontal fisheye effect is a little greater - and this will perform a better job of unsqueezing straight lines))

Nick
 
haojan said:
I think the Panasonic 20mm f1.7 might a better buy at ~$360 brand new (pre-order w/ bing cashback)
Click to expand...

The difference being that the sigmas can focus incredibly close but are also very large (and won't AF on the GH1.)

I might skip the fast wide angle and get an Xbox instead :D
 
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