Introduction

This blog is a user's perspective on the Micro Four Thirds camera system. Read more ...

Lens Buyer's Guide. Panasonic GH4 review.

My lens reviews: Olympus 9mm f/8 fisheye, Lumix G 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6, Leica 25mm f/1.4, Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8, Lumix X 35-100mm f/2.8, Sigma 30mm f/2.8, Sigma 19mm f/2.8, Lumix X PZ 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6, Lumix X PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6, Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8, Panasonic Lumix G 100-300mm f/4-5.6, Panasonic Leica Lumix DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 1:1 Macro, Panasonic Lumix G 45-200mm f/4-5.6, Panasonic Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 pancake, Panasonic Lumix G 14mm f/2.5 pancake, Panasonic Lumix G HD 14-140mm f/4-5.8, Panasonic Lumix G HD 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6, Panasonic Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye, Lumix G 7-14mm f/4, Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye, Tokina 300mm f/6.3 mirror reflex tele, Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5 circular fisheye lens
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Monday 27 February 2012

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens review

The Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, also marketed as Rokinon and Bower, is special in that it is one of the first third party lens designs made specially for Micro Four Thirds. Some other manual focus lenses for Micro Four Thirds are older designs with a new mount.

The Samyang fisheye lens is an alternative to the native Panasonic Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, so it makes sense to compare them. Here they are, with lens caps:


They have different type caps. The Samyang, on the left, has a cap held in place with clips, operated by pressing the side tabs. The Lumix's cap is held in place with friction only. I prefer the latter, since the Samyang cap must be inserted correctly rotated, which is somewhat more awkward.



Removing the caps, reveals that the Lumix has a significantly larger front lens element. Both have the same type of integrated hood.


Looking at the rear of the lenses, we see that also the exit pupils have different sizes. The Samyang lens has the smallest exit pupil I have ever seen on a Micro Four Thirds lens. A large exit pupil is usually associated with a high quality lens, although there is of course no definite connection.


Yet another option is the Olympus 9mm f/8 body cap fisheye lens (my review). Both lenses are seen below:


The Olympus 9mm f/8 fisheye is not as wide, covering only 140° diagonally. Further, it is not nearly as fast, with a much smaller aperture of f/8. And it does not have any aperture mechanism, so you cannot stop it down at all. Finally, it does not perform nearly as well as the Samyang lens. I would say: Get the Olympus lens only if you would like a very compact lens at a low price.

Specifications

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5Lumix G 8mm f/3.5Olympus 9mm f/8
Aperture rangef/3.5-f/22f/3.5-f/22f/8
Number of aperture blades67None
Lens elements9105
Lens group794
Minimum focus distance0.09m0.10m0.20m
AutofocusNoYesNo
Weight197g165g30g
Diameter60mm61mm56mm
Length48mm52mm13mm
Diagonal field of view180°180°140°




Physical appearance

Even though the Samyang lens is slightly smaller, and has smaller lens elements, it weights more. This is due to the lens being made from metal materials, in contrast to the Lumix lens, which has a plastic exterior.

The Samyang lens has a traditional mechanical focus ring, which moves the whole lens assembly back and forth. The focus ring is well dampened, and feels high quality. There is a distance scale, but sadly no depth of field (DoF) scale.

Regarding the focus scale, I find it to be a bit lacking. It has no markings between infinity and 0.25m, as seen here:


There is some sense to this practice, of course: The focus is the most critical at shorter distances. Still, I'm guessing that quite many see the need to focus the lens to around 1-2 meter distance more often. So a distance marker at around 1-2 meters would be good. Of course, this lens has a quite deep Depth of Focus (DoF), so the focus is not much of an issue unless you are printing large copies of your pictures.

I solved this by adding a distance marker at 1m myself. It doesn't look very good, but it makes the distance scale much easier to use:


I found the infinity mark to be somewhat inaccurate. But I guess that is not uncommon.

The aperture ring also feels well made, and has clicks at full and half stops.

No electrical contacts

The Samyang lens is a purely mechanical lens, and has no electrical contacts. This means that the camera does not recognize that the lens is mounted at all, and certainly cannot read off information about the focal length or aperture.

It also means that you need to set the "SHOOT W/O LENS" option. Otherwise, the camera will not operate, as it believes that no lens is mounted at all. Here is the "SHOOT W/O LENS" menu option from the GH2 camera:


The camera will still store EXIF data in your image files, however, the information about focal length and aperture is never passed to the camera, and will be missing when using this lens.

Distortion

Being a fisheye lens, of course you are going to get a lot of distortion. Still, there have been some rumors online that this lens has a stereographic projection, rather than a spherical projection, the norm for fisheye lenses. The stereographic projection is less distorted.

Comparing the distortion of the two fisheye lenses reveals that they are in fact quite similar. Here is a test image showing how a rectangular grid is projected to the sensor with the two lenses:


Read more about the study here. My conclusion is that the Samyang lens in fact features somewhat less distortion, but the difference is rather subtle.

When converting a fisheye image to rectilinear, a process called defishing, it is generally easier to defish the images coming from the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 than the Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 lens. The reason being that the Samyang lens has a more common projection model for fisheye lenses.

The Panasonic Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, on the other hand, has more distortion that what is common for fisheye lenses, making it more difficult to use under certain conditions. Most of the time, this is a non-issue, but if you specifically intend to defish the images, I would go for the Samyang lens.

Sharpness

I have taken the same picture with both lenses, to examine their optical properties. Here they are, both at f/3.5, taken on a tripod. I used the base sensitivity of the GH2, ISO 160.

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5Lumix G 8mm f/3.5

To better examine the sharpness, here are some 100% crops from the upper right hand corner (click for a larger view):


It is quite apparent that the Samyang/Rokinon lens is surprisingly sharp in the corner. There are virtually no chromatic aberration (CA) artifacts. On the other hand, the Lumix fisheye lens has some residual CAs, even after the in camera CA adjustments.

Here is another sharpness comparison with the Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. In this test, the lenses come out more alike in terms of sharpness.

Flare
The fisheye lenses cover a 180° diagonal field of view. So it can be quite difficult to avoid having the sun, or some other bright light source in the frame. Hence, the handling of flare is quite important. Does a strong, visible light source ruin the image?

Again, here are some comparison images, both taken at the same spot:

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5Lumix G 8mm f/3.5
Samyang 7.5mm f/11Lumix G 8mm f/11

The Lumix lens gets the green ghosting in the opposite corner of the sun. The Samyang lens avoids this. Overall, I'd say the Samyang lens handles the flare better.

The Samyang lens has six aperture diaphragm blades, and hence, there are six rays around strong flares when stopping down. You can see this in the lower left example image, and even better in an article about the significance of odd and even aperture diaphragm blade numbers.

In use

Here is a discussion about the possible use of a fisheye lens.

This lens can be used on any Micro Four Thirds camera, given that you enable the "SHOOT W/O LENS" option, as described above.

When used on the Panasonic GH2, it is possible to use the rear click wheel to enable the focus assist mode. Pressing the wheel once enables the magnified view. It can then be magnified even more by scrolling the wheel. To disable the magnified mode, half press the shutter, or press the click wheel once more. This GH2 feature is described here. All Micro Four Thirds camera have the magnified focus assist mode, but it may be more involved to enable it on some cameras.

To get the best focus accuracy, you should ideally focus manually using the largest aperture (f/3.5). When finding the focus range, you can then stop down the aperture to the desired size, and take the picture. Most system cameras handle this process automatically, however, since there is no signal connection between the lens and camera, the camera cannot help you with this process.

You can use the camera's automatic exposure with this lens. Just set the aperture you want on the lens aperture ring, set the ISO you want (or leave the ISO on auto), and the camera will set the appropriate shutter speed. This works well, in, e.g., the P and A modes.

The exposure is generally good in low contrast situations, e.g., in daylight. With high contrast scenes, though, the GH2 tends to underexpose significantly. This is strange to me, since using the Lumix G 8mm fisheye lens in the same way yields a good exposure.

At night, I must dial in approximately +1.3 EV compensation on the Samyang lens to get the same exposure as the Lumix G lens would have given. This is at full aperture, f/3.5. At f/5.6, the gap increases, and I must dial in +2.0 EV.

This behavior puzzles me. As the camera sees roughly the same image through both lenses, I would have guessed that it also exposes similarly. But it appears that using a non-electric legacy lens triggers a different exposure mode, which preserves highlights to a larger degree. Or, and I am just speculating here, since the Samyang lens features less flare, perhaps highlights are more defined with the Samyang lens, and hence the camera does more to preserve them.

The need for extra compensation with the Samyang lens can be illustrated with this example. The scene was shot with both lenses at f/5.6.

First, the Samyang lens without compensation:


The Samyang lens with +2.0 EV compensation:


And finally the Lumix lens with no compensation:


In my daytime outdoor sharpness example images above, I used no exposure compensation at all, and they all came out ok. So this is only a problem when the contrast is high, for example at night with artificial light sources.

Since the camera does not know that this is an extremely wide angle lens, it will assume that it has a focal length of around 50mm, and use a shutter speed of around 1/125s. This causes the camera to use too high ISO in some cases, as this lens can be handheld at 1/15s with few problems. Set the ISO lower manually to avoid this.

Example photo

This image of Sergels Torgs was taken at f/5.6, ISO 160. Notice that straight lines which pass through the centre of the frame, are reproduced as straight in the image. The further from the centre a straight line passes, the more curved it is rendered. This is an important property of a fisheye lens.


Here are some 100% crops from the image, showing that the sharpness is very good throughout the frame (click to enlarge):


Another example, this one is from the Stockholm Old City:


The picture was taken by pointing the camera directly upwards inside a circular open yard.

And an example picture from the Rockefeller Center in New York:


Example video

This video was recorded with the Samyang lens at f/3.5.





The GH2 tends to underexpose when using this lens in high contrast situations, e.g., at night. Hence, I had to dial in +1.3 stops of exposure compensation. When using the Panasonic Lumix G 8mm lens, the exposure compensation is not needed, so it is clear that the camera treats them differently.

The first 20 seconds of the video below were filmed with the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, using the Panasonic GH3 camera:



In this example, I filmed a firework display using the fisheye lens.

Defishing

The process of making rectilinear, or at least near-rectilinear transformations from a fisheye image is commonly called defishing. I have written about this process here.

I have found that when defishing an image from the Samyang fisheye lens at 4:3 aspect ratio, you get a very wide rectilinear image. In my experience, it has a vertical field of view which is a little bit wider than the Lumix G 7-14mm f/4 lens at 7mm, and a much wider horizontal field of view.

Here is a real world comparison with the Lumix G 7-14mm f/4 ultra wide angle lens at 7mm.

Variants

Samyang also produce fisheye lenses for DSLR cameras, with the mounts of major camera manufacturers. You could conceivably buy e.g. the Nikon version of this lens, specified as 8mm f/3.5, and mount it to a Micro Four Thirds camera using an adapter for Nikon F on M4/3. This lens is also marketed as Rokinon, Bower and Vivitar.

However, I would not recommend doing so. The DSLR version of the lens is made for a larger sensor, and hence, when using it on Micro Four Thirds, you don't get 180° coverage in the diagonal. Also, due to the longer register distance of the DSLR systems, the 8mm fisheye lens made for these formats is much larger in size and weight. So if you can, go for the lens designed for Micro Four Thirds in the first place.

Conclusion

The Samyang/Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens has got impressively good optical properties. This makes it a good alternative to the Panasonic Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, at a lower cost. You'll have to focus manually, though, which is quite easy for objects far away. When photographing close objects, though, it takes somewhat more effort to use the Samyang lens.

With the GH2 camera, I need to make exposure compensation during night photos with the Samyang lens, to get a sensible exposure. This is not needed with the Lumix fisheye lens. I'm sure this is a camera issue, though, and nothing I should blame the lens for.

I think the Lumix lens generally gives better colours. But this is a subjective matter, of course. As the Lumix lens is quite expensive, the Samyang lens is a good alternative, if you can live with using manual focus. The optical properties are certainly very good.

All in all, the Samyang/Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens is a very good lens, and provides good value for money. If you want to try a fisheye lens, it is a good choice.

Further reading

Sharpness comparison with the Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye.

Comparison with the GoPro Hero 3+ Black.

Comparison with the Lumix G 7-14mm ultra wide angle lens at 7mm.

Comparison with the Olympus 9mm f/8 body cap fisheye lens.

Recording fireworks with the fisheye lens.

Samyang 7.5mm fisheye used on a Sony NEX E-mount camera.

Tutorial on defishing a fisheye lens.





46 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this review. I always wanted a fisheye lens, but it is such a niche item and I couldn't justify the expense. Your review, plus others I've read have convinced that this is a good and reasonably priced lens. Mine will arrive tomorrow.

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  2. For what it's worth, the infinity focus mark on mine is also off. I guess it's by design. (My lens has it at approximately the same spot as yours, it seems.)

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  3. great review! this is very informative

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  4. Thanks for the review and the comparison to the Panasonic 8mm. I opted for the Samyang 7.5mm, but have had occasions where I missed the autofocus :-)

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  5. Brilliant Review. What do you think about Rokinon 8mm? I´m trying to find out information about the use of that lens on a Micro Four Thirds system..

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    Replies
    1. First of all, Rokinon is just an alias for Samyang. So they share the same manufacturer.

      The 8mm lens is made for DSLR cameras. This means it probably has the mount of one of the major DSLR producers, e.g., Nikon F or Canon EF. To use it on a Micro Four Thirds camera, you will then need an adapter. Here is an adapter for Nikon F on M4/3.

      However, since most DSLR cameras have a (slightly) larger sensor than M4/3, you will not get full sensor coverage, and hence, not 180 degrees in the diagonal.

      I would recommend the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, since it is made specifically for the M4/3 format. It can be found under other names as well, e.g., Rokinon and Vivitar. The 7.5mm lens made for the M4/3 format is smaller than the 8mm lens made for DSLR. This is possible due to the shorter register distance.

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  6. I have had this lens for a month now and it is everything I expected from this review and more. It really is very sharp and the lack of autofocus or aperture are just not much of an issue at this focal length. I find myself doing all sorts of impulsive things like putting the camera in a shopping cart in the parking lot of my supermarket. But what I like most of all is that the distortion creates a warped visual space that can be used to express emotion or record a highly subjective experience. As an example of the latter, i know a church with memorably elegant crosses at the end of each pew. Putting the 7.5 mm close to one of these crosses while being able to take in a large part of the church interior shows what is important and memorable to me along with a wider, albeit distorted, view of the church interior. . Thanks for a really helpful review.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I think the Samyang 7.5mm fisheye lens is a good deal. I like using a fisheye lens for the possibility to photograph items that are near and far away at the same time in the same frame.

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  7. Robert in Arabia4 August 2012 at 17:11

    Tack ska du ha.

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  8. I have just got one myself in its Rokinon guise. I find the manual focus ring very hard to turn, as if it needed better lubrification. I also noted the same curious behaviour - having to correct for exposure in dark shots on my G3. I am really puzzled about this. Do you know if other/all manual lenses behave the same on Panasonic/Olympus bodies?

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    Replies
    1. My lens has a nice focus ring. It is well dampened, meaning that it does not turn very easily. But neither does it require a lot of force to turn it.

      On the GH2 camera, I also find that it underexposes significantly. I need to dial in +1 to +2 exposure compensation in high contrast situation, e.g., night photos. Generally, I find that the Panasonic G cameras underexpose a bit with night photos, but even more so with this lens, as I write in the review above.

      I haven't tried the lens on Olympus cameras, so I don't know if they do the same. I find this behaviour on Panasonic cameras to be unexpected.

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    2. I have the Rokinon version ( same as the samyang ), it to has very, very well damped manual focusing, that's just the way it's made. If you can over that it's quite a nice little optic.

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    3. Yes, I agree, the focus ring of the fisheye lens is good. It is well constructed, in a traditional way.

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    4. Just add a silicone hand bracelet to the focus ring. Easy peasy!

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    5. Just add a silicone hand bracelet to the focus ring. Easy peasy!

      Delete
  9. Good writeup as it helped me deciding whether to look into the Pana 8mm even owning the Samyang... with your review and results i can happily live with the Samyang :-) ... i also like the near CA free pictures and maybe the day will come when i am able to handle it on a Pole for Panoramas!
    See you over at the GPlus MFT group!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think the only reason to consider the Lumix G 8mm fisheye is the autofocus. This could come in handy if you want to take cure, novelty closeup images of pets, for example. Otherwise, one can almost always leave the focus close to infinity, so focusing manual is a small issue.

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  10. Interesting article but I would like to point out that the link where you say "I have found that when defishing an image from the Samyang fisheye lens at 4:3 aspect ratio, you get a very wide rectilinear image" is not working.
    I'd love to read that article too :)

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  11. When shooting with any fully manual lens (without electrical contacts), does the exposure meter on the GH2 or GH3 still show you when the camera thinks exposure is correct?

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    Replies
    1. Yes, it absolutely does. You can set the camera in P or A mode, and it will try to expose it as good as possible. I've often found that the camera underexposes with manual focus lenses in high contrast situations, e.g., at night time. But this can be corrected by setting exposure compensation, of course.

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  12. Tested stepless aperture (GH2 in S-priority mode) tonight on 4 lenses... 12-35mm, 20mm, 14-45mm, 14-140mm. Conclusion... the first two looked very smooth when moving my camera to/from a bright light source to a dim area of a room. The second two "tried" to look smooth, but it was a more "steppy" transition than the 12-35mm and the 20mm.

    Question... Would someone please test this on the Samyang 7.5mm, the Panasonic 8mm, and the Panasonic 7-14mm? I need to choose one of these lenses for wide-angle video work that will involve moving from medium-lit rooms to outdoor sun.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    Jon

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    Replies
    1. Not sure about this. With the Samyang lens, the camera cannot control the aperture at all, so it can only affect the exposure through the shutter speed or the ISO rating.

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    2. I actually realized that about the Samyang soon after I typed it. I guess I'll go with the 7-14mm and hope the stepless transitions are smooth.

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  13. Excellent practical review

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  14. I have the Samyang 8mm 4:3 and it works quite well on my E-M1 as long as I stop it down between f5.6 - f8. And then I have a small mark to line up the hyperfocal distance. easy-peasy

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  15. Nice work Radek. How do you get the effect in your software? - I got inspired ;-)

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  16. Interesting article.
    Just one small point, you say "this lens has a quite deep Depth of Focus (DoF)".
    This is not the correct term, it should read Depth of Field.
    Depth of Focus is a different thing, it is the image plane distance behind (from the photographers point of view) the lens, and I am sure you were talking about what is "in focus" in front of the lens.

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  17. Time to compare the Olympus 8 mm fisheye f1.8 with the Panasonic 8 mm fisheye!

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  18. samyang fisheye for APSC won't work well with normal mount adapter. but I wonder if a rectilinear fisheye made for ASPC/FF would work for M43 is mounted on a focal reducer ? in theory, a samyang 8mm f/3.5 would become a samyang 5mm f/2.8 fisheye?

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  19. Do you have an example image showing the crop factor? I have the Panasonic 8mm fisheye which has a 180 degree diagonal view.
    Looking for an alternative with either 180 circular view or at the very least a barrel fisheye image. IE not a fullframe fisheye image.
    Thanks

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  20. For most of us an ultra-wide is used rarely, so we have to justify the cost and weight of carrying that extra lens.

    For static images, using the camera in vertical format and shooting an overlapping panorama works very well: the free "Hugin" software, or "Panorama Stitcher Mini" all work great for this.

    Can I suggest that you check out the 7-artisans 7.5mm fisheye in M4/3 native mount. In my experience it gives great pictures to 10x8 prints and demanding computer screens, even when shot wide open (though contrast gets better at F5.6). it is small, and has won a place in my camera bag for even the toughest travelling. It's current online price hovers at £100-110 online which makes it a bargain in comparison with the alternatives.

    With the 7-artisans, defishing is easy with DXO software - that's the programme that has all the lens corrections ready to hand. Just click distortion correction "fisheye" and move the slider to 66% and it turns into a 16mm rectilinear equivalent lens image - fantastic!

    Best wishes - Paul C

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  21. Hi
    Thanks for your reviews. What Fisheye lens do you recommend as having berst sharpness performance for Fuji X-mount to shoot just 4 round shots in a single row to get full sphere? I mean to get a cropped drum shape, like using Sigma 8 mm for full frame on a APS-C sensor. Tnx for advice.

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  22. It's said that the Samyang 8mm is stereographic, but the 7.5mm is equisolid. The Lumix 8mm is said to be stereographic.
    http://michel.thoby.free.fr/Fisheye_history_short/Projections/Models_of_classical_projections.html

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