[jrpower10]

I was looking at ultra wide-angle primes for Pentax and ran across this. I've considered a circular fisheye before but hte Sigma option was a bit pricey for what I consider a fun screwing around lens (for me, anyway). This one is more reasonably priced and wondering how it performs. Anybody tried it?

[Na Horuk]

Don't know about the Lensbaby fisheye, but I think a lot of people on this forum like the Samyang 8mm fisheye Samyang 8mm F3.5 Fisheye CS Lens Reviews - Samyang Lenses - Pentax Lens Review Database
Or even the Samyang 10mm prime (really wide, not a fisheye, not as expensive as some other uwa lenses, good IQ) Samyang 10mm F2.8 In-Depth Review - Hands-on Reviews | PentaxForums.com

Hope someone chimes in on the Lensbaby, though.

[digital029art]

At $300 the LB is cheap for a circular fisheye, but if you already have an MX-1 cam, you can get the Ipix fisheye converter for about $60 bucks - if you just want to play around with a circular!

The converter looks to be about 185 degrees and it works surprisingly well on the MX-1 - it's actually sharp to the edges with almost zero fringing!!

The circle at the 28mm end is exactly Pi ( 3.14MP ) megapixels. Zooming in makes a bigger circle but reduces coverage to less than 180.
It is sharp and actually much better than on the Q/02 samples as in this thread: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/136-pentax-q/273865-circular-fisheye-converter-pentax-q.html

Another plus for the MX-1 is that if you attach the converter to the "58mm filter Adapter Tube For Pentax MX-1", there is no stress on the zoom lens as it's solidly attached to the body via tube!

The only limit is that you "only" get 3.14MP, as the MX-1 has 12MP total. The sharpness is there to the edges once you stop down to f/4 or 5.6, but you have to keep iso's below 800 and never underexpose - but those are the limits of the 1/1.7 sensor~.

Here's an example of a whole-tent 360 x 2 circular "clamshell" panorama with the IPIX on the MX-1: https://kayakfari.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/camping-with-the-stars-a-whole-tent-panorama-teaser/

(click pic to view fullscreen)




Dulces sueños!
www.kayakfari.com

[Ian.morgan]

The Samyang 8mm is good.
I'm just about to sell mine, as I went for AF with the pentax 10-17 in the end as well, so look out on the marketplace thread if interested.

[jrpower10]

Thanks, but I have the 10-17 already. I wasn't really looking for a fisheye, just ran across this and wondered if anyone had tried it. If I were to buy another, though, it would be a circular fisheye. The only 2 I know of are this and the Sigma 4.5 at more than twice the price.