Category Archives: Lenses

Rokinon MFT 7.5mm f/3.5 MFT fisheye lens – Part I

Lenses, Micro Four-Thirds, Photography

Exceptional and cheap.



The Rokinon 7.5mm fisheye for MFT. Click the image to go to Amazon.



Garden cranes at sunset. There are no halos from the sun. Uncorrected original at f/8.


Corrected in Fisheye-Hemi from Imaudio. Graded darkening of the sky added in LR.

At $218 the Rokinon MFT fisheye lens costs less than a third of its Panasonic counterpart; it sacrifices AF and full EXIF data for truly outstanding all metal construction and resolution to die for. I have not tested the Panny FE but reviews disclose that the Rokinon is a far better optic. The 7.5mm fisheye is the only true MFT lens listed by Rokinon on its USA site; all others are either APS-C or full frame adapted to the Panny/Oly MFT bayonet mount and are, accordingly, huge and out of proportion on an MFT body.

I have no interest in the gimmickry of fisheye perspective but I am very interested in having an ultrawide prime. I first experimented with de-fishing images from my Canon FF fisheye here, concluding that defished images were almost as sharp as those from a very costly Canon 14mm prime and came in at 12mm effective focal length. That’s considerably wider.

While there are many fisheye profiles to be found in Lightroom, none does a great job and there is not one tailored to this lens. Some fishing around (sorry!) on the web disclosed that there was an outstanding plugin for LR from Imaudio for $30 and after testing the trial version, which watermarks the processed image, I sprung for it. There is no loss of edge definition unlike with the stock LR profiles and the image is considerably wider, less being lost. Look carefully at the above images and you will see that content loss really is negligible.

In keeping with the MFT aesthetic, the lens is tiny, unlike your FF or APS-C fisheye with an adapter.

Manual focusing:

The Rokinon is a manual focus optic. However the great depth of field means that careful focusing is really only needed at close distances and large apertures. Otherwise at, say, f/8 (the aperture ring has half click-stops except between f/16 and f/22) the focus is set at the hyperfocal distance (just short of infinity, like in the first image above) and you bang away, happy as a clam. When careful manual focus is required, using the relatively stiff focus collar, Panny MFT cameras come with the best focus aid in the business. Having first set ‘Shoot w/o lens’ on the last page of the third menu to ‘Yes’, allowing the lens to be recognized, you push the left quadrant rear button once, then the Set button. The center of the image is magnified allowing easy critical focus. On the GX7 you can vary the magnification using the knurled wheel around the shutter release button. I have mine set to maximum magnification.

When focused the group of lens elements extends within the confines of the petal, non-detachable lens hood. The total extension is around 1/8″. The rear glass moves forward a like amount suggesting that all the elements are being moved in unison during focusing. There is no way to attach filters and the deep, provided lens cap must be correctly oriented to clip on and lock in place. In practice the lens hood’s petals do a fine job of protecting the front glass. A rear lens cap is also provided and fits well.

The same lens appears to be marketed under a variety of brand names, including Bower and Samyang. Buy the cheapest. I much prefer chrome finish lenses and the Rokinon comes in a chrome variant; however, I have read that the chromed focus ring is plastic whereas the black one is very much metal, so I opted for the latter. The weight is just 6.2 ozs (176 grams). As I stated above, it is tiny, easily accommodated in a trouser or jacket pocket.

As I only ever use my GX7 bodies in aperture priority auto-exposure mode, correct exposure is guaranteed with the Rokinon, despite the absence of any communication mechanism between lens and body. Of course, one of the most appealing bits of magic of the MFT format comes into play here: as the aperture is changed the finder image remains the same brightness, for the finder automatically adjusts to the change in aperture. The only variable which visibly changes is depth of field.

Along with the outstanding 12-35mm f/2.8 Panasonic pro zoom and the small GX7 Panny body the user has a full frame equivalent lens range of 12mm to 70mm. The size:performance equation here seems to be impossible to improve on.

More in Part II.

There’s one born every minute

Lenses

A fool and his money ….


Click the image for Lomography’s site and hang on to your wallet.

Lomography specializes in selling plastic crap cameras to photographers idiots who desire to take crap pictures. It’s a winning combination, one must admit. The two are made for one another, proving yet again that not only is a fool and his money easily parted, but also that there are lots of fools.

Now the ‘anything to be different’ crowd who need technology, even if distinctly retro, to excuse their total lack of creativity and imagination can blow $600 on a lens first designed in 1840. This comes complete with the most ghastly rendering of OOF areas, dizzyingly bad, and with a set of drop in aperture stops because, let’s face it, for that sum of money who could possibly expect an adjustable iris diaphragm. (“Hang on love, gotta stop down. Dang, just dropped the stop in the cow patty.”)

Of course, if you dare use this on your digital Canon or Nikon, the self-combust device kicks in and your prized DSLR melts. You understand this is intended for film users only? But of course.

Canon 100mm Macro-L with IS

Lenses

The Macro finally gets IS.

While I find Canon’s announcement of yet another APS-C camera, the 7D, underwhelming – who needs yet another ‘me too’ DSLR? – this did catch my eye:


The new 100mm f/2.8 ‘L’ IS Macro

I have had nothing but good experiences with the existing (non-L, non-IS) macro which seems almost impossible to improve on optically, but the addition of IS is a welcome feature. Price is rumored to be around $1,000, or twice that of the non-IS lens. If your macro photography is tripod-based, I would find it hard to see spending twice as much on this lens, as IS is wasted in tripod work. Further, from a definition perspective, I find that making razor sharp 18″ x 24″ prints from my non-IS macro is trivial and see no reason why these would not scale just fine to 30″ x 40″, based on what I am seeing on the screen of my 24″ iMac.

So the new lens may be better on paper, but how much better than my experience can you get? Worth thinking about. Some recent snaps with the non-IS Canon macro (using Helicon Focus) appear here.

DPReview has the scoop.

Getting closer

Lenses

Small, yes, but is it fast?

The Olympus Digital Pen is an exciting prospect for those of us interested in an affordable alternative to the ridiculously priced digital Leica M8, whose cost of entry with a lens is well north of $7,000.


The Olympus Digital Pen wit the 17mm (=34mm) non-zoom lens

At $900 for the body with the 34mm wide angle and optical viewfinder it is affordable as a street snapper but as yet there’s no indication what the shutter lag is like; auto focus with a lens this short is not important as pretty much everything will be sharp all the time, but what the world really needs is a pocketable high quality camera with a decent sized sensor without the interminable shutter lag which makes just about very point-and-shoot out here useless for street photography.

Thank goodness Olympus has had the good taste to release the body in chrome. The more amateur it looks the less visible the photographer becomes.

One other thought – the Pen is smaller than the M8 in every dimension without a lens, and much smaller with the 17mm fitted compared to, say, a 28mm lens.

Check the Comment for some preliminary feedback on shutter and focus lag.

Lens of the Year

Lenses

No contest.

It’s not so much ‘Lens of the Year’ as it is ‘Outfit of the Year’ and the choice will surprise none who have been visiting here recently.


Canon 5D, Canon 100mm EF Macro and Bower ring flash

While none of this gear is ‘new’ – the 100mm macro has been around for ages, the 5D is no spring chicken and ring flashes are as old as politicians’ lies – what is so very special about this outfit is how simple the technical side becomes. Back when, in the bad old film days, you used a lens head on a bellows, constantly messed with focus and depth of field, tried to remember the right exposure compensation when the bellows were racked out and then suffered agonies trying to light your subject. Then, when you snapped the picture, you realized that you had forgotten to stop the lens down and were five stops over-exposed.

But Canon obsoleted all of that with a few strokes of genius, doubtless available from other makers also. First, they made the lens fixed length. It does not change in size as you focus. Second, the focus range is continuous from infinity to life size on a full frame sensor body. Third, focus is automatic and blisteringly fast. And, finally, E-TTL makes sure that all those arcane calculations are a thing of the past, computing the optimal blend of natural and flash light on the fly. A nice 100mm length also allows the photographer to step back from the subject, leaving more working room, and throw in the Software of the Year and you have the most perfect macro kit yet.

Thanks to all this magic 100% of your attention can be devoted to the subject and the technology takes care of the back end. This compares well with the automatic gearbox in cars which leaves more brain cycles available for the job of driving rather than shifting gears. Sure, there are people who like to use a clutch. (None of them drive in Formula One, by the way). There are also people who will tell you that film beats digital and good sound ended with the LP era. Have pity on them, while they do their calculations and make incantations to the analog gods of yore. The world will always have its technophobes, most so over-invested in yesterday that they have to defend antiquity.

And it’s not like this wonder lens is wildly expensive, compared to the mess of adapters, bellows, racks etc. in olden days. The lens retails for under $500 and works every bit as well on Canon’s cropped sensor bodies as it does on full frame. The optical and mechanical quality is right up there with Canon’s exalted ‘L’ offerings – I know as I own some. In fact, there’s not a sharper lens in my kit. So add an inexpensive digital Rebel body, splash out another $150 on the ring flash (no need to get Canon’s costly version), and you have the best macro kit out there for under $1,000. What’s that, you say? You want the ability to switch off one side of the ring flash tube for better modeling effects like the Canon one does? Well, dear reader, I have two words for you. Black tape. You stick it over one half of the flash tube in the same way you stick it on your camera to obliterate all those gauche manufacturer’s markings. Now that’s what I call a bargain.


The good old days were …. really bad.

The Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro autofocus lens is the Lens of the Year.