Rokinon FE8M-C 8mm F3.5 Fisheye Lens for Canon - Black

by Rokinon

• 180 degrees angle of view
• Built-in petal type hood
• 10 Elements in 7 groups
• Aperture range of F/3.5 ~ 22

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.8 x 3 x 3 inches ; 14.4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B002LTXQUE
• Item model number: FE8M-C
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (339 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #59 in Camera & Photo > Lenses > Camera Lenses
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 17, 2009

Product Description

Style: Canon

From the Manufacturer

The NEW ROKINON 8mm Ultra Wide Angle Fisheye Lens is the most affordable 8mm Fisheye Lens in the market. It features the widest field of view over any other 8mm fisheye lens, and its build quality and optical construction are superb. The ROKINON 8mm lens is designed for digital SLR cameras with APS-C image sensors. For these types of cameras, it provides full-frame coverage - which means that pictures will cover the entire frame. It is also compatible with cameras that have a full-frame sensor. For cameras with full-frame sensors, the lens will produce pictures with a semi-circular image and close images will appear proportionately large for a dramatic effect. The ROKINON 8mm lens creates images with an expanded and exaggerated perspective and an extremely wide 180° angle of view. The lens is available for the following mounts: Canon EOS, Nikon, Sony Alpha, Pentax & Olympus 4/3.

Specifications:

Specifications		f=8mm, F 3.5 (Fisheye Lens)
Aperture Range:		F3.5 ~ 22
Optical Construction:		10 Element in 7 Groups (1 Aspherical Lens)
Min. Focusing Distance:		1.0 ft (0.3m)
Filter Size		NONE
Maximum Diameter:		φ75.0mm
Mount:		Nikon	Pentax	Sony	Canon	4/3	Samsung NX
Angle of View:	APS-C	180°	180°	180°	167°	-	180°
	4/3	-	-	-	-	139.3°	-
Length:		74.8mm	75.8mm	76.8mm	77.3mm	80mm	98.3mm
Weight:		14.7 oz	14.6 oz	15.6 oz	15.1 oz	15.1 oz	16.4 oz

Features:

• Ultra-wide 180 degree diagonal field-of-view for APS-C size image formats
• Lens is constructed with hybrid aspherical lenses for outstanding, sharply defined images
• Lens features super multi-layer coating to reduce flares and ghost images
• Lens has a minimum focusing distance of 12 inches for enhanced close-up shots
• Lens includes a built-in petal type hood

Sample Photos:
See attached sample photos taken with this lens:

Product Description

Rokinon 8mm F/3.5 Fisheye Lens for Canon; Lens creates images with an expanded perspective and allows user to capture a very unique perspective; Lens Conforms to APS-C (1:1.5x) size digital imaging format; Lens Actualizes 8mm focal length and a diagonal angle of view of 180 degrees for APS-C size; Lens Corrects aberrations using a complex aspherical lens; Manual Focus; Aperture range of F/3.5 ~ 22; Built-in Petal type hood and multi-coating help control flaring and ghosting; Minimum focusing distance of 12 inches (0.3m); Includes Lens Pouch, Instruction Manual, and One Year Rokinon Warranty

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

285 of 292 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Best of the "affordable" Fisheyes I've found February 6, 2011

By MiRSD TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Style Name:Canon|Amazon Verified Purchase

Fisheye lenses are very fun - they give a totally different perspective compared to just about any lens out there. The most common type seem to be the "circle" type, which product a big circle in the center of your image (with the fisheye image inside of that). On digital cameras with a crop-factor (like the Canon Rebel series, XXD series and even 7D), this can sometimes result in what looks like a circle with the top and bottom cut off.. not the most enjoyable image.

That's where this one comes in - the Rokinon produced a rectangular fisheye image - there is no "circle" as with other types of fisheye lenses, but you still get that great fisheye look (distortions and all).

You might see other similar looking (and priced) Fisheye lenses available out there.. Bower, Pro-Optic, Samyang, Rokinon, Vivitar, Falcon. These are ALL THE SAME LENS - Samyang, the manufacturer, simply re-brands it and changes the colors a bit (For example, look at: Vivitar - Fisheye lens - 7 mm - f/3.5 - Canon EF Pro-Optic 8mm f/3.5 Manual Focus, Fish Eye Lens with Canon EOS Mount ). With that said, be sure to check out the others to find the most affordable. The Rokinon is often 50-75 dollars less than the Vivitar.

The lens is a Canon EF mount (I only mention this because it's not listed in the description, only that it's "For Canon" - I wasn't sure if it was EF or FD mount before ordering). It WILL fit onto any EF Mount (meaning it will work on a 5D) but because it's SO WIDE, the hood will show up in images on a fullframe camera (it will not show up on images on a 1.6x crop camera like the Rebels, 7D or XXD line).... The hood is not removable, but some people actually cut it off to use with full-frame cameras like the 5D.

The lens is rounded like a traditional fisheye, so you cannot use lens filter in front of this.

The angle is VERY WIDE - probably 180 degrees.. I have the lenscap on a leash (capkeeper) and it shows up in images if I don't move it. Things right to the side of the lens will appear in the photo.. it's hard to hide from it!

The low price comes because the lens does NOT make electrical contact with the camera. It's a MANUAL LENS - there is no autofocus, and the camera will not recognize it as a lens. You change the aperture by turning the manual aperture ring on the lens itself. You focus using the larger ring. Since the lens is so wide, if you set it to infinity (on the focus scale), then bring it back to just before that mark, most of your image will be in focus. It's actually tougher to get stuff out of focus than in focus (great for those like me who can't manual focus at all)

If you set your camera to AV mode (haven't tried the others) it will automatically determine exposure for you (I was worried about this, figuring a manual lens had to be set manually (including exposure)) - You can, of course, still set it manually. And while it does meter, it's not always perfect so be sure to review your images once in a while to make sure everything is turning out. One of the problems is that with such a wide angle of view, there can often be very different lighting conditions. Taking a photo indoors, for example, will often result in a darkened room and very bright light sources wherever windows are. You almost need to "HDR" these to get usable images. Outdoors or in even lighting conditions, it works great.

The price is much less than other wide angle lenses (because those have name-brands behind them and features like autofocus and probably better optics). The only cheaper alternative are the poor screw-on fisheye filters that attach on top of an existing lens, but these will often produce near unusable photos. The photos from the Rokinon are surprisingly sharp.

The downside to it is that quality control on the distance-scale can be poor - a number of people are reporting getting this lens (or the other rebranded variations) with a distance scale that is "off" - meaning that the 2 foot mark might actually be "Infinity", but I think it is something you can learn to deal with after a few uses. It doesn't make the lens unusable by any means.

The other negative is that this lens is about 300 bucks for a manual-only lens made by Rokinon (or Samyang, etc..) - that's almost the same as you'd pay for a Canon 50mm 1.4 lens (or similar). With that said though, I still really enjoy it and would re-buy it again if I had to make the choice again. Read more ›

64 of 69 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Waaay better than the peleng October 22, 2010

By G. Cerpa

Style Name:Canon|Amazon Verified Purchase

Well what can I tell you, this lens is awesome, I've testes it and let me tell you some of the results I noticed:

- The amount of flare (even pointing the lens towards the sun) is minimal, it really surprised me in a very positive way.
- It doesn't darkens the corners or produce vignetting effect AT ALL!
- The quality in the final pictures is superb, the pictures are crisp sharp even in the edges!
- Unlinke the peleng lens, the rokinon does fill the entire frame of the picture with no empty corners.
- It does not have the annoying lock ring of the peleng.
- When you handle the lens it feels great, the build quality is great and the rubber grip in the focus ring is awesome, its heaviness makes it feel like a solid rock and well built pice of glass; and, unlike the peleng, it does look modern!
- The colors look nice and saturated in the final pictures.

I loved this one, and I can truely say that this lens will exceed your expectations, the best bang for the buck!

Note for the buyers: this lens is also sold under other brands such as: opteka, samyang, falcon; but it's the same glass

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An underrated great lens from Samyang November 1, 2010

By E. Hung

Style Name:Canon|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you are reading the review for this lens, you are looking at a highly underrated lens. The performance of this lens has surprised a lot of critics including Ken Rockwell and photozone. If you are out there shooting with fisheye, you definitely should not mind about manual focus and manual aperture. Otherwise, go ahead and spend 3 times as much of your hard earned money on Sigma or at least 4 times as much on the new Canon 8-16mm L which hasn't been shipped yet. BTW the price of this Samyang fisheye has dropped to $263. Hello? How much does the plasticy Canon kit lens cost? For the quality of its optics and build (metal), the Samyang is a real bargain. The first thing I did with this lens was to shoot toward the sun and confirmed that flares were very well controlled. You get a nice single streak of flares and they are not all over the place. Just be realistic with laws of physics, you cannot expect no flare at all with such wide angle even with nano or whatever coating. This Samyang is arguably the best choice for APC DSLRs with all factors considered. And it 's made in Korea too unlike some N company with cheap Chinese made lenses.

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Manual Lens! Detailed Review September 14, 2011

By Mark Petry

Style Name:Canon|Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought this lens after reading several reviews. I got it this morning and used it on my lunch break for about 30 minutes and it seems great so far. The image quality is good, but you can see that for yourself in the customer images. So, here are a few things you can't tell from the customer images. Things I knew going into this purchase - these are not complaints - just a few notes that you may not have been aware of:

1. First, it is a great lens for the price; very solid, feels nice, looks good. Definitely worth it if your want to give fisheye a try without breaking the bank.

2. You can not use filters with this lens.

3. This len (for Canon cropped cameras) has a viewing angle of 167 degrees NOT 180. It is however 180 degrees for cropped Nikon, Sony, etc. Not a big deal, the lens definitely has a great fisheye effect.

3. There is definitely some CA (chromatic abberation), but that can easily be fixed in your favorite photo editing software.

4. This is a fully MANUAL lens. You have to manually set the aperature and focus on the lens - NOT through the camera. The lens does not actually communicate with the camera body. If you are confused by this, read you camera's manual or look for a free tutorial online by Googling "Photography for Beginners". There are a ton of free tutorials that will help you learn. That's how I got started.

5. The aperature ring shows six values of 3.5, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22. However, when you rotate the aperature ring, it clicks 9 times from 3.5 to 22 - just something to keep in mind. Not a big deal since a lens of this nature is going to have a pretty wide depth of field most of the time anyway.

If you just want a quick "how-to" for this lens, then:

1.... Set the aperature (on the lens) to f5.6 or up (f8, f11, etc)
2. Set your camera's ISO to AUTO
3. Finally, set the focus ring (again, on the lens) to the infinity symbol.

Now, as long as you are at least 2 feet away from you subject, your pictures will be in focus without doing anything else to the lens. If this seems complicated, don't be afraid! It's actually quite simple! Again if you are confused, search the Internet for the following terms:

Aperature
Depth of field

Well, that should get you started. If you are ok with the things I listed above, then go get this lens! You won't regret it! Read more ›