Sigma 8mm f/3.5 EX DG Circular Fisheye Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

by Sigma

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 2.9 x 2.9 x 2.7 inches ; 14.1 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000GE9SBM
• Item model number: B000GE9SBM
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 17, 2003

Product Description

Manufacturer Description

This circular fisheye lens produces circular images with an angle of view of 180-degrees when attached to a full-frame digital or 35mm film SLR camera. It has a maximum aperture of f3.5, a minimum focusing distance of 5.5-inches and a maximum magnification of 4.6x. The special fisheye design allows maximum creative expression. Sigma's super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting, a common problem with digital cameras. The new lens power layout reduces color aberrations. Providing excellent image quality for digital and film SLR cameras. This lens can be used for the scientific applications such as the solid angle measurements of cloud distribution over the sky, the vegetation distribution of the rain forest canopy, etc., due to the quantifiable angle/area relationship it produces. This lens has a gelatin filter holder at the rear, allowing the use of gelatin filters.

DG (DG lens)
These are large-aperture lenses with wide angles and short minimum focusing distances. With an abundance of peripheral illumination, they are ideal lenses for digital SLR cameras whilst retaining suitability for traditional 35mm SLRs.

EX (EX lens)
The exterior of this lens is EX-finished to denote the superior build and optical quality, and to enhance its appearance.

Product Description

This circular fisheye lens produces circular images with an angle of view of 180° when attached to a full-frame digital or 35mm film SLR camera. It has a maximum aperture of F3.5, a minimum focusing distance of 13.5cm (5.5") and a maximum magnification of 1:4.6. The special fisheye design allows maximum creative expression. Sigma's super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting, a common problem with digital cameras. The new lens power layout reduces color aberrations. Providing excellent image quality for digital and film SLR cameras. This lens can be used for the scientific applications such as the solid angle measurements of cloud distribution over the sky, the vegetation distribution of the rain forest canopy, etc., due to the quantifiable angle/area relationship it produces. This lens has a gelatin filter holder at the rear, allowing the use of gelatin filters

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm very happy with this, March 31, 2007

By 

D. B. Smith "sloppy thinking police" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sigma 8mm f/3.5 EX DG Circular Fisheye Lens for Canon SLR Cameras (Electronics)

I got mine about a month ago and am just back from 10 days in Italy, where I used this extensively.

Sharp, good flare control, lots of fun. The previous reviewer says something about the AF being slow-- which, while true, is only half the story. You're almost always going to be focusing at or near infinity, so it's actually very rare to have to wait. Because this lens has such wide depth of field, I actually usually keep it on manual focus and leave it near infinity.

Actually, the biggest challenge with this lens is composition-- it can be surprisingly hard to find a scene with interesting things in all directions. That said, this lens is *excellent* for inside buildings and crowded city streets. Be aware that outdoors, finding the correct exposure can be difficult for a number of reasons. I did significantly better in M (manual) mode than my camera was doing in A (aperture) mode. (reasons for difficulty include the dark corners in the frame which mess up the camera's metering in some modes, and the probability that the sun will be in the frame and/or there will be both very light and very dark areas in the frame)

This lens is excellent for making spherical panoramas, and for realllllly wide angle shots (I'm de-fishing a lot of my pictures with software).

(I use this lens with a Canon 10D)

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sigma 8mm Circular Fisheye is Top Quality!, March 20, 2008

By 

Uncle Rocco "Rocco" (Va. Beach, VA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sigma 8mm f/3.5 EX DG Circular Fisheye Lens for Canon SLR Cameras (Electronics)

This Sigma lens is like a working piece of art. The build quality is high, the images are bright and sharp with excellent color saturation. I use mine to shoot full-screen 360 by 180 panoramas and the results are breathtaking! The best part is that this lens costs 1/3 to 1/4 of what the Canon 8mm lens costs. It's an awesome deal, no matter what way you look at it. The Sigma 8mm is definitely a professional grade lens.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars optics excellent, AF speed very slow, not internal focus, January 9, 2007

By 

A. Ko (usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sigma 8mm f/3.5 EX DG Circular Fisheye Lens for Canon SLR Cameras (Electronics)

Optical quality of this fish eye is very good. Flare control is excellent. However, AF speed is very slow. Takes 2+ seconds to move from closet distant to infinity. THe slowest AF speed lens among my other 14canon lenses. Also, during AF, the AF ring moves. I would like to be internal focus or at least the AF ring doesn't move. They didn't design a clutch to disengage the AF ring.

Pros: optical quality

Flare control

Cons: AF speed

AF ring moves during AF