Trying the Canon 8-15mm f/4L fisheye

Last I week I got a taste test on the new Canon 8-15mm fisheye f/4L. Some will say it’s a novelty, some depend on it, some froth on it. I’ve gone through my pros and cons of the lens to see if it’s on my wish list.

TNF NZ Freeski Open 2011, Snowpark.

When it was announced I was amped myself as it meant we could now shoot ‘true’ fisheye on any Canon body with canon EF glass. That also means the option to now shoot at 10fps. Previously if we wanted to shoot 10fps with a fisheye we had to sacrifice a little of the mm due to the 1.3x crop or get a third party lens.  Sacrificing a few mm can be a positive though, not being as warped but enough for a similar look. So who should be excited? Photographers who own a crop body camera or a mixture of crops. They’ll be able to achieve fisheye across the crop field. For Example surf photographers can grab the 8-15mm and use it on the 7D for fast frame rate and focus white quite light.

Now I’ve seen it and played with it, what am I thinking? The ‘ampness’ has died down to be honest. It could be because I mostly use the Canon 5dII which isn’t anything new using a fisheye. Below 15mm is new, and all the way to 8mm. But that’s even more of a novelty in my point of view. Having say 50 no 20 images or so all done at 15mm, they can all start to look similar let alone trying it at 8mm. I know when I tried the Sigma 8mm 3.5 I was like “WOOOW this is wack”. I got a bit bored after a while. The black area just becomes a space waster, a waste of MP. I can see some people enjoying it on a full frame camera but that’s not really where I am at with the lens.

That sounds like I’ve said it’s a bad lens, its not. It’s just not for me at the moment. If you’ve got a 1.3x crop body but even more a 1.6x crop body it’ll be for you. When I got my first DSLR the first lens I wanted was a fisheye then to my disappointment you had to have a fullframe to achieve the warped look, bugger. So now all those people with 550D’s, 60D’s 7D’s or alike can now go out and grab this lens and have some fun with fisheye photos. Yeah ok the Iphone 5 has had an fisheye extension lens for some time now but it’s just not the same.

8-15mm without the detachable lens hood. Dont want to scratch that huh!?

Build quality,

It’s an L lens so overall it will be great. It’s more that some design aspects that will let it down.

Due to the front element being convex or ‘shaped like a bubble’ it’s very exposed to surroundings. If you’ve got the camera dangling off your neck you’ll see what I mean, the lens is facing down and you’ve a high chance of knocking something if your not careful. You might not do that but even holding it you’ve got to be careful. It’s not a lens you’ll want to scratch either. Canons got a solution to this and added a lens hood. But if your going wider than 14mm on a full-frame like to go fisheye on a smaller crop body you’ll have to take the hood off so it doesn’t appear in your frame, that’s wide.

So you’ve got the large lens cap that fits over the lens hood because of the shape. Its good, its goes on and off with ease… too effortless really. While shooting up at Snowpark I had just brushed the cap while waiting for the skier and it fell right off. It was quite windy and I was standing on groomed snow so the cap started quickly rolling, luckily I grabbed it before it tumbled 50m down the hill. It’s not something you want to muck around with during a shoot, or something you’d want to loose. Other photographers have picked up on this too. I’d say it’s probably the most annoying part of the lens. I can imagine if I wasn’t careful the lens cap could fall off in the bag and something rub against the front element… eekk.

Some may argue the 15mm 2.8 is worse but just like a photographer I know has just puts a few pieces of tape on the inside of the cap to give grip and it will stay on. Fixed.
What’s interesting though you can take off the lens hood at the same time as the cap if you need to take a picture at a wide mm. that saves having your hands full, you’d still be mucking around putting each item into a pocket wasting time. I liked that time saver!

The 8-15mm you’ll see the front pop in and out as it zooms, it’s the same with the 15mm 2.8 fisheye as it focuses, in fact a lot of the Canon wide’s front element moves. I’m not a major fan of this since having a mare where flour being a super fine substance was sucked in the 17-40 during a shoot.  So to solve that I now always pop a UV filter on the front of my lenses, keeps them in good condition and safe. Sadly you’ve got to take extra care of the 8-15mm due to the convex shape of the lens you cant attach a filter. Even though being weather sealed it isn’t fully sealed due to the front focusing moving

Size wise it’s smaller than the 17-40mm and in fact currently smaller than all other Canon ‘L’ lenses.  Because it’s a fisheye the only comparisons are fisheyes really, so fullframe the canon and sigma 15mm f/2.8, for 1.6x crops sigma 10mm.

Canon's 8-15mm f/4L fisheye with lens hood and cap.

Image Quality,

I tested it up in the snow with skiers in perfect blue sky so it wasn’t the best place to see chromatic aberration or image sharpness etc. I’ve heard the chromatic aberration isn’t that great but the Gordon’s tests will show that.

What I did do though was play with the sun star while skiers were in the air after hitting­­­­ the jump.
If your don’t know too much about the sun star grab a wide, pop it on AV, try f/4 stop it down around 1 or so and aim it at the sun on a clear blue sky. Then try it on f/16 or above. You’ll notice you caught a nice star. Different lenses have different stars depending on aperture blades and the shape.
So with the current world’s best skier Jossi Wells throwing down double cork 1260 mute grab… Say what? That’s flipping twice and spinning three and half revolutions as he holds his skis then landing backwards. So ‘photo-wise’ that’s a lot of moving as he spins over a 60ft jump. So you need a high shutter to freeze the movement as well as a low aperture for the sun star then high ISO to compensate. 
My Canon 17-40mm f/4L gets a good sun star around f/13-18, any higher it’s darker than you’d want.  Using the 8-15mm the sun star starts around f/16 but nicer at f/22. That’s quite dark so I had to use an ISO around 1250 which isn’t great for large prints. I did this on the 5dII so it was on 15mm zoom.

Conclusion

So is it for me, no. I’d prefer the Canon 15mm f/2.8 fisheye prime lens unless I grabbed a crop body more often. The older prime is smaller, lighter, better sun star, ‘better lens cap design’ and we’ll see on the image quality. That would be my main lens to have comparison to the 8-15mm as I mostly use fullframe.
Is it for you, people with who have a mixture of Canon crop cameras or just a single 1.6x camera.
It’s an ‘L’ lens so all the bells and whistles come with it, Canon’s weather proofing, build quality, Quality glass, USM focusing. I’ve picked this lens apart with features on this making it seem not that great but it’s those points that make the differences from a good lens and a bad lens to use in my opinion.

So me I’m going to grab the older 15mm f/2.8 fisheye before they’re no more, the sigma 2.8 is very similar if not sharper so that’s another option if you agree with me and miss the boat. When I’ve got the fisheye in my pack its not a go to lens for the ‘incase’ moment so I wouldn’t want any further weight and space taken up by the lens.

This was to see my thoughts on the 8-15mm f/4L fisheye for Gordon Laing at Cameralabs.com
Go check it out here!

Enjoy, Stefan Haworth