General impression
I have been attracted to the Nikkor fisheye after seeing a few
pictures on various internet forums. My first reaction was that that lens was a
kind of expensive gadget but I found a number of enthusiastic users. I decided
to give it a try and a last thing helped: Nikon just started a 20% rebate
program when I made up my mind and we were just before Christmas...
As a result I got the lens for Christmas... the first impression was that the
lens was very very small. A lens cap and a pouch are standard in the box. There
is no separate sun hood, it is integrated in the lens body. If you want to adapt
a filter, you need very small ones you put on the rear element. Because of the
curvature of the front element, it is impossible to add anything in front of the
lens. About the fisheye itself, it is adapted to APS-C sensors (DX) with a
1.5 crop factor (that lens is similar to a 16mm fisheye on a film reflex camera)
with a 10.5mm focal length. It is a rectangular fisheye, that means that the
viewing angle is 180 degrees on along the diagonals. A circular fisheye would
give you 180 degrees in all directions with black corners. Using the de-fishing
option of Nikon Capture for example, you can get straight lines again (and a
normal perspective). This gives the effect of a super-wide angle (much wider
than a 12mm for instance) but with some drawbacks: a serious loss of details in
the corners and right and left borders of the picture and a visible color
aberration (can be somewhat corrected with the appropriate post processing, but
don't expect perfection there)
Pros
- excellent build
- small (very compact)
- 2.8 maximum aperture
- funny to use - surprisingly "usable"
- availability of de-fishing option in Nikon Capture
- usable as a super-wide angle
- reasonably sharp fully open
- very interesting results (perspective)
- fast focus (not really relevant because of the enormous DOF)
- very short minimum focus distance allowing nice effects (a few cm's)
- based on my experience, no flare until now
Cons
- Color aberration (CA) in the corners
- corner softness when de-fishing
- no AF-S motor (slow focus) - not critical because of the extreme depth of field
- expensive for a "toy"
Examples (more coming soon)
A few typical pictures (I like taking pics by putting the camera on the ground, timer activated, gives very nice perspectives)
Comparison between a 12mm wide angle shot and the de-fished view from the same spot
Conclusion
A very nice lens, more than just a toy, superior quality, small and light, with a few limitations you can correct with the appropriate tooling. Highly recommended.