Fisheye lenses compared

I like fisheye lenses: They can cram an impressively wide field of view into the image frame, and create perspectives that you would not be able to see with the human eye. Another aspect of fisheye lenses is that they create a lot of barrel distortion (rounded images), which you can remove through a defish process, or retain in the final image.

Here is a collection of fisheye lenses for Micro Four Thirds and other systems:

From the left: Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 (my review), Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 (my review), Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4 (my review), Olympus 9mm f/8 (white) (my review), Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5 (the biggest) (my review)

There are basically two types of fisheye lenses: A circular fisheye lens renders a circle in the centre of the image frame, which usually extends to 180° all around. A full frame/diagonal fisheye, on the other hand, renders the full imaging sensors, and usually extends to 180° from corner to corner.

Here are the basic specifications of the lenses above:

Lens	Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5	Lumix G 8mm f/3.5	Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4	Olympus 9mm f/8	Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5
Type	Full frame	Full frame	Circular	Full frame	Circular
System	Micro Four Thirds	Micro Four Thirds	Sony E	Micro Four Thirds	Nikon F, Canon EF, Sony Alpha, Sony E, Micro Four Thirds, etc
Field of view	180° diagonally	180° diagonally	180°	140° diagonally	185°
Lens elements/groups	9/7	10/9	7/6	5/4	8/5
Weight	197g	165g	200g	30g	298g
Length	48mm	52mm	43mm	13mm	70mm
Diameter	60mm	61mm	61mm	56mm	76mm
Minimum focus distance	0.09m	0.10m	0.10m	0.20m	0.01m
Focus	Manual Focus	Autofocus	Manual Focus	Manual Focus	Manual Focus
Aperture	f/3.5-f/22	f/3.5-f/22	f/4-f/22	f/8	f/3.5-f/22

About the lenses:

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5

One of my favourite lenses for Micro Four Thirds. It is very small, light, well constructed, easy to use (manual focus is easy), and gives stunning, impressive images. On top of this, it is cheap. See my review.

This lens is also marketed under a number of other names, like Rokinon, Bower, Walimex, and more. They are exactly as good as the ones called Samyang.

Lumix G 8mm f/3.5

The first fisheye lens available for Micro Four Thirds. It is fairly expensive, and not any better than the much cheaper Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5. It does have autofocus, though, which can be useful for cute closeups of pets, for example. See my review.

Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4

A very exotic lens, a circular fisheye lens for mirrorless APS-C sensor cameras (Sony E mount). It is very compact for this class, and gives a good image quality. See my review.

Olympus 9mm f/8

The second of Olympus's pancake body cap lenses. It is very inexpensive, but doesn't have the same wide format as the other fisheye lenses on this list. The image quality is good for the class of lens. It is easy to bring along, and can be fun to use. See my review.

Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5

The only lens in the list which is designed for DSLR systems, with a longer register disance. That is the reason why the lens is so big: It needs a big retrofocal design due to the longer register distance.

It is also the only lens in the list which has a field of view larger than 180°, meaning that it can look slightly behind the photographer.

Also, this lens is designed to have flares effects. The inside lens barrel is glossy, so that you will have light reflecting and causing some light effects outside of the image circle. You can see this in the example picture below. However, this designed flaw also reduces the contrast and the overall image quality of the lens.

In the picture above, I have the lens in Nikon F format, with a cheap Sony E adapter. You could buy the lens in Micro Four Thirds mount as well, however, I would rather recommend to get the lens in Nikon F mount, with a cheap M4/3 adapter. That way, you can reuse the lens later on pretty much any conceivable mount with the appropriate adapter. The 4/3 sensor is not large enough for the full image circle, you will get a cropped disc.

Olympus 9mm fisheye on Sony E mount

A fun fact is that you can use the Olympus 9mm f/8 on a Sony E mount camera using a cheap adapter. This works well, and I can focus on infinity using the adapter. Here is what it looks like:

The same can also be done with the Samyang 7.5mm lens, however, I am not able to focus on infinity using the Samyang lens on Sony E. So for me, that is rather useless. This indicates that the adapter is a bit too thick, making the lens focus too close.

Image quality

To compare the image quality, I have taken the same picture using the five lenses:

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 @ f/3.5	Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 @ f/3.5	Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4 @ f/4
Olympus 9mm f/8 @ f/8	Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5 @ f/3.5 on Sony E	Olympus 9mm f/8 on Sony E

As you can see, there is some difference in the field of view. The Lensbaby is the widest, but the margin to the next, is small. On the other hand, the Olympus 9mm lens is the least wide of the bunch. When used on a Sony E camera, though, this lens gives you a wider view, but at the cost of dark corners.

To better evaluate the image quality, here are 100% crops from the images:

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5, Lumix G 8mm f/3.5, and Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4:

Olympus 9mm f/8, Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5, and Olympus 9mm f/8 used on Sony E:

Example images

From the Pantheon:

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5	Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5	Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4
Olympus 9mm f/8	Olympus 9mm f/8 on Sony E

Alternative lenses

One alternative not shown in this comparison, is the Olympus 8mm f/1.8 PRO. It is very expensive, but also has one of the largest apertures of fisheye lenses currently available. This large aperture can be useful for underwater photography (using a waterproof housing), or for astronomical photography.

The most used fisheye lens today, is the one built into the Gopro action cameras. Here, I have compared the Gopro lens with the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5. It is nearly as wide, and not quite as sharp as the Samyang lens.

An interesting lens is the Sigma 4.5mm f/2.8 circular fisheye, the only serious, and affordable, circular fisheye lens. While it only comes with DSLR mounts, and for APS-C systems, it is clearly designed for the Four Thirds format, as the image circle is just smaller than the height of the Four Thirds sensor. So it is ideal to use on Micro Four Thirds. I would recommend getting it in Canon EF mount, with the Metabones smart adapter, which allows you to control the aperture from the camera.

Conclusion

Both the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 and the Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 are very good optically. As the Samyang lens is so much cheaper, I would recommend this lens to anyone who wants a serious fisheye lens for Micro Four Thirds.

The Olympus 9mm f/8 does surprisingly well, I would say, given the price tag. The image quality is not as good as the other Micro Four Thirds lenses here, but given the price, it performs very adequately. It is not as wide as the other lenses here, but it is still very wide, wider than the 9-18mm wide angle zoom lens, as demonstrated here.

Going to the circular fisheye lenses, the Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4 is by far the best. It has some chromatic aberration artefacts, but otherwise, it is a very good lens for the moderate cost. Sadly, it is only available for Sony E cameras.

Yasuhara have communicated that a Micro Four Thirds version is on the way. However, given that it has an image circle which is larger than the height of the Four Thirds sensor, I doubt that we will see it.

And that is also the reason why the Lensbaby is not a good lens for Micro Four Thirds, even if it come with a Micro Four Thirds mount: Its image circle is taller than the Four Thirds sensor. Apart from that, the Lensbaby is by far the worst in this test. I would not recommend this lens.

A fisheye lens can be fun to have. They used to be large, exotic, and expensive, but with these options, you can get one at a bargain price!

Lens	Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5	Lumix G 8mm f/3.5	Yasuhara Madoka 180 7.3mm f/4	Olympus 9mm f/8	Lensbaby 5.8mm f/3.5
Pros	Small, cheap, very good	Autofocus, good image quality	Good image quality, exotic, fun	Cheap, small, fun	Very wide
Cons	No autofocus, but manual focus is easy	Expensive	Only for Sony E cameras	Manual focus, somewhat hard to focus correctly, no aperture mechanism, image quality could be better	Not very good, large