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.

Sigma 60mm long portrait lens

Both lenses used here are designed for a larger sensor than in the cameras pictured:

The Sigma 60mm f/2.8 DN used on the Olympus E-M5 II (left) is designed for mirrorless cameras with an APS-C sized sensor, e.g., Sony E, where it becomes equivalent to 90mm, a classic portrait lens. However, it also comes with a Micro Four Thirds mount, where it becomes a 120mm equivalent lens, i.e., a long portrait lens.

Normal lens shootout

Some decades ago, when film SLR cameras became popular, the 50mm lens was abundant. Due to the long register distance of SLR cameras, the 50mm lens was the shortest which could be designed cheaply with a large aperture, which is why it became so popular. It became the standard lens people bought with an SLR camera, the normal lens.

Nowadays, the kit zoom lens has become the normal lens, but the field of view corresponding to a traditional 50mm lens is still popular. So most manufacturers release a fast "normal lens" when they invest into a new lens mount. In this article, I will compare two normal lenses for two different systems, the Nikon 18.5mm f/1.8 for Nikon 1, and the Leica 25mm f/1.4 for Micro Four Thirds:

Lens	Nikon 18.5mm f/1.8	Leica 25mm f/1.4
Announced	Sep 13th, 2012	Jun 13th, 2011
System crop factor	2.7	2
Equivalent focal length	50mm	50mm
Maximum aperture	f/1.8	f/1.4
Equivalent max aperture, in terms of DoF	f/4.8	f/2.8
Weight	70g	200g
Diameter	56mm	63mm
Length	36mm	55mm
Filter thread	40.5mm	46mm
Minimum focus	0.20m	0.30m
Lens elements/groups	8/6	9/7
Hood included	No, HB-N104	Yes
Focus ring	No	Yes

Both correspond to 50mm field of view on a 135 film camera, and both are quite fast, with large maximum apertures:

Lumix 100-300mm vs Nikon 70-300mm

When Nikon launched their Nikon 1 mirrorless format, it was hard to understand why anyone should buy into it. The cameras were pricey, relatively large for a 1'' sensor, and did not have a good ergonomics.

With the launch of the Nikon 1 CX 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 lens, I think the format finally makes sense. This is the only 800mm equivalent lens which is truly portable and which can be handheld. It is a very good birders lens.

In my review of the Nikon 1 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 lens, I was testing it with the Nikon 1 J1 camera, with a 10MP sensor. Since this time, I have acquired the Nikon 1 V3, which is a more suitable camera for a long lens, with the extra hand grip, and the EVF. The V3 also has 80% higher resolution, at 18MP.

With the V3 camera, I have re-run the sharpness tests. For the rest of the lens review, see my previous article.

I'm not sure if the image quality is better with the 18MP sensor in the Nikon 1 V3 camera. But the resolution is higher, which should make it better for an evaluation of the sharpness.

For a point of reference, I have compared the images from the 70-300mm lens with the Lumix G 100-300mm f/4-5.6 on the Lumix GH4.

Both cameras with lenses are pictured below:

As you can see, the Nikon system is much smaller, and should be easier to bring along for trekking.

Wide angle prime lenses compared

The classic 28mm prime lens is a natural part of any lens lineup. Most kit zoom lenses include the 28mm equivalent in the wide end, but you can also get prime (non-zoom) lenses with the same field of view.

Below are three such lenses, for three different interchangeable lens systems. How do they compare?

From left to right: Sigma 19mm f/2.8 (old style) mounted to a Sony NEX-3N, Lumix G 14mm f/2.5 mounted to a Lumix GM1, and Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8 mounted to a Nikon 1 V3 with a user optional EVF.

Lens	Sigma 19mm f/2.8	Lumix G 14mm f/2.5	Nikon 1 10mm f/2.8
Announced	Jan 10th, 2012	Sept 21st, 2010	Sept 21st, 2011
System crop factor	1.5	2	2.7
Equivalent focal length	29mm	28mm	27mm
Maximum aperture	f/2.8	f/2.5	f/2.8
Equivalent max aperture, in terms of DoF	f/4.2	f/5	f/7.6
Weight	140g	55g	77g
Diameter	61mm	56mm	56mm
Length	46mm	21mm	22mm
Filter thread	46mm	46mm	40.5mm
Minimum focus	0.20m	0.18m	0.20m
Lens elements/groups	8/6	6/5	6/5
Hood included	Yes	No	No
Focus ring	Yes	Yes	No

The lenses are laid out here:

Olympus 9mm: Fisheye vs Rectilinear

Olympus now has two lenses which include the 9mm focal range: The Olympus 9mm f/8 fisheye (my review) and the Olympus 9-18mm f/4-5.6 wide angle zoom lens. The first is a fisheye lens, and hence, it has significant barrel distortion. The second is a rectilinear wide angle zoom lens.

But beyond that, do they give you a different field of view? Below is the 9mm fisheye lens, with the Four Thirds version of the 9-18mm zoom:

Taking the same picture with both lenses yields these variants:

Olympus 9mm f/8 fisheye	Olympus 9-18mm f/4-5.6 @ 9mm f/8

So, as you can see, even if both lenses are rated at 9mm, they give a quite different field of view. The fisheye lens is much wider. On the other hand, outside of the centre, it is quite distorted.

Comparison @ 30mm

The launch of the Lumix GM1 compact M4/3 camera also brought the collapsible wide zoom lens, the Lumix G 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 Mega O.I.S. It is seen below to the left in the extended position, together with the Sigma 30mm f/2.8 DN and the Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8:

The Lumix G 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 is designed with a form factor to fit the new Lumix GM1 compact camera. It has a clean, smooth look, and is one of the few lenses which is small enough to go flush with the very low GM1 camera body.

The Sigma 30mm f/2.8 DN is a slightly long normal lens. It's not very impressive in terms of the maximum aperture, but it has a consistently very good image quality, and a noiseless, quick autofocus.

On the 30mm lens, I have used a 46mm to 28mm step down ring as a hood. It does a good job of keeping the front lens elements safe from accidents, in my opinion, while also keeping out some stray light. If you want to use it, you also need a 28mm front lens cap.

The Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8 is Panasonic's answer to the classic standard pro zoom lens. It is very compact for a lens of this class, and performs excellent. It is probably the best lens I have ever used.

Comparison @ 60mm

These are two of the most highly regarded lenses in the Micro Four Thirds lineup: The Sigma 60mm f/2.8 DN (left) and Lumix X 35-100mm f/2.8 (right):

The Sigma 60mm f/2.8 DN is a quite recent lens in their "Art line". Corresponding to a field of view of 120mm on a traditional film camera, it is a fairly long lens, slightly longer than the typical portrait lens. People often use it to take portraits, and for images of people from about 2-4 meter distance.

Comparison @ 12mm

The launch of the Lumix GM1 compact M4/3 camera also brought the collapsible wide zoom lens, the Lumix G 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 Mega O.I.S. It is seen below to the left in the extended position, together with the Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8 and Olympus 9-18mm f/4-5.6 (Four Thirds lens with adapter):

 

The Lumix G 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 is designed with a form factor to fit the new Lumix GM1 compact camera. It has a clean, smooth look, and is one of the few lenses which is small enough to go flush with the very low GM1 camera body.

Comparison @ 100mm

As the Micro Four Thirds lens lineup grows, there are more and more lenses covering the 100mm focal length. I have compared the image quality of four of them here:



From left to right: Lumix G 100-300mm f/4-5.6, Lumix X PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6, Lumix X 35-100mm f/2.8, Lumix G 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6. The lenses are shown with the original supplied hoods.

GH2 vs GH3 video quality comparison

When Panasonic released the GH3, it was expected to raise the bar even further in terms of video quality. To compare it against the GH2, I connected both cameras to a piece of wood, using Manfrotto Superclamps, so that they would record the same scenery for comparison.



On both cameras, I used the Lumix G 14mm f/2.5 pancake lens, a favourite of mine. I focused on "infinity", and then set both cameras to manual focus. The lenses were set to f/5.6 for the best sharpness, and I used the base ISO on both cameras. With the ambient lighting, the shutter speed was usually around 1/120s. Both cameras had the same settings in terms of sharpening and saturation. It was all recorded in 1080p, 25fps.

Even if the cameras have identical lenses mounted, they still have different field of view during video recording. This is due to only the GH2 having the an over-sized, multi aspect sensor, giving a wider field of view in video mode.

Here are the videos combined, for easy comparison:



Some may doubt that the quality of the YouTube rendering of the video is sufficient to really tell the difference between the cameras. I agree with that, and to assist in comparison, I uploaded parts of the video at 200% size, which probably makes the video image quality easier to assess. And I made some 100% crops from the original out of camera video files, uncompressed in PNG format below:





This last image comparison is from the ISO 1600 footage:

Conclusion

Just like I have concluded previously, the GH3 features somewhat less rolling shutter artefacts in video mode. Further, I think it looks like the GH3 handles high contrast better, and the overall sharpness of the video stream is better. Not unexpected, since the GH3 can record at up to 72Mbps bitrate, as compared with 24Mbps for the GH2. I used 50Mbps with the GH3 here, though. Of course, the bitrate is not everything, the sensor, AA filter, downsampling algorihm and compression algorithm are also important.

I also like the colours of the GH3 better. At high ISO, the GH3 does provide more details.

As far as I can see, the GH3 does deliver on the promise of delivering even better video quality than the predecessor GH2.

Sharpness comparison: 19mm vs 20mm

Sigma recently launched to Micro Four Thirds lenses, the Sigma 19mm f/2.8 EX DN, and the Sigma 30mm f/2.8 EX DN.

I have previously been quite happy with the sharpness of the 30mm lens, so I am curious to see how the 19mm lens performs. It makes sense to compare it with the Lumix G 20mm f/1.7, with a similar focal length.

Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 and Sigma 19mm f/2.8 EX DN

The test images were taken with the GH3 camera at ISO 200, on a tripod, and with self timer. The focus was set on the centre of the frame.

Lumix G 20mm @ f/2.8	Sigma 19mm @ f/2.8

Here are 100% crops from the centre of the image frame at various apertures:

And from the lower left corner:

Conclusion

We see that the Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 has an impressive level of sharpness, even wide open. The Sigma 19mm, on the other hand, needs a bit of stopping down before reaching the same level of sharpness. At f/2.8, the 19mm lens is a tad bit dull, even in the centre of the image frame.

This finding is consistent with other tests I have seen. Generally, it is observed that the Sigma 19mm lens is not the sharpest at f/2.8, and improves when stopped down to f/4 and f/5.6. Stopping down beyond f/5.6 does generally not add anything to the overall sharpness, but does give you more depth of focus (DoF). If you need a deep DoF, it may still be wise to stop down to f/8 or even further, but this will give you slightly worse sharpness at pixel level.

Still, it makes sense to say that both lenses are sharp. Comparing the Sigma lens with the Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 is perhaps a bit unfair, since the latter is known to be very sharp. For most uses, the Sigma lens is certainly sharp enough.

On the positive side, the Sigma 19mm f/2.8 EX DN appears to handle flare a tad bit better. There is less flare effects around the strong highlights.

My experience also confirms that the Sigma 19mm f/2.8 EX DN has a much better autofocus performance. The focus operation is also less noisy.

Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8 review

The Panasonic Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8 is a premium standard zoom lens. It was released in 2012, but obviously intended as the kit lens for the high end GH3 camera released later the same year. The lens is show below, together the with basic Lumix G 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 kit zoom lens:

Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8 sharpness evaluation

The Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8 is the new premium standard zoom lens from Panasonic. It was launched before the Panasonic GH3 camera, but obviously intended as the kit lens for their highest quality cameras. With a steep price tag to boot, there is much anticipation to the image quality from this lens.

A viewpoint commonly found in online discussions is that a prime lens is always better than a zoom lens. With this in mind, it is sensible to compare this zoom lens with some prime lenses. I chose to compare it with the Lumix G 14mm f/2.5 pancake lens and the Sigma 30mm f/2.8 EX DN, which are both covered by the zoom range of the Lumix X 12-35mm lens.

At 14mm

Using a tripod, and with the GH3 camera at the base ISO 200, I took the same picture with both lenses. The focus distance was very short, about 30cm/one foot. The pictures are out of camera (OOC) JPEGs. I made sure to focus on the same item in both images, the lone branch in the upper left corner.

Lumix G 12-35mm @ 14mm f/2.8	Lumix G 14mm @ f/2.5

Now, let me be the first to admit that there are many problems with this test setup. For example, the lenses have different lengths, so that the field of view turns out to be different in the two cases, even though the camera is at exactly the same place in both examples.

Also, since I am focusing on an item close to the border of the frame, what is in focus could be quite different in the centre of the frame, due to different focal plane curvature. However, despite these shortcomings, I think we will be able to see examples of items that are in focus in both pictures, and, hence, be able to do some comparison of their relative sharpness.

Here are some enlargements (100% crops) from the top left corner, where I set the focus point.

And from the top middle:

Finally, from the centre:

Based on these images, keeping in mind that the focal plane may be slightly different in the two last crops, I think we can conclude that they are pretty much equally sharp.

The Lumix X 12-35mm zoom lens appears to give a bit nicer bokeh, but on the other hand, the Lumix G 14mm f/2.5 handles the flare better. These observations are perhaps not surprising: We already know that the pancake lenses are not optimal in terms of bokeh. And when it comes to flare, we would normally expect that the simpler lens, with fewer lens elements, handles flare the best. The Lumix G 14mm pancake lens has only six lens elements, while the zoom lens has a whopping 14 lens elements. Flare is usually caused by unwanted stray reflection and refraction between the lens elements.

I think we can conclude that both lenses perform very well here.

At 30mm

This time, I focused in the single leaf in the centre of the frame. The focus distance was about one meter (three feet), suitable for a portrait photo.

Lumix G 12-35mm @ 30mm f/2.8	Sigma 30mm @ f/2.8

While I thought that I focused on a single leaf in the centre, it turns out that they were two different leaves, at some distance, and the Sigma lens focused on the left leaf, while the Lumix lens focused on the right leaf.This just shows that extreme caution must be taken when doing these studies. Still, I think the 100% crops from the centre are interesting:

We see that both lenses are very sharp in the centre. We also see that the Sigma 30mm lens is more resistant to flare, again probably because of the simpler construction using only seven lens elements.

Here are some crops from the lower left side, to look at the bokeh:

Based on these examples, the bokeh looks just fine for both lenses.

Conclusion

My experience so far indicates that the Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8 zoom lens has very good optical properties. I plan to make more comparisons later.

Despite using "nano surface coatings", the lens is prone to flare, though, but it is not unexpected for a lens of this class.

Fisheye sharpness

When I reviewed the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye, it was natural to compare it against the native Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. Since the Lumix lens costs about 2-3 times the price of the Samyang lens, I would expect that the Lumix lens comes out as the winner.

However, what I found was that the Samyang lens was sharper, even in the extreme corners, and without the in camera CA correction which is done with the Lumix lens when using it on a Panasonic camera.

Some have doubted this result, and I have also been a bit unsure now and then. So I decided to do another test.

This time, I photographed a couple of trees against the bright sky, a useful test for lens sharpness. The focus was set on the centre of the image. With the Lumix lens, I used autofocus, and set a centre spot. With the Samyang lens, I used the 10x focus assist magnification available with the Panasonic GH2 camera. Here are the two images, both at f/3.5:

Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5	Lumix G 8mm f/3.5

To better evaluate the sharpness performance, I have compiled some 100% crops. From the centre of the image:

And from the top right corner:

Based on this study, it is perhaps not correct to say that the Samyang lens is much better. I think the Samyang lens appears to have slightly better sharpness in the corner, but the differences are fairly subtle.

Keep in mind that the Lumix lensis automatically corrected for CA artifacts, though. By looking at the RAW image files, and converting them to JPEG with third party software, we can see how the images were before the software CA corrections. These 100% crops are from the top left corner:

I used the free program UFRaw to convert the RAW images, but any program could have been used here, as long as it allows for doing the conversion without applying CA correction.

Here we see that without the in camera software CA correction, there are some significant red/green fringing artifacts. These are largely removed in the out of camera JPEG image. In the light of this, the Samyang lens's performance is even more impressive, as no in camera CA correction was done.

Conclusion

I wouldn't say that the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens is significantly better than the Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, even if it appears to perform better in this test. So the image quality should not be an important factor when deciding between the two.

You could also consider the fact that they have slightly different projections. The Samyang lens gives images that are slightly less barrel distorted, and may be easier to defish.

The Samyang lens also handles flare better, see a direct comparison between the two in my review. Flare handling is very important for a fisheye lens, since you are quite likely to find the sun or a strong light source inside the image frame, due to the wide field of view.

When focusing manually with the Samyang lens, it is important to keep in mind that you shouldn't blindly trust the focus distance scale. On my lens, it is slightly off, and I reach infinity focus slightly before the infinity mark. This is not uncommon with manual focus lenses. Exact calibration would be very expensive, and the producers usually leave some slack for themselves by allowing the lens to focus beyond infinity.

The autofocus of the Lumix G 8mm f/3.5 fisheye isn't really needed for landscape pictures, as you easily get infinity into focus manually. But when taking closeup images, the autofocus can come rather handy.

Lumix G 7-14mm f/4 ultra wide angle lens

The Panasonic Lumix G 7-14mm f/4 is a highly desirable ultra wide angle zoom lens. Starting at 7mm, corresponding to 14mm on a traditional film camera, it is one of the widest rectilinear lenses out there. One of the wider lenses include the Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 for APS-C DSLR cameras, which corresponds to 12mm on film cameras.

Physical

The lens feels heavy, solid and well made. The barrel is made of a plastic material. The zoom ring is rubberized, and rotating it feels smooth and well dampened.

There is no extending zoom tube, but the front element moves when zooming. At 14mm, is is the most retracted into the built in hood, and at 7mm, it is closer to the hood opening.

No filter can be mounted to the front of the lens, and there is no possibility to mount a gelatine filter to the rear side of the lens.

The autofocus is quick and virtually inaudible, due to the internal focus method.

In this short review, I have focused on the lens used at 7mm, where it is the most unique. At longer focal lengths, there are other lenses that overlap.

Example image

This image was taken at 7mm, ISO 160, 1/1300 second, f/4.5, with the Panasonic GH2:

You can notice that there is a significant perspective distortion: The vertical lines are skewed. This is because I was holding the camera non-level (tilted upwards), and does not represent any problem with the lens. It is quite simply a geometrical property.

The sun is inside the image frame (near the Empire State Building), and the lens handles this very well. There is only a minimal amount of flare in the image, and the contrast is still good.

We can take a look at some enlargements (100% crops) from the image, to look at the image quality (click for larger images):

Centre:

Top centre:

Lower right corner:

These crops show us that the sharpness is quite good, although there is some reduction of the sharpness in the extreme image corner.

Sharpness

I have taken some images to look at the sharpness, and compared it with the Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens (click for larger images).

Lumix G 7-14mm @ 7mm f/8	Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 @ f/8

The focus was set on the buildings in the background. To better evaluate the sharpness, here are some 100% crops from the top left corner.  The images have not been sharpened, and are from the out of camera JPEG images:

Note that this comparison is not entirely fair. I'm comparing the diagonal corner from the 7-14mm lens, which is at 57°, with the corner from the fisheye lens, which is at 90°. This difference is very substantial.

Here is a comparison from the centre of the image:

In the centre, both lenses render very sharply already from the maximum aperture.

It looks like the camera adds some sharpness to the JPEG images for the Lumix G 7-14mm lens, which is not done for the Samyang lens. This could be because the Samyang lens does not have any electronical contacts, and the camera does not know the nature of the lens.

Here is another test of the Lumix G 7-14mm f/4 lens at 7mm. The full image:

Lumix G 7-14mm @ 7mm f/8

Again, the focus is set on the background. Here are 100% crops from the top right corner:

We see that even when stopping down to f/8, the extreme corner is still unsharp.

In the corners, some Chromatic Aberration (CA) artifacts are retained even when stopping down.

Geometric distortion correction

Like many other Micro Four Thirds lenses, this lens requires in-camera software correction to become rectilinear. However, the adjustments done at 7mm are fairly small. Here is an illustration of the example image with and without the distortion correction. One could conceivably use the output image without the geometric distortion correction, which would yield an even wider perspective.

Conclusion

The Lumix G 7-14mm f/4 ultra wide lens is a very good, and expensive lens. It is a joy to use, and handles flare well. The extreme corners are a bit dull at the widest setting, but this is probably not a big deal with real life usage of the lens.

At the moment, this is the widest rectilinear lens available for the Micro Four Thirds format.