Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens

The Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens is currently Canon's only intentionally distorted EF lens.

The heavy barrel distortion from the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens creates a special effect that is liked by most people (until it is over-used of course). With digital capture, we can now use fisheye-to-rectilinear conversion software to create a corrected picture equivalent to what a 12-13mm rectilinear lens would yield. This is great - but it takes some extra post-processing work and requires some knowledge of what the end-result will look like when capturing the shot.

PTLens is a really easy to use (Low $) rectilinear conversion software program (or Photoshop Plugin) based on Panorama Tools (included and free). Photoshop's lens correction tools can also retilinear-convert the fisheye distortion. The downside to rectilinear conversion is that the image corners become soft. Reducing the image to 70% or less allows much of the corner sharpness to be recovered at the expense of the pixel size of the image.

Build quality of the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens is reasonable. The metal mount shows it is not a bottom of the line lens. The focus ring feels relatively low quality, but this lens does not cost a fortune either.

The size of the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens is very small - and very nice. It is much smaller than the Canon EF 14mm L USM Lens, Canon EF 16-35mm L USM Lens or Canon EF 17-40mm L USM Lens.

The Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens focuses moderately slowly and makes a loud buzzing doing so. Reality is that fast focusing is not very important to most people using this lens. A lens this wide does not need to adjust much to go from close to infinity. FTM (Full Time Manual) focus is not available. The manual focus ring is coarse - not smooth.

Along the same lines, the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens only has 5 aperture blades. This creates undesirable 5-pointed out-of-focus highlights. But, this lens is so wide that it is hard to get the background out of focus. So, this negative point is probably not important to most people either.

When I think of a highly distorted lens, I would expect the most distorted areas of the picture to be of lower quality. But that is not the case with the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens. This lens has very nice image quality.

Close subjects tend to be soft at f/2.8 and become steadily sharper through f/8. Distant subjects were sharp wide open and improved little with the lens stopped down. What was most noticeable to me was the relatively excellent corner sharpness even on a full-frame body. The Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens easily bests the Canon EF 14mm L USM Lens, the Canon EF 16-35mm L USM Lens and the Canon EF 17-40mm L USM Lens for corner sharpness. At least until it is converted to rectilinear.

Vignetting is apparent at f/2.8, but less apparent than most of the alternatives. Vignetting disappeared quickly as the lens was stopped down.

Flare is moderately well controlled on the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens. For flare, it was much better than the Canon EF 14mm L USM Lens but not as good as the Canon EF 16-35mm L USM Lens.

In harsh/heavy contrast conditions (such as dark tree branches against a bright cloudy sky), CA (Chromatic Aberration) is a problem. It was generally not a problem in my real life shots, but very present under certain conditions.

Like the Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II USM Lens, the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens features a convex objective lens (yes - both the objective lens and the pictures it takes look like fish eyes) and a fixed metal petal type lens hood. Gelatin filters inserted into the rear of the lens are the only filters that can be used on this lens.

Standard screw-in protective UV filters can not be used on this lens. Nor can any other screw-in filters for that matter. A special lens cap is required to protect this lens and hood. Canon supplies a nicely manufactured metal cap that slips on over the hood. A fuzzy material on the inner sides of the cap protects the sides of the hood from scratching and gives it some adhesion to the lens. Unfortunately, it falls off far too easily. Canon has solved this problem on the 14mm L II.

Color and saturation both are fine.

The Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens includes more in the picture than the other two f/2.8 ultra wide angle lenses Canon currently makes - the Canon EF 14mm f/2.8 L II USM Lens and the Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM Lens. These images were taken with a 1.3x FOVCF DSLR body.

The Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens is so wide that getting adequate flash coverage can be a problem. Expect to minimally need a flash with a built-in flip-down diffuser to cover the frame on a 1.3x or 1.6x FOVCF body. A Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce Diffuser will yield complete flash coverage on all bodies. Bouncing the flash may provide adequate coverage as well.

What is the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens used for? Nearly anything that requires an ultra wide angle lens. Similar to the rectilinear ultra wide angle lenses, the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens is useful for wide landscapes, wide day or night sky shots and Interior pictures of houses, vehicles and other confined spaces.

The fish-eye look is appealing as a special effect as well. It invites creativity. With an 8" minimum focusing distance, the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens can create some wild-looking effects. Remember to keep your feet out of the picture.

Architecture and real estate photography often have large subjects and require wide angle lenses - these are more good uses for the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens if distortion is acceptable - or removed.

I am impressed with the image quality from a lens this wide. If you don't mind the severe distortion or are willing to post-process the distortion out, the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens will make a very nice wide angle lens for you. [by the digital picture]

Types of Fisheye Lenses

In a circular fisheye lens, the image circle is inscribed in the film or sensor area; in a full-frame fisheye lens the image circle is circumscribed around the film or sensor area. Further, different fisheye lenses distort images differently, and the manner of distortion is referred to as their mapping function. A common type for consumer use is equisolid angle.


Circular

The first types of fisheye lenses to be developed were "circular fisheyes" — lenses which
took in a 180° hemisphere and projected this as a circle within the film frame. Some circular fisheyes were available in orthographic projection models for scientific applications.
These have a 180° vertical angle of view, and the horizontal and diagonal angle of view are also 180°.

Full-frame

As fisheye lenses gained popularity in general photography, camera companies began manufacturing fisheye lenses that enlarged the image circle to cover the entire 35 mm film frame, and this is the type of fisheye most commonly used by photographers.

The picture angle produced by these lenses only measures 180 degrees when measured from corner to corner: these have a 180° diagonal angle of view, while the horizontal and vertical angles of view will be smaller; for an equisolid angle-type 15 mm full-frame fisheye, the horizontal FOV will be 147°, and the vertical FOV will be 94°. The first full-frame fisheye lens to be mass-produced was a 16 mm lens made by Nikon in the late 1960s. Digital cameras with APS-C sized sensors require a 10.5 mm lens to get the same effect as a 16 mm lens on a camera with full-frame sensor.

Fisheye Lens

In photography, a fisheye lens is a wide-angle lens that takes in an extremely wide, hemispherical image. Originally developed for use in meteorology and astronomy and called "whole-sky lenses", fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted appearance. They are often used by photographers shooting broad landscapes to suggest the curve of the Earth. Hemispherical photography is used for various scientific purposes to study plant canopy geometry and to calculate near-ground solar radiation.

The focal lengths of fisheye lenses depend on the film format. For the popular 35 mm film format, typical focal lengths of fisheye lenses are between 8 mm and 10 mm for circular lenses, and 15-16 mm for full-frame lenses.

All the ultra-wide angle lenses suffer from some amount of barrel distortion. While this can easily be corrected for moderately wide angles of view, rectilinear ultra-wide angle lenses with angles of view greater than 90 degrees are difficult to design. Fisheye lenses achieve extremely wide angles of view by forgoing a rectilinear image, opting instead for a special mapping (for example: equisolid angle), which gives images a characteristic convex appearance. A panorama by rotating lens or stitching images (cylindrical perspective) is not a fisheye photo. (wikipedia)