A Practical (and Fun) Review of the 8mm Zuiko f1.8 Fisheye Pro Lens.

March, 2016

underwater photography in pool
Practicing some close focus wide angle (cfwa) photography in a pool. I picked up this Jelly (made of silicone!) in an aquarium supply store.

Since Olympus’ announcement last summer of their superbright Zuiko 8mm f1.8 fisheye Pro lens (micro 4/3 series), I’ve been wanting to get one for my wreck photography and next big animal trip. The early reviews weren’t overstated. This is one impressive piece of engineering. And it’s just fun to play with.

What better way to test a fast f1.8, 180 degree field of view lens than through astrophotography?  So I took advantage of a clear and cold night.  You can see from the pictures how excellent the optical quality of this lens is. I pushed this exposure for as long as practical, using the 500/f rule of thumb (where f= the equivalent 35 mm focal length= 16 mm in this case).   Under a magnified view, the stars at the upper left in the photo were just beginning to trail due to their distance from the North pole (the axis), and therefore larger rotation rate.  Since this lens has no infinity focus setting, I had to manually focus on a distant light source, as best I could.  This lens has actually inspired me to do more astrophotography.

All the images shown here were shot in RAW format before converting to JPEG. I did this to get a more realistic impression of the image quality, since the camera’s internal processing engine automatically edits JPEG’s.

astrophotography of winter milky way.
The Winter Milky Way. Note Constellation Orion at upper left and the Big Dipper at upper right. There was a setting, thin crescent moon that provided some nice lighting. I lightly “painted” the foreground with a flashlight to give some more depth to the picture. Iso 800, f/1.8, 30 s exposure.

 

8mm Zuiko f1.8 Fisheye Lens test
A 100% crop taken from the upper right area of the above photo, showing the bowl of the Big Dipper. Note that all stars are “pin sharp”, right to the corners! Iso 800, f1.8, 25s. This photo has no post-processing, except for some contrast.

Astrophotography is one of the harshest tests that you can put to a lens. Using the above image, I could find no spherical aberration (“blurry” focus), distortions or stretching of the stars, and they were all “pin sharp” right out to the corners.  The only “defect” that I could find was a very slight chromatic aberration noticeable around the brightest of stars, but that’s when pixel peeping. There was a total of 4 or 5 red/blue coloured pixels which gives an aberration level of about 0.14% (the ratio of the aberration pixels to the image height pixels).  To put this in perspective, anything less than about 0.4% is generally considered to excellent.  But this tiny amount doesn’t take away from the full-sized image, and it wouldn’t be worth my time removing it with software, like Lightroom.

 

Astrophotography Star Trails
Star trails. I couldn’t resist. I wanted the focus to be on the stars, so I didn’t “paint” the foreground. The “North Star” (Polaris) is the star which the others appear to rotate around. Note the airplane (red streak) which passed close to the horizon. Iso 800, f 1.8, 30 s x 50 stacked images.

However, under “normal” circumstances I could find no evidence of chromatic aberration (“colour-fringing”) in the high contrast scenes that I shot below, even with wide aperatures. Believe me, you will be snooping at the pixel level. I expected this much from a Pro series lens.

As you can see in the photo below, fisheye lenses have vertical and horizontal areas in the middle (“crosshairs”) where there is no distortion. This is where you want to place straight lines-if you have, or want to keep them straight.  The most distortion (“Barrel distortion”), or bending, occurs  toward the four corners.  Lightroom can correct most, but not all of this Barrel distortion,  at a cost of lost information through cropping. Since Lightroom doesn’t have presets for the micro 4/3 Lens series, you will have to do it manually.  In underwater photography, there are few straight lines like this to deal with, and the curved distortion produced by the lens is often appealing.

 

photography with a Fish eye lens.
A Century old split-cedar fence at the edge of a hardwood forest.  Iso 200, f20, 1/50 s.

Another thing to keep in mind when using a fisheye lens is the “forced-perspective” that it produces. Near objects look really close, while distant ones look further away. This is what produces those  dramatic reef scenes, and striking close focus photographs with a fisheye. Depending on your subject, and what you hope to accomplish, you might want to keep a little more distance.  This is why my dog’s nose (see the photo below) looks bigger than it really is, producing a comical effect. This also explains why they don’t use fisheyes for portrait photography!

Lens vignetting, Zuiko f1.8 8mm fisheye lens.
Such a ham!  Shot wide open at f/1.8, just inches from his nose.  By viewing all 4 corners, you can see that there is negligible lens vignetting (darkening of the corners).  I wouldn’t hesitate to use this setting underwater if needed.

 

fisheye lens test
Frozen Sugar Tyme crabapples (about 1.5 cm or 0.75 ” in size) with some frosting.  This lens focuses ridiculously close (it was about 1″ or 2.5 cm away from the lens)!   I was actually worried about the lens touching them. Be careful with a dome on your underwater camera, as you may touch your subject!  Iso 200 f8.0, 1/500s.   f8.0 is the minimum that I would aim for in a close focus wide angle (cfwa) shot.

 

Of course I couldn’t wait to get it into the water to experiment with it. So still being winter, with snow and the lakes frozen over, I rented out a local pool with some friends. This is a perfect opportunity to keep-up your diving and underwater photography skills.

Underwater photography in pool.
Future scuba diver. Lucas investigates my Jellyfish. Can you spot the nylon fishing line tethering it?  A generous depth of field,  considering it’s at f /2.5.  This is a scene with a very high dynamic range. If you look closely around the two bright artificial lights, it might appear that there is a small amount of chromatic aberration. But I think this is actually caused by sensor blooming (sensor level colour fringing), due to the sharp, clipped, specular highlights. Sensor blooming results in a single colour in one direction.

 

Underwater Photography in pool.
I love reflections. Melanie practicing her sculling. Iso 800, f/2.5, 1/80s, no strobes.

 

Underwater Photography in pool.
Snell’s window. Melanie rolling her kayak. Iso 800, f/3.2, 1/60 s.

Conclusion: This lens is worth every penny I paid for it ($1049.99 CAN), and I’ll join the growing chorus of positive reviews about it. It’s fast focusing, ruggedly built, weather sealed (dustproof, splashproof & freezeproof), cutting edge (world’s first f/1.8 fisheye), and has excellent quality optics.  Divers will especially appreciate the splashproof lens in the event of a flooded housing.  I can’t wait to use this lens in the upcoming dive season!

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