Here Fishy Fishy Fishy

I was looking for a fisheye, and recently bought a Peleng 8mm Circular fisheye. If you own a cropped Camera like I do (APS-C sensor), your choices are pretty limited as far as getting a lens that will give the fisheye effect. Canon makes a lovely 15mm fisheye, but you need a full frame sensor to get the proper effect.

Looking around, I figured that the options available for my 30 & 40D were:

a) Tonika 10-17mm

b) Peleng 8mm circular fisheye

c) Sigma 8mm

d) Sigma 10mm

The Sigma lenses are very expensive, and I wasn't really interested in spending upwards of 1000 bucks for a gimmick lens.

The Tonika is rated as a very fine lens and is around 550-700 bucks a copy. It is designed for APS-C sensors and gives a 180 degree view without the black borders.

Then there is the Peleng. It's cheap (300 bucks), and it is one odd bird.

The lens is completely manual, with the outer ring being the aperture adjustment, and the inner ring being the focal length. The centre lock and unlock dial needs to be set to unlock in order to reduce the aperture.

To change aperture, you move the aperture ring and then move the lock/unlock ring until it stops at the you f-stop setting. It is all fairly straightforward. The lens goes from f/3.5-f/16:

The rear mount is rather basic and does not have an have th Canon EF chip on it. There is a small amount of play present in the lens once mounted. Overall construction is solid though, and there is a lot of metal in the body.

The Peleng is built by BelOMA, which is the Belarus Optical Mechanical Association. The company originally made optical components for Aviation, Military and Space equipment. See www.belomo.by for more history of the company.

The glass itself looks quite nice.

I haven't had much time to use the lens, but here are a few samples I took recently.

I might post more later as I learn how to use the lens...