Canon EF 8-15 mm f/4L Fisheye USM Lens, What a great lens!

December 26, 2019

Canon EF 8-15 mm f/4L Fisheye USM Lens, What a great lens!

Bought from ‘asgoodasnew’ at just £104 in mint condition. Fabulous bargain and swift delivery. This is a lens with limited use but it produces great images and is worth having in your kit if you can get it at the right price.

Too specialised a lens for your average keen photographer, but still a great lens,.

I’ve had canon 15mm, sigma 15mm +8mm. 5mm +15mm pano lenses and this one is of course the best. But cheap if you use it on paid jobs for years. Sharpness, colour, contrast is a step up from anything else. The main thing that makes it the best for me is the flare resistance. Shooting very close to bright lights, i often had flare issues, not with the 8-15.

The canon 8-15mm is a great alternative to the old 15mm fisheye. Its built like a tank l series lens. For me one of the biggest benefits of the l lens is the weather protection. When i had an aps-c 7d i oftentimes used the excellent sigma 4. 5mm which is a circular fisheye for taking some amazing architecture shots; and the 8. 5mm for those times i want to get really close to a subject. The 8-15mm lets me do both in one; i can take a 360 view from the front of the lens at 8mm; and then get wider than the 16mm can at 15mm. The lens vignettes between 15 and 8mm on full frame slowly. The difference between 15 and 16mm is noticeable; though as its fisheye so is the distortion on horizons and verticals; though lightroom has a lens correction that converts the fisheye to rectilinear – though you get a fair bit of distortion in the final image. At 15 and 8mm the image is sharp in the centre from f4 and upwards – given how wide it is you don’t really need a wider aperture.

This lens opens up horizons, literally. The quality of the pictures on my 5dii are excellent, fine detail and good colours. You can create all sorts of pictures from circular 8mm to normal diagonal pictures at 15mm. You do however need to be careful not to curl your horizons. You need to be careful to keep yourself out of the pictures. I have taken some really exciting curved shots. You can get a really good landscape at 15mm, if you are careful. A simple wide angle may suit some folk better and it would be easier to control from the flat horizon perspective. Filters, if used fit in the back of the mount. All in all this lens is very good and i would recommend it to a friend.

The canon ef 8-15mm f4 l fisheye lens has a professional feel to it straight out of the box, without being too big or heavy. It comes with a lens cover, hood and basic case, although i am not convinced that many people will actually transport such a lens in a cheap case like the one provided. The hood has an added release button to stop it moving around on the lens or being positioned over the wrong part on the lens (the hood can show in some pictures). The cover is like the one on the canon f2. With a convex lens you don’t want to be walking around for long without this cover on. The circular images are very wacky, whilst the full frame images are amazingly wide. There probably aren’t a whole host of uses for these lenses, but they will help you get perspectives you can’t achieve with standard lenses. I find my best images are coming from being very, very close to my subject. If you can splash the cash i would recommend this lens, but not until you have a full set of standard lenses in your kit bag first.

Without a doubt this has to be the craziest affordable fisheye lens ever. I stood at 4cm from my estate car at the headlight and got it all in. That element is so vulnerable as its easy to touch your subject with it by accident. On taking it out of the box, i was mesmerised by that front element. This is so much fun to use although too much can get boring. The lens itself is built like a hand grenade. It really feels tough with a metal mount and full weather sealing. The focus, zoom rings feel great and really smooth. As for sharpness holy moley its crazy sharp with a teeny weeney bit of colour fringing at the edge of the black circular frame. I can’t wait to try this in a church at my next wedding shoot as i have great ideas for its use.

Key specs for Canon EF 8-15 mm f/4L Fisheye USM Lens:

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8-15mm f/4 fisheye L series zoom lens
High quality images delivered by UD lens and an aspherical lens Ultra low dispersion (UD) lenses & Super Spectra coatings ensure high image quality
Reduction in ghosting and flare with SubWavelength Coating (SWC) and super spectra coating
Full-time manual focusing
Quiet, fast autofocus, with the ring USM and high speed CPU

Comments from buyers

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Outstanding Fisheye

Crazy, Insanely wide fun lens.

Best fisheye for 360s

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I must say i have no regrets in buying this lens, its a crazy crazy lens that works actually very very well on my 7d, at 15mm i get a very wide angle which with careful composition can be used in a variety of ways. I typically set the limiter so that i avoid optical vignjetting onb my 7d, this equates to a focal range of 10-15mm. Honestly cant understand the complaints ive read on fred miranda and others which complain about the hood and lens cap, if you put the lens cap on properlky its solid as a small bullbog made of osmium, i think perhaps its easy to put the cap on improperly thus causing problems. Ok, iq wisecentre quality at any focal length @f4 is little short of stunning, its easily as sharp as my 24mm f/1. 4 l ii was at the same aperture. . Which ids basically to say imo one fo the sharpest lenses ive ever tried. Edge quality is ok wide open and improves upon stoipping down, but due to the distortion it doesnt reach the near legendary levels of the centre. One could say this lens is a one trick pony, and yes, in ways it is, but tbh so is every lens, the only difference is this lens’s ‘trick’ is easily visible, which to me basically says i need to work hard to utilise its skills without making cliche shots. Build quality is basically perfect, a good mixture of metal and high quality plastics. I bought this whilst selling some of my older lenses, and bought this at the same time as getting a 17-40mm l, i have to say the two of them compliment themselves quite well.

So long as you know why you need this lens, you won’t be disappointed. Very sharp and the angle is a clear 180deg, maybe more.

L series lens quality glass gives sharp focus images and with the wide angle of it you get some strange photos great for different photos than a standard lens. You have to be careful not to put your feet or tripod in the way as its that wide.

If you own a canon and want to get more into your picture this is the lens. It was great when taking pictures of the northern lights. Getting in the land and the heavens.