Sigma Fisheye Circular Image Filtermatic 8mm F4 Lens Reviews - Sigma Lenses (2025)

It is a nice and rather affordable circular fisheyes on the used market. I got mine virtually unused as a part of a kit for virtual tours. As part of a deal I got also a tripod, a special panorama head, Pentax P10 body, a couple roles of film and a video tape describing the whole process. So all in all not a bad deal worth 270 bucks with shipping cost.

Back to the lens itself:

It is a nice lens, one of few fisheyes where you can actually use filters. There is one filter in the middle of the lense (22.5) mm and one always has to be there. My copy got with a clear filter. Something more anusual for the fish-eyes is that it is also possible to mount a front filter. Front cap consists of two parts: a thread and a lock. So if you want 180 degrees circular capability you simply take off both the thread and the lock from the lens. Otherwise you can just take of a front cap (similar to any other actually) and on then there is a thread where a filter can be screwed in. That would of course lead to heavy vigneting and loss of 180 degree ability and limit the view to about 140-150 degrees.

It is a manual focus lens with "A" contacts so that the aperture can be controlled by new bodies. Even wide open at 8mm the DOF is huge so you can focus it to about 1m (4feet) and virtually everything will be in focus.

As almost all fish-eyes it suffers from flare (when taking photo of a light source close to perifery) and there is som CA also at perifery with high-contrast edges.

I am personally more than satisfied with image quality.

Do not forget that this is a special lens that is going to distort your picture a LOT, but seen mostly as a toy it can produce some nice arthistic images straigh out of camera without heavy postprocesing.

With some nice cropping and postprocessing it can be used as a fast and rather cheap panorama lens.

Here are some photos taken with this lens (as well as links to high-resolution images) so that you can judge the result yourself.

IMGP8606 by Stanislav Simic, on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanislav_simic/5389041360/in/set-72157625909064992/

Circular fisheye test by Stanislav Simic, on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanislav_simic/4569145475/in/datetaken/

Build quality: part metal part plastic with metal mount. Most of the barrel is metal and feels very nice to focus (not that it needs to be focused, unless you close focus it). It is a filtermatic lens so you can open the inside and screw on a colored filter for B&W use. Mine came with just the clear filter. The front element is very much exposed so you have to be careful when using it.

Usability: 8mm is obviously a specific use lens. I became smitten with the idea of circular fisheye after looking at flickr images of the new 8mm sigma on full frame. Haven’t gotten anything close to that though. This lens is really quite hard to compose with, as it covers things that even your eye cannot see properly (180 degrees all around, not just diagonally). On film it is what it is, a circular fisheye. On digital it’s a cropped circle and sort of an acquired taste. On digital I still prefer DA 10-17 at 10mm, but make no mistake, this lens is considerable wider than the DA!

This lens is very good for ‘instant’ panorama as the previous poster mentioned and apparently useful when making those 360 degree digital panorama. I haven’t used it this way personally, but the previous owner claimed that this was their main use for the lens.

For people shots it is actually an interesting lens. Put your subjects on the center and exaggerate their size compared to their surroundings. When used from a high vantage point it also offers a unique fisheye perspective that no other lens can offer. I suspect that on video it can be used to its full potential.

For interiors it is really quite funky, and needs a lot of work to actually compose it properly.

At any rate, I think that among my collection, this is the hardest lens to use, but when it works the effect is really quite nice.

Optical Quality: Sharpness is good. Resolution wise it is not up to par with current lenses or >24mm takumars, but those lenses are not circular fisheye. Colors are not as nice as pentax SMC but on film bodies you can couple this with the Ektar / Provia to get very nice colors. Stopping down does give it sharpness + resolution boost and I do recommend to use this lens around the f/8-f11 on a tripod. Sharpness / resolution wide open is not satisfactory. Good for holga styled shots though. It CAN close focus which brings it an added utility. For this purpose the DA 10-17 is slightly superior as it's a zoom. The bokeh on the Sigma 8mm is a little nicer though.

I have some issues with CA on this lens but I’d say it’s on par with the DA 10-17mm in this regard.

Conclusion: Good resolution/sharpness when stopped down. If you need/want circular fisheye, you really have no other choice.

Overall the colors are great and unless shot directly into the sun contrast is not affected but you will get some flare.

Best of all, it is the distortion that give the 8mm such a different feel. It doesn't work for every thing but it can give even mundane subjects a new feel.

The lens provides a cropped circle on APS-C cameras and a full circle for 35mm cameras.

Some photos taken with this lens:
http://www.sam.tron09.com/2006/05/29/fisheye-lens/
http://sam.tron09.com/wordpress/wp-c...2006/07/81.JPG
http://sam.tron09.com/wordpress/wp-c.../2006/07/6.JPG

Not having AF is not an issue because any thing beyond 1m is at infinite. Makes for a lighter lens!