Landscape Photography With 7Artisans 7.5mm F/2.8 Fisheye Lens On Fujifilm Cameras
/7Artisans 7.5mmF/2.8 Fisheye Lens Landscape Review With Examples
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As I search through the interwebs, high and low, I've been unable to find much at all with use of the 7Artisans 7.5mm F/2.8 Fujifilm X-Mount lens for making landscape images. Alas, I decided to try it on my own and share it with you.
I also recently took possession of the Rokinon 12mm F/2.0 lens, which I thought would make for a good comparison for landscapes on the Fujifilm system.
Although the 7Artisans lens is a fisheye lens with lots of potential distortion, I see no reason to keep it out of the purview of making landscapes with it.
I took this lens out for two days to test it out with landscapes, and found it to be very, very sharp! The manual focus is super easy to achieve with focus peaking enabled on your camera, so don’t let the manual focus scare you away from this lens.
You can see the potential here for distortion as you move away from the center of the lens
Although focus on this lens at infinity is very sharp throughout, closer objects may require a little extra effort to focus. A two image focus stack seems a logical fix for this, but your experience may be vary, depending on your composition.
Another thing to consider when using this lens is the level of distortion your okay with, and whether or not you will make your image in landscape or portrait. Remember, since this is a fisheye lens, keeping the horizon centered in the frame will reduce the distortion effect of the lens to a great degree.
One obvious thing I love about this lens is the ability to put so much into the frame! This ability does make creating a good composition a little more difficult, and you will need to get much closer to your subject than normal. Keeping your feet out of the frame while shooting in portrait mode is also a little tricky.
The Smithsonian Castle in Washington D.C.
Another shot of the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C.
As you can see with the images above, adding architecture into your pictures warps the buildings at the sides of the image. You can avoid this warping if you get the buildings more into the center of the lens, but you will also not get as much into the photo as you may like. The warping can certainly add somewhat of a whimsical look to a photo such as the one above. What do you think?
Using the 7Artisans 7.5mm lens with the Fujifilm X-T2 lets you pull a huge view into your images. To get the same image above with the 18-55mm Fujinon would take multiple stitched images to get the same field of view. I made the image below with a single shot, and compared it with a two image stitch from the Rokinon 12mm F/2.0. Sometimes it’s just fun to get it all in in a single image, but the stitched Rokinon image had no distortion.
George Washington’s Gristmill and Distillery at Mount Vernon, VA
A working building at George Washington’s Gristmill and Distillery in Mount Vernon, VA.
A fun image at the Smithsonian Museum Castle in Washington, D.C.
When stopped way down, you can Get some really nice sun bursts. This shot was at F/22 and is still very sharp throughout.
Conclusion
If you are a Fuji shooter and are wondering if you should spend around $140 on this lens, I say absolutely go for it. Here are my top reasons that you should buy this inexpensive lens for your Fujifilm (or any other compatible camera, for that matter):
Image Quality (or IQ) - The lens I received consistently produced excellent image quality from corner to corner.
Sharpness - Although I’ve read that earlier copies of this lens didn’t produce very sharp images, my experience has been much different. The images I made with this lens were VERY sharp throughout. Make sure you get a good focus in your lens and your images should turn out the same as mine.
Focus - Even though this is a manual focus lens, I found it to be ridiculously simple and fast to achieve a perfect focus with nearly every image I took.
Color - As you can see in the images above, the color rendered by this lens is excellent!
So, quit waiting and jump on this lens. You won’t be sorry.
If you are already thinking of making a purchase, there are affiliate links within this article. If you follow links and make a purchase, I may receive a very small commission at absolutely no extra expense to you. Using these links helps support GenXploreMore.com, so thank you for your support.
7Artisans 7.5mm F/2.8 Fisheye Lens - Check Prices By Clicking on the Lens Photo Below
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