wideangle or fisheye

Hi,

just returning from a trip to the maldives I know now, that I am not totally satisfied with my lenses.

I have a Canon 300d in a Sea&Sea housing with the large domeport.

For wideangle shots I used:

a 17-40mm f.4, which worked quite well, but simply isn´t wide enough for what I was going after.

and a zenitar 16mm manual fisheye. For some reasons the shots turned out completely unsharp. I set the focus to infinity, and no portions of the image, not even the ones being 10m away were sharp. I took some over/under shots, and guess what, the part of the pic being over was crisp, and the one under completely blurry. I am sure I should have done my homework in physics, but I´d better go for a new lens.

Now I don´t know what to get: another AF fisheye (canon or sigma), or an even wider lens (canon 10-22, sigma 10-20, or 12-24).

For shots above surface I have a canon Camera, that doesn´t accept EF-S lenses, so if there is not much difference, I would prefer a EF Mount to an EF-S.

Actually I am looking for a lens that looks reaaaaaaly wide!

I´m curious about any comments.

Thanks in advance,

Wolfgang

For starters, you should NOT set the manual focus on the fisheye to infinity. You should set it to the virtual image distance for your domeport. Start out by setting focus to two times the diameter of your dome port. Alternatively, set the focus distance to the minimum focus distance for your lens.

Cheers

James

The 10-22 is not as wide as a fisheye. But it is nice having that zoom function for a variety of different subjects.

Still not sure what the fisheye option for Canon is. I think you would want the Sigma 8mm for a fisheye option.

The Sigma 8mm is a circular fisheye, compared to a diagonal fisheye which is what you typically think of. If you are looking for overall sharpness and are looking to do over/under split shots, you'll be happier with the 15mm fisheye than with a 10-22. The fisheye is almost (but not quite) as wide as the 10-22, but is significantly sharper in the corners. It's also a faster lens (f2.8 vs f3.5) which is an issue for some people.

Wolfgang,

I agree with everyone's recommendations. On your 300D camera a Sigma 15mm or Canon's own 15mm Fisheye will likely give you the view you want.

I have a Sigma 15mm Fisheye and the Canon 10-22mm lens with appropriate ports for my Ikelite housing for my Canon Rebel XT (350D). I find I'm using the Sigma 15mm Fisheye lens more often underwater, and the Canon 10-22mm more for above water shooting.

Hope this helps!

dhaas

Thank you all for your inputs. I think I will go for one of the diagonal fisheye lenses. Not sure which one though.

James, I really like the image quality of the zenitar over water (except the flare), but underwater I think I won´t play with it. I had some really great shots (composition wise), but they turned out unsharp and I don´t want to risk to get some more of those

Thanks again,

Wolfgang