Nikon 8-15mm in the house!

Hi all,

Wetpixel has purchased the new Nikon 8-15mm lens in order to review it.

It arrived today!

Many thanks to Dale Photographic for moving heaven and earth to get one very early for us.

In terms of size, it is slightly longer than the Tokina 10-17mm. Of course, this does not necessarily reflect the len's nodal point, so actual dome and extension lengths still need to be experimented with.

I shot some images of it on the D500 and D810.

D810:

@8mm

@11mm

@15mm

D500:

@8mm

@11.5mm

@13mm

@15mm

For FOV comparison purposes, here are two with the D500 and Tokina 10-17mm:

@10mm

@17mm

First impressions of the lens would suggest that build quality is similar to that of the Canon EF 8-15mm F/4L lens. Optical quality has not been tested yet.

I am going to try and rig a zoom ring for it now and shoot it tomorrow behind a dome....

Any specific queries, please fire away

Adam

it would be nice to know the nodal point

Some good news is that on my (Seacam) set up, the zoom ring for the Nikon 10-24mm works beautifully with this lens!

I'll be shooting it tomorrow with a Fisheye (4") port on the D500 and a Compact (7") port on the D810.

 

 

it would be nice to know the nodal point

Is there any specific way of calculating this, or is to just trial and error?

Adam

Hi Adam,

It would be great to know about AF speed - performance compared to the Sigma 15mm. Specially on the D810 body.

Thank you very much.

Eduardo.

 

it would be nice to know the nodal point

 

Is there any specific way of calculating this, or is to just trial and error?

This may provide some insight on to determine nodal point. I used the laser pointer method on a lens many years ago and it gave a good result compared to the published data:

http://www.hugha.co.uk/NodalPoint/Index.htm

Some good news is that on my (Seacam) set up, the zoom ring for the Nikon 10-24mm works beautifully with this lens!

 

I'll be shooting it tomorrow with a Fisheye (4") port on the D500 and a Compact (7") port on the D810.

 

 

Is there any specific way of calculating this, or is to just trial and error?

 

Adam

Yes here is a link to the solution. http://archive.bigben.id.au/tutorials/360/photo/nodal.html it helps if you have a camera rail to make this measurement.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Slide-Bar-RAIL-for-CHA-CHA-Stereoscopic-Single-Camera-3D-Calibrated-Tripod-Ready-/381975930317

The measurement is from the back face of the lens (where the lens face meets the camera face)(see below) to the nodal point.

Lens Focal Length Entrance Pupil Length (L2)

Original equipment

(Lenses from same manufacturer as camera) Enter the exact lens name, or if you are using a camera with a fixed lens the name of your camera as mentioned at DPreview.

Facing the side of the lens, the distance from the base of the lens to the Entrance Pupil. A negative value means the entrance pupil is outside the lens, in the camera body. Such is the case with many telephoto lenses. The lens base is the point on the lens that contacts the "lens base" on the camera used to determine the "Tripod mount length (L1)" in the table above.

shooting against the light and sunballs would be interesting to see

It would be interesting to compare sharpness and chromatic aberrations with Tokina 10-17.

Maybe 8-15 can change 10-17 for APS-C cameras, if any parameter is better.

I received my Nikon 8-15mm lens about a week ago and have had it in the water once since then. Because I shoot with a Nikon D800, my interest in this lens is as a close-focusing full frame fisheye lens. I have very little interest in circular fisheye images.

I initially did a few topside shots comparing this lens to my Sigma 15mm f2.8. My initial impression is that in dim light, the Sigma may pinpoint the focus in the center of the image a little better than does the Nikon lens. Probably due to the fact that the Sigma focuses at f2.8 vs f4.5 on the Nikon lens when set to the 15mm full frame. But on those same test shots, the sharpness near the edges of the images were consistently better with the Nikon lens.

Underwater I have used both the Sigma 15mm and now the Nikon 8-15 behind the Seacam Wideport which has a radius of curvature of about 75mm, meaning that if you had that port as a full hemisphere, the diameter would be about 150mm or about 6 inches. I also own the Seacam 4" fisheye macro port, but pretty much stopped using it because you needed to cut off much of the lens shade on the Sigma 15mm when using this combination and therefore do not have it with me on my current trip. I feel that cutting back on the Sigma lens shade resulted in too much image degrading flare.

With the wideport, I could use the Sigma 15mm with the manufacturer's full shade in place and although I did get slight vignetting at the corners of the image, I feel the image quality was better enough to use the lens this way. With the Sigma 15mm, I use the wideport directly attached to my Subal housing body.

I switched to the Subal housing body for my D800's because I felt Subal gave me a much more complete set of controls to the D800 body functions than did the Seacam housing body and with the help of a good machine shop I was able to modify the port mount on my Subal housings to take my Seacam ports rather than buy a new set of ports.

Because the Nikon 8-15mm lens @ 15mm is physically longer than the Sigma 15mm, I am able to shoot the Nikon 8-15mm lens, with its Nikon lens shade mounted, without any vignetting when using the Seacam wideport in combination with a Seacam 20mm extension tube. With a 25mm extension tube, there may be a very slight amount at vignetting, but still far less than with the Sigma 15mm.

Below is one of the shots from my only dive so far with the Nikon 8-15mm lens. It shows a pair of small octopuses mating underneath the Edithburgh jetty in South Australia. The image was shot late in the afternoon at 1/250th at f16 using ISO 3200 on my Nikon D800.

When anyone does tests to determine the nodal point of the 8-15mm lens, or any other lens, they should be aware that the nodal point of the lens lens can change with both the zoom setting and the focus point of the lens. I found quite large differences when I did a series of tests on Nikon's 24-70mm f2.8 several years ago. Using the manufacturer's given nodal point is also likely to be at least slightly inaccurate for underwater use because the manufacturer's nodal points are given for lenses focused at infinity rather than at the close distances the lens is likely to focus at when used behind a dome port.

Lovely image Fred...

Here is a series of images taken with the D500 and D810 today. I have deliberately not edited them; they have been run through Lightroom with no adjustments or presets.

Set up was as follows:

D810:

Seacam housing

Seacam Compact Port

No extension

@8mm

@12mm

@15mm

The lens deals with the sunball well

@15mm

Completely unadjusted in post. Camera and lens tonal range is very good!

D500

Seacam housing

Seacam Fisheye Port

No extension

2 x Seacam Seaflash 150 strobes

@8mm

@10mm

@12mm

@15mm

@15mm

Shooting straight up into Snell's window. Lens copes with sunball?

I shot quite a few more images, including a variety of apertures. I will post these in the full Wetpixel lens review to follow soon.

First impressions are that the lens is optically very good, better than the Tokina 10-17mm and on a par with the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L.

Usable range on FX will be based on having a dome with a removable sunshade. This will be needed from 8mm through to around 13mm.

On DX, the lens partially vignettes at 8 and 9mm, before offering usable image from 10 through to 15mm.

Pool testing on Sunday....

Adam

Usable range on FX will be based on having a dome with a removable sunshade. This will be needed from 8mm through to around 13mm.

 

On DX, the lens partially vignettes at 8 and 9mm, before offering usable image from 10 through to 15mm.

 

Pool testing on Sunday....

 

Adam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isn't the vignetting caused by the fact that the dome is not in the propler location and the lens is seeing the backing plate for the dome?

I don't think so Bill,

I think it is "seeing" the sunshade...

If anything, it might be too far into the port. I will try it with an extension in the pool on the weekend...

Adam

I saw exactly the same vignetting, caused by the lens shade, when I shot topside pictures. More extreme vignetting with the camera set to the full FX picture and less when I had my D800 set to the DX crop mode. If you have an FX camera, like the D800 or D810, you can get the same picture area as Adam did by simply setting the camera to the DX mode.

If you use the D800 or D810 in the DX mode you have a camera that shoots images very similar to the D500. I think it is about 16 Megapixels and has auto-focus spots covering nearly the whole image area. What the D500 offers is faster and possibly more accurate auto-focus, a faster frame rate which is of little use if you are shooting with strobes, and the larger image buffer which again is of little use if you need to wait for strobes to recycle. If Nikon's successor to the D810, D820?, appears with the rumored 46 Mp sensor (an upsized D500 sensor) the D500 will offer very little advantage, except size and weight and price, over the D820 when the D820 is used in the DX mode. And it will offer more than double the Mp in the FX mode for higher image quality.

Hi Fred-thanks for your thoughts on the D810 vs D500. Can we try to keep the thread focused on the lens though? Did you get the lens shade in the frame at 8mm in FX mode with the 20mm extension?

Hello Adam,

Most of the thoughts I posted relative to the D800/810/820 and the D500 have relevance to this new fisheye lens as well as other lenses. And were made with the idea that if someone is thinking they might want to buy a D500 to get the "wider" zoom range of 180 degrees to 110 degrees that this lens provides on a DX camera, which is similar to the Tokina 10-17mm lens, that they could get the same zoom range by switching their FX camera to the DX crop mode and lose very little in comparison to a DX only camera. There have been many posts concerning the Tokina 10-17 which is a DX only lens unless you use it with a teleconverter which degrades its image quality. My feeling is that if you shoot a DX camera, and want a similar zoom range, the Nikon lens will provide this with considerably higher image quality.

I did not shoot any pictures underwater at 8mm in the FX mode. Everything I shot was at the 15mm (full frame fisheye) setting. As I wrote initially, I am not interested in circular fisheye images and I would have needed a zoom gear to make any changes while underwater, which I did not have at that time. My interest in this lens is because I can shoot it behind the wideport at 15mm with no vignetting whereas I cannot do this with the Sigma 15mm. And because it focuses so closely.

I had Nikon's own lens shade mounted on the lens when I took the picture of the octopuses that I posted. I shot similar images at f11, f16 and f22 and saw no vignetting in any frame. Since the lens is an internal focus design, that means the angle of coverage of the lens gets slightly wider as you focus closer and closer and the octopuses were only about six inches from the from of the wideport's glass surface.

The lens was behind the Seacam wideport with a 20mm extension ring between the wideport and the housing body. If I get some free time I will take pictures of the housing with the port and extension ring in position as they were during the dive and post them. I will also post a couple additional pictures that show that whereas the Sigma 15mm lens almost always exhibits some minor vignetting with the wideport, even without any extension ring, the Nikon lens does not.

Honestly for the price of $2250aud for the new Nikon 8-15mm it would have to have much higher grade imagine quality over the Tokina 10-17mm and or 10.5mm for my D500 to justify its purchase. Maybe if Tokina made a Dx lens on par with the FOV of the FX 8-15mm and price it at $700usd when that might be a game changer for DX users like me.

Regards Mark

Hi all,

 

 

And were made with the idea that if someone is thinking they might want to buy a D500 to get the "wider" zoom range of 180 degrees to 110 degrees that this lens provides on a DX camera, which is similar to the Tokina 10-17mm lens, that they could get the same zoom range by switching their FX camera to the DX crop mode and lose very little in comparison to a DX only camera.

I would disagree on the point of "losing very little" between D800/D810 in FX mode and the D500. This is of course based on shooting all three cameras underwater a fair bit now! However, that is a discussion that we are best having somewhere else.

I would absolutely agree that there will be no vignetting or port shade in the image with the D800/D810 and this lens at 15mm. Equally I would tend to agree that the optical quality on this lens is much superior to that of the Tokina 10-17mm. This is especially true if the Tokina is combined with a TC on an high resolution FX camera like the D810. Build quality seems also to be in a different league. Most of us have had at least one Tokina come apart on us!

Strictly technically, the Sigma does actually focus closer than this lens (by 1cm). I note that Nikon list the FOV of the lens at 175° at 15mm on FX. The Sigma has an FOV of 180°. That 5° difference in FOV probably explains the lack of vignette.

The D810 images above were with a Seacam Compact port (170mm). I have used the Sigma with this port a lot and there is no vignette at any aperture. It is amazing to think that 10mm of difference in diameter produces such a difference. It is a salutory tale for anyone considering dome port choices.

Adam

Really enjoying this conversation and wanted to be involved even though I haven’t seen the lens yet.

I am really keen to try this lens. For some reason availability has been very limited in the UK, but I am grateful to Adam for lending me his to shoot in the Red Sea.

However, away from the glitter of new gear, I don’t find this lens that enticing on paper. As we already know from the Canon 8-15mm, the zoom range is not that useful on a full frame camera. Nikon market it as two lenses in one, rather than a zoom, and I think that this is a good way to think of it. That said, I am not a fan of circular fisheye shots (despite using one as the opening image inside my recent Secrets Of The Seas book!), and I don’t want to dive routinely without protective dome shades (even though they easily unbolt on my Zen domes).

So for me, on full frame, it comes down to whether a Nikon f/4.5 15mm is better than a Sigma f/2.8 15mm. And I don’t think it will be by enough to get really excited about. (I will still buy one because, like Adam, I have both FX and DX underwater systems.

Like many I would have been much more excited if Nikon had made an updated replacement for the Nikon 16mm f/2.8, one that focused close and had image stabilisation. In my experience the Nikon 16mm has always been better at handling the sun than the Sigma.

However, the big difference between the Nikon and Canon Full frame 8-15mm fisheyes is that the Canon 8-15mm is clearly the best fisheye for underwater use a full frame Canon user can buy, even if they only shoot it at 15mm. This is not the case for Nikon users. Not only might this lens offer little compared to Sigma 15mm, Nikon users have the option of the Nikonos 13mm.

The Nikonos 13mm offers little advantage over a Sigma 15mm and 230mm/9” dome at apertures of f/13 or above. Except that its small size (lack of dome) makes it much easier to light subjects very close to the camera. The strength of the Nikonos 13mm’s water contact optics is with subjects shot in the range f/11 down, where is out performs any lens behind a dome very noticeably. This is especially exciting for full frame users, because rather than giving away aperture to DX users to achieve comparable corner sharpness, you actually gain aperture! Of course the Nikonos 13mm cannot shoot split levels, which is a significant limitation, especially as these are amongst the most commercial type of wide angle underwater images.

For me the final piece to puzzle might be the new Wide Angle, water contact fisheye system that Nauticam are developing. This is not a 180˚ lens, but has a tighter angle of view with a FOV range of about 60˚ to 130˚, but with the advantage of being able to shoot at more open apertures and still giving excellent corner sharpness, because of being designed solely for in water use (can’t do splits either).

The downside of both the Nauticam lens system and the Nikonos are that both are expensive solutions. The Nauticam port is also heavy because it involves a lot of glass!

Alex

Just a quick response to Alex's comment re: no over/unders with Nauticam's WWL1. The fellas over at Freshwaters Illustrated demonstrated that it is possible to do these shots, you just need the right O-ring to place in the wet connect chamber (they used Reef Photo to help with that). Here's a link to the article with examples of the split level shots they got. If I had a spare $10,000 laying around I'd make the switch to Sony and go with the setup they feature in that article. Super compelling!

http://www.nauticam.com/news/freshwaters-illustrated-puerto-ricos-wild-rivers/

Hi Adam et al, Some more comments on the fisheye lenses for Nikon and the camera you can use them on.

Adam, it seems you have misread my comment comparing the D500 to the D800/810. I specifically wrote that I did not see a whole lot to be gained in image quality by using the D500 vs the D800/810 in the DX crop mode. I totally agree that the D800 in the FX mode will provide a significantly higher image quality than the current crop of Nikon DX cameras including the D500. And that is one of the reason's I shoot an FX camera.

However, you have made the comment, "Strictly technically, the Sigma does actually focus closer than this lens (by 1cm). I note that Nikon list the FOV of the lens at 175° at 15mm on FX." If you look at the lens specifications, as provided by the lens manufacturers, the Sigma lens may focus that 1 cm closer. However this lens specification distance is usually measured from the subject to the film plane or sensor plane in the camera body. But underwater, and behind a dome port, how close to the front of the lens you can focus (which might be called the working distance) is more important due to the fact that with the dome port you are focusing on virtual images that are much closer than the actual subject. And with a small diameter dome port, those virtual images are quite close to the dome itself. The fact that the Nikon fisheye zoom is physically quite a bit longer than the Sigma fisheye means that at minimum focus, the Nikon lens focuses closer and provides a larger image (more magnification) than does the Sigma.

I shot a couple quick comparison shots with the two lenses at the minimum distance at which each lens could focus and the camera still fire when shooting with my D800 set to single focus auto-focus with being in focus the priority. To do this, I started with the lens almost touching the little spice bottle and then backed it away in tiny increments until the camera was able to shoot the picture. Here are the two shots.

This is the image shot with the Nikon fisheye zoom at minimum focus and at 15mm

This is the image shot with the Sigma 15mm fisheye at minimum focus

As you can see, the vertical height of the little bottle is not completely shown in the image taken with the Nikon fisheye zoom. But there is space above the top and bottom of the bottle in the Sigma lens image. I made paper "feeler gauges" to measure the actual space between the front element of each lens and the bottle. The distance between the Nikon zoom's front element and the bottle was 24mm. The distance between the Sigma's front element and the bottle was 51mm. I have not had the opportunity to shoot this comparison underwater, but will when I get home and can try both lenses behind both the Seacam wideport and the Seacam fisheye macro port.

Something that also shows in these two shots that I was not expecting is that if I look at the background of the Nikon lens vs the Sigma, the overall coverage with the Nikon lens is a bit wider than that of the Sigma lens. I would have expected there to be less difference as the glass bottle position remained constant and thus the Nikon lens was a tiny bit closer to the background as well as being 27mm closer to the bottle.

So I would conclude from these images that the Nikon zoom is capable of providing a larger image (more magnification) of the subject at its closest focus than the Sigma fisheye can. And that at very close focusing distances, it includes a bit more of the background (is a little bit wider).

Fred