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Canon 8-15mm F4 L Fisheye Review

The Canon EF 8-15 F4 L fisheye lens is one highly anticipated piece of glass !  First announced back in Autumn 2010 this is not a replacement of any existing lens, but an all new design with unique potential.  Offering full frame fisheye on all crops of Canon’s cameras and even circular fisheye on a full frame camera.

Canon originally started with the 15mm f2.8 fisheye which was designed before the digital days.  This lens provided a full 180 degree field of view on a full frame camera but users of 1.6 or 1.3 crop cameras were left with slightly less fishy look to their images.  On the Nikon side of things, Nikkor released a beautiful 10.5mm fisheye for their crop cameras but Canon never followed suit.  Sigma built a Canon mount 10mm fisheye and a few people got by with a Tokina 10-17 which did give you a wide view on a 1.3 crop camera but neither of these lenses were hugely high quality.  I often use fisheye lenses in my action sports photography work but the problem is I shoot with a full frame Canon 5dMKII and a 1.3 crop Canon 1dMKIV.  I’ve always made do with a 15mm f2.8 fisheye which is great on my 5d with it’s full frame sensor but always left me wanting when used on the cropped 1d.  Well with this new Canon 8-15 they have solved my problem and designed a lens that can achieve a full 180mm field of view on any of their digital cameras, a simply fantastic idea.

Moving on to the hood though thankfully there are better things to say.  Instead of the regular twist on hoods supplied with most Canon lenses they included the release switch that I think we first saw on the 70-200 f2.8 II.  Simple enough, you just need to press the button and then twist to release the tiny hood.  Whether or not you will need to release the hood at all will depend on what sort of camera you are going to be using.  The only situation where the hood gets in the way is when trying to get a circular fisheye image at 8mm on a full frame camera.  If you have a 1.3 or 1.6 crop camera there is really no reason to take the hood off at all.

A bi product of creating such a lens is that in it’s widest setting, 8mm, you also create a circular fisheye lens when used with a full frame camera.  Canon never made an EF circular lens before so this is another bonus to the design of this unique lens.  For those unfamiliar, a circular fisheye lens will allow you a full 360 degree field of vision in the middle of the frame.  Around the outside of the circle it will be black.  A specialist lens use, perhaps one you might not buy a specific lens for, but seeings as it’s all included in one lens then why not!

Lens cap and hood

I’ll start here because this is the first thing you notice when you unpack the lens from the box.  To shield the convex front element there is a special lens camp to fit the lens with the shade still in place.  To remove the lens cap there are two opposing plastic latches just like a normal lens cap with one unfortunate exception…. The latches on the 8-15s cap require the most minute amount of pressure to release them to the point at which the cap comes off.  I’ve never seen any other cap like it, you could practically breathe on it and the cap would unlatch itself.  The result is that it almost immediately falls off when it’s in your camera bag.  If there was EVER a lens where I did not want the lens cap to fall off in my bag THIS would be the one.  The front element is extremely vulnerable and any damage to the element will show up many times worse than it would on a zoom lens.  If you place the lens “face” down in your bag you will be very slightly safer but the pressure from the padding on even a moderately full camera bag will immediately release the cap.  You might still be ok at this point so long as you don’t bump your bag to the point where the lens can jump out of the cap.  If it does and it shifts over, your lens cap is going to be directly rubbing that element.  Infuriating design for such a premium lens.  I recommend that anyone who buys this immediately purchases a neoprene lens bag such as one from LensCoat.  This will help keep the cap on while it’s in your bag.  I didn’t even know it was possible to fail on designing a lens cap!  The cap on my Sigma 15mm fisheye was many many times more effective, in other words it just stayed on!

Moving on to the hood though thankfully there are better things to say.  Instead of the regular twist on hoods supplied with most Canon lenses they included the release switch that I think we first saw on the 70-200 f2.8 II.  Simple enough, you just need to press the button and then twist to release the tiny hood.  Whether or not you will need to release the hood at all will depend on what sort of camera you are going to be using.  The only situation where the hood gets in the way is when trying to get a circular fisheye image at 8mm on a full frame camera.  If you have a 1.3 or 1.6 crop camera there is really no reason to take the hood off at all.

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What a nice camera! I really like Canon 8-15mm F4 L Fisheye for making trip snapshot. Thanks for the amazing collection reviews!

Posted by Richard Hunkin  on  08/15  at  12:06 PM

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Thanks Richard !!

Posted by Dan Carr  on  08/15  at  02:23 PM

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Nice! Do you know any similar Fisheye but for Nikon camera, I have D5100

Posted by Leo Tran  on  03/21  at  03:03 AM

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