I have a 12mm semi circular fisheye of the same vintage. Most probably
made by the same manufacturer as the Spiritone. It's IQ is shall we say
"interesting", rather than bad. The 8mm lenses unless they were head
and shoulders above it probably produce the same quality images. The
Rokinon, by all the accounts I've read, is actually at least in the same
ballpark as much more expensive lenses as far as image quality is
concerned.
I sometimes use the 12mm as a full frame fisheye on my APS-C digital
cameras but you'd never mistake the quality of it's images with those
produced by the SMC Pentax 17mm on film.
I'd expect the Rokonon iwould be a lot closer, maybe even better,
there's been a lot of improvement in lens design.
I once owned a Vivitar 17-28mm rectilinear zoom, (which I think I paid
maybe $70 for NIB).. The quality of the images were very good if not
excellent, the main problem was that though the lens was made mostly of
metal the focusing system was easily damaged and after about a year of
ownership I found that turning the focusing ring had little effect on
actual focus. The plastic fantastic lenses from Pentax such as the FA
20-35 and FA 28-70 were and are much more resilient.
My point? The results you'll get from the Rokinon are likely to be much
better than the equivalent inexpensive lens of the past, and if they use
good plastics in it's construction at least as resilient and probably
more resilient than a cheap lens of yesteryear made of metal.
On 11/27/2012 4:30 AM, Joseph McAllister wrote:
The Spiratone 8mm lens* I have had for 40 years cost me $49.95 at a local camera store in San
Francisco. So $300 is about right for todays version. Note that the new version is also labelled
"HD" whatever the hell that means. "Is that 1080p or 740p mr salesman."
* actually a threaded ad-on to a 50 mm lens for a 180° field of view. Or any
lens with 49mm filter threads. Covers full frame as a fish-eye with a 105mm or
120mm lens. Any camera! Sharp? Who cares! Used it mostly for shooting fireworks
shows from the barge they fired off the show
.
On Nov 26, 2012, at 22:42 , P. J. Alling wrote:
To keep that in perspective, if you consider what such a lens would have cost
in current dollars 20 years ago they're giving it away.
On 11/25/2012 10:45 PM, Igor Roshchin wrote:
Sorry for spamming the list with lens sales information.
Some sales are very good, and I hope this info might be useful
for some people on the list.
(Or maybe somebody will hate me for the episode of LBA.)
Rokinon 8mm/3.5 fisheye for Pentax mount for only $214 -
at B&H (until Nov. 27) and Amazon.
If anybody was considering this lens, - this is probably the time.
I doubt it would go any lower any time soon.
--
Don't lose heart, they might want to cut it out, and they'll want to avoid a
lengthly search.
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