Great for Panoramas
First of all let's clarify that this lens is not made by Vivitar - it is rebranded and originally made by Samyang (as Samyang 8mm). It seems that the cosmetic design of the lens might be unique to Vivitar. You can find this lens also branded as Bower Polar Falcon Rokinon Digital Innovations. And of course Samyang. The Vivitar version is the sexist-looking though. here is rokinon:
Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 Aspherical Fisheye Manual Focus Lens for Canon EOS 50D 40D 30D 20D 10D Digital Rebel (300D) Rebel XT (350D) Rebel XTi (400D) Rebel XS (100D) Rebel XSi (450D) & Rebel T1i (500D) Digital SLR Cameras
You'll also notice that the other brands call this lens a different focal length - Samyang calls it 8mm for example. Just to be clear these are all the same lens. Why the difference? Well you probably don't even want to call the lens 7 or 8mm. If you compare it to other lenses it will be closer to 10 or 12mm. The main issue is that this lens doesn't use the normal (equisolid) fisheye projection but rather a "stereographic" projection. What does this mean? It means that the "fisheye distortion" is not quite as pronounced at the sides of the image.
If you have a full-frame sensor you can cut off the lens hood of this lens and have a "circular" fisheye similar to an 8mm lens on a 1.5 or 1.6 crop sensor. (yes this will void your warranty ;-)
Overall the image quality of this lens is on par with lenses that cost twice as much or more.
For some incredibly in-depth analysis of this lens check the intrepid Michel Thoby's page:
[...]More detail ...
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