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As far as I know only 3 different diagonal fish eye lenses designed for fulIframe sensors have been released yet (as of Dec. 2022): the 7Artisans 10mm 2.8, the TTArtisan 11mm 2.8 and this AstrHori 12mm 2.8. They are all similarly priced but their weight and dimensions differ noticeably. This AstrHori one is by far the biggest and heaviest, so I would also expect it to perform the best. Bokeh: You're not going to select or use this lens for its bokeh. One reason for that is it has so much depth of field in most uses you just won't see truly out of focus areas. If you move to the 7" (0.17m) close focus distance and use f/2.8, sure, long distances are now not in focus, but they're also not distinctly out of of focus, either. So if you're thinking "special effect" by shooting close and fast aperture, be ready for a very busy and somewhat distracting "bokeh." Bokeh balls, if you can produce them, have a distinct bright edging, but very little cats eye effect as you move towards the corners. Not terrible, by any means, but not quite as much "juice" as I'd like when trying to pull off a near/far differential. Open full-size image in new tab. Same image at f/3.5 with 200% zoomed-in crop boxes showing star performance. Huge improvement in sharpness of stars in corners/edge. Still some chromatic abberation and coma, but not obtrusive. Open full-size image in new tab. 2 min. single exposure at f/4, ISO 1600, Canon EOS Ra, Bortle 3 sky. Fisheye-Hemi provides a more normal view of people by not distorting their faces and bodies, and straightens vertical lines.
The focus ring has a hard yet nice resistance and turns about 100° from the minimum focus distance of 0.2 m to infinity. Performance wise, I'm pretty impressed. TL/DR - it's almost as good as the Olympus 8mm f1.8 - and I hold that lens in very high regard (it's certainly the best FE on the m43 format and there are a number of other credible options there, including a Panasonic/Leica version and one from Samyang that is well respected). Things of particular note about the TTArtisan:Architecture was my next idea to shoot with the TTArtisan 11mm f/2.8 fisheye. I wanted to get a really bloody tall building entirely in frame from an unusually close distance. There’s a tall spire right near my work, so I made a beeline for it. In the end, I found that even as close as maybe 15-20m from the bottom I could get it all in, so I decided to frame in some tree to help draw the eye. I think it worked too. What’s interesting about this shot to me is that at f/5.6 you can see the effect of the softening down one side of the frame is no longer an issue. This is a rather odd/interesting Fisheye zoom lens. At 8mm you have a 180° circular fisheye while at 15mm you have a 180° diagonal fisheye. If you have use for both this lens can be a good option. Not long ago Nikon introduced a similar lens, but as it is harder to adapt to Sony I recommend the Canon lens. Even at longer distances loCA are hardly a problem, if you zoom in to 100% you can see a bit of color fringing but nothing that will ruin a shot. Alternatives The thing that most obviously lets the TTArtisan 11mm f/2.8 fisheye lens down – or at least my particular copy – is the decentered optics. Shooting at f/2.8 it is a little disappointing to see some softness toward the right hand side fo the frame. This isn’t the first time I have seen or heard of this when talking about the new “Artisan/s” brands of lens coming out of China either. Would this put me off buying this lens? I’m not sure. I really do think it would depend on my goals.
Also longitudinal CA (including purple fringing) are corrected so well, they are hardly noticeable. Alternatives The lens comes with an external 11mm metal viewfinder (very helpful if you don’t have live view, no frame lines in the viewfinder):The video portion of this review along with a different selection of photos and short videos can be seen in this video: TTArtisans 11mm f2.8 fisheye on Leica M10 Fujifilm X-T3 and GFX One thing that will become very clear if you try to shoot a flat surface up close is that this lens has considerable field curvature, and it doesn't appear to a perfect curve, at that. Thus, consider this as you're shooting with this lens: perhaps the central third of the lens on each axis is going to be at or very near the focal plane you choose. Flat objects outside that are going to go soft. The Fisheye-Hemi Plug-In automaticaly remaps your fisheye images to minimize distortion and maximize the preservation of all image details.
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