Portland, OR—Lensbaby, makers of creative effects camera lenses, released a 5.8mm circular fisheye lens in Canon EF and Nikon F mounts. With this lens line expansion, Lensbaby now offers photographers with crop sensor cameras an affordable way to create circular images for photographic creativity.
The lens is designed to capture the scale of endless landscapes and big events, self-portraits, unique shots of subjects, with extreme perspective, and for experimenting with artistic lens flare.
“Our circular fisheye lens, from a hardware perspective, functions just like any other manual lens,” said Craig Strong, Lensbaby cofounder and chief creative officer. “Simply attach it to your camera and start shooting—no additional parts needed. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Lensbaby lens without something fun, different and wacky. That’s why the circular fisheye lets you focus on objects nearly touching the lens, while getting a 185º view of your surroundings. Plus, the flare this lens can produce adds a creative element to the border around the sharp circular image.”
The manual lens has built-in aperture control ranging from f/3.5–22 and features an ultrawide 5.8mm focal length. It is capable of capturing a 185º angle of view and focusing from a quarter inch in front of the lens to infinity. That extreme close-focus paired with the wide 5.8mm focal length produces “other-worldly” distortion with sharpness throughout.
Lensbaby deliberately designed the internal lens barrel of the circular fisheye to be reflective, allowing bright sources of light to form a halo of colorful flare around the image. In flatter light, parts of a scene can also be reflected into the area surrounding the image. In addition, when mounted on a camera with an APS-C-size sensor, the lens is optimized to produce full-circle fisheye image.
Other features include: a polished internal barrel for creative flare and reflection; focus distance scale and hyperfocal scale to aid in focusing; dimensions of 2.75×3 inches; and a weight of 10.5 ounces.
The Lensbaby 5.8mm 185° circular fisheye lens, available for preorder, will retail for $299.95. lensbaby.com