Zenitar 16mm f/2.8 Fish-eye and A7r

[addicted2light]

I've bought my first fish-eye ever to use it for a specific project I've in mind. For now I'm just toying around with it to get a sense of the lens.

 

For the same reason I've gone cheap and dirty, and bought a Russian Zenitar 16/2.8 instead of more expensive option. My reasoning has been that should I have not liked the results of the project, and subsequently aborted it, doing so I would have limited my expenses.

 

It turned out that the Zenitar, or at least my copy, is a pretty good lens anyway, especially like many old optical schemes once you stop it down two or three notches. Don't fall into the old film habit: "a fish-eye has a depth of field so great that you don't have to focus" is BS. On sensors packed of pixels like basically any modern one the difference between small rotations of the focusing dial will show, you can be sure of that.

 

A bit of CA remains at the extreme borders, but it is fairly easy to remove in Lightroom or PS.

 

And the lens de-fishes beautifully (with a bit of a kind of "explosion effect" that is awesome to attract attention to your central subject) using the Lightroom profile for the Nikon 10.5 APS-c fish-eye or the Nikon 16 full frame fish-eye (the effect will vary slightly between the two profiles).

 

Note: none of the following pictures have been de-fished.

 

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I've shown this last picture in color because it is easier to judge the overall quality of the image, but this is how I envisioned it (or pre-visualized, for Ansel-talk aficionados  ):

 

 

 

 

[Cheatah]

I have the ZENITAR MC 16/2.8 for many years now, first using it on my Contax cameras, and now with the C/Y mount, with adapter on my SONY A7!

 

It's an excellent tiny glass, if properly made.

 

The only disadvantage is, that the MC coating generally on most Russian/Ukrainian glasses, are not Meeting an Western Standard.

 

But besides this minor problem, it is an great fisheye lens!

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[addicted2light]

Yes, in effect I'm growing quite fond of this lens.

 

Beside the pronounced CA at the borders at the widest apertures (easy to deal with in LR, and anyway I shoot almost exclusively in b/w), it is pretty sharp across the frame on the A7r. And if you de-fish it with the Nikon 16mm profile, but halving the amount of distortion, it stays sharp; really really nice!

 

I guess I got lucky with this one, given the proverbial inconsistency or Russian glass. I bought it "new old stock" from *bay, and other than having to shim the m42>Minolta MD adapter to center the lens properly so that the corners of the hood will not show in the pictures (an adapter problem, not a lens fault) has been great from day one.

 

And as for multicoating is not that bad either; I have other legacy glass, notably among them the Pentax Super Takumar 50/1.4, that if shot with the sun even remotely into or near the frame will flare like crazy. This one instead if the sun is hidden behind a tree, or just outside the frame, will not flare at all (just look at the first image I posted)! And down below you can see the worst that can happen.

 

Like I said I thought this was to be a "try if you like the fish-eye and then buy a better lens" kind of glass, instead it looks like it is a keeper

 

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[Cheatah]

Yes, in effect I'm growing quite fond of this lens.

 

Beside the pronounced CA at the borders at the widest apertures (easy to deal with in LR, and anyway I shoot almost exclusively in b/w), it is pretty sharp across the frame on the A7r. And if you de-fish it with the Nikon 16mm profile, but halving the amount of distortion, it stays sharp; really really nice!

 

I guess I got lucky with this one, given the proverbial inconsistency or Russian glass. I bought it "new old stock" from *bay, and other than having to shim the m42>Minolta MD adapter to center the lens properly so that the corners of the hood will not show in the pictures (an adapter problem, not a lens fault) has been great from day one.

 

And as for multicoating is not that bad either; I have other legacy glass, notably among them the Pentax Super Takumar 50/1.4, that if shot with the sun even remotely into or near the frame will flare like crazy. This one instead if the sun is hidden behind a tree, or just outside the frame, will not flare at all (just look at the first image I posted)! And down below you can see the worst that can happen.

 

Like I said I thought this was to be a "try if you like the fish-eye and then buy a better lens" kind of glass, instead it looks like it is a keeper

 

_DSC1574.jpg

 

Directly into the sun, is not so critical!

[addicted2light]

I nearly forgot to upload this one, a de-fished example (using Lightroom profile for the Nikon 10.5/2.8 DX fisheye at 60% of the strength for distortion and at 0% for vignetting). The extreme corners become pretty bad, with loads of nearly unfixable (in Lightroom) CA, but the image from the center up to 5/6th of the field stays tack sharp.

 

The extreme sides (i.e. the last 1/6th of the frame) stay decently sharp, but they are not great. Ideally (I couldn't do it for the picture below) you'll want to vignette the image a fair bit to hide the shortcomings.

 

The worst one, the CA in the corners, it will be obviously a non-issue if in the corners you will have just sky, or if you convert to black and white.

 

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[pfogle]

Nice, had this lens but sold mine with my Canon gear, cos I moved to Fuji and didn't expect to go to FF again.

 

Now I'm looking for another one!

 

By the way, your pictures are terrific. Great use of the lens.

[addicted2light]

Nice, had this lens but sold mine with my Canon gear, cos I moved to Fuji and didn't expect to go to FF again.

 

Now I'm looking for another one!

 

By the way, your pictures are terrific. Great use of the lens.

 

Thanks, you're too kind!

 

I was going to give you the name of they guy from whom I bought my copy (new old stock, but at used prices). Unfortunately it looks like he is not selling anything anymore, probably the supply dried out...