AstrHori’s new 8mm fisheye lens is designed for medium format cameras, such as the Fujifilm GFX or Hasselblad body, and offers a circular image with a field of view wider than a full hemisphere. The lens has a 220-degree field of view, which can capture a wide scene, including the photographer’s own hands or feet if not careful.
Keith Cooper tested the AstrHori 8mm f/2.4 Circular Fisheye lens on a Fujifilm GFX100S and found that the circular image just fits the height of the frame, resulting in 60 megapixels of actual image data inside the circle. The lens is also available in Hasselblad’s XCD mount, although AstrHori notes a slight crop at the top and bottom of the circle on that version.
Design and Construction
The lens is an all-metal manual lens, weighing 517g, with a front element that bulges out far enough that the cap should stay on whenever not shooting. There are no electronics, so the camera body does not recognize the lens, and EXIF data will not record aperture.
Cooper advises writing down settings if planning to stitch images, as the file will not retain this information. He shot most of his samples handheld and had no trouble at 8mm. Focusing is easier than expected, with everything from about a foot away to the horizon sharp at f/8.
Comparison to Other Lenses
Lenses that see past 180 degrees are rare, but not new. Nikon’s 6mm f/2.8 Fisheye-Nikkor from the early 1970s covered 220 degrees on 35mm film, but weighed over 5 kg and was built mostly for scientific and industrial work. Most modern lenses with similar coverage have been small optics for small sensors, aimed at VR rigs and specialty capture.
Medium format shooters have had limited options for fisheye lenses. Fujifilm’s GF lineup has never included a fisheye, and adapted full-frame options like the Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM throw a circle that leaves much of the larger sensor dark. Chinese makers like Laowa and AstrHori have filled this gap with manual lenses that major brands don’t see enough demand to build.
Practical Applications
If you shoot interiors for VR, the extra 40 degrees of coverage pays off directly, allowing for a full sphere to be captured with two exposures instead of four or six. However, Cooper notes that the overlap zones are also where the tripod and camera mount show up, which can be a challenge.
The geometry of the lens takes some getting used to, with straight lines running through the center of the frame staying straight from edge to edge. Cooper uses this as a compositional anchor, lining up a tree trunk so it stays dead straight while the buildings around it bow outward. Circles in a scene behave differently than they would with a 180-degree fisheye, due to the changed projection.
Cooper found that tilting the camera up bends architecture hard, and people near the edges get squeezed in ways that are interesting rather than flattering. Around the rim of the circle, bright scenes can leave a faint blue glow, which he routinely cleans up with a circular crop that gives the image a crisp black border.
Cooper’s two-shot 360-degree stitch of his office can be seen in the video above, demonstrating the lens’s capabilities in capturing a wide scene.
