Aleksander Salwa

★★★★☆  Great Value in a Quirky Lens
Post date : Monday, Oct 14 2019

This is a great value for someone who is interested in exploring fish eye photography. It is tiny, smaller than a 35mm film cannister, and very light. It does have some quirks, however. The focusing is not like regular lenses, here is what I have found the tick marks on the lens barrel to mean (Left to Right as looking down from behind the camera:1. Way beyond infinity2. Beyond Infinity3. Hyperfocal (3 feet to infinity)4. About 1 foot (from the front of the lens)5. About 6 inches6. About 4 inches7. About 3 inches8. About 2 inches9. About 1 inch (the attached image was shot at this setting, slightly cropped.)In addition, the Q7 and Q S-1 auto crop to fill the frame. You can put a piece of paper over the camera contacts when you mount the lens to get an additional 20° of coverage with corners vignetted and you will have to input 3.2 mm to enable SR.

Is this review helpful?
     Report

---

Ren Hirota

★★★★☆  Not my kind of lens
Post date : Thursday, Sep 19 2019

Just too distorted for anything I do. I really hoped it would work out better. Maybe for someone else, just not for me.

Is this review helpful?
     Report

---

Marilyn Armstrong

★★★★☆  Great Little Lens
Post date : Wednesday, Aug 28 2019

Gotta love these little lenses from Pentax. Small and well designed for the Pentax Q mount cameras.

Is this review helpful?
     Report

---

Steve

★★★★☆  This is a really good lens for the price
Post date : Sunday, Aug 18 2019

This is a really good lens for the price. This shot was into the Sun, and the results are very good. Notice a bit of lens flare at the upper right, and also at the lower left. Remarkably good performance for such an economical lens.I really have gotten to love this little Pentax Q, and the fisheye lens makes it even better.

Is this review helpful?
     Report

---

Fumiya Yamamoto

★★★★☆  Affordable fish-eye
Post date : Saturday, Aug 3 2019

This lens is OK for extra-wide angle shots you might not otherwise be able to fit into a single image like tall trees or the sides of buildings. The optical quality is not great, though, particularly in limited light situations. It would fit more into the "toy" lens category that Pentax offers. It's a fish-eye and there will be severe distortion around the edges of images.

Is this review helpful?
     Report

---

Pat P.

★★★★☆  great fun for little money
Post date : Thursday, Mar 28 2019

Some people complained about manual focus on this lens. I found it really easy to take sharp pictures with it. Focus peaking + x4 zoom make it easy. Depth of field is really big with this lens.I also really like close focusing capability (see picture of flower). Architecture and interiors look nice with fish eye :)

Is this review helpful?
     Report

---

Smaug

★★★★☆  A really fun lens, and an inexpensive way to try a fisheye
Post date : Wednesday, Feb 20 2019

In the past, even with a 28mm lens at the bottom of my zoom range, I found that I could not always get everything in that I wanted to. Now that I'm in the Q system with my Q7 and this lens is reasonably priced, I decided to give it a go.I'm not really interested in the fisheye distortion, more accurate would be to say that I'm willing to tolerate it to fit in what I need to fit in. I'm happily surprised by some of the images though. They're just FUN.I took off a star for the following: plastic lens mount, focus markings are meaningless, no autofocus, no lens shutter. Why only one star deducted?- I think the lens mount will hold up well over time, as this lens is about half the size and half as useful as the 01 Normal prime.- If they had put focus markings on it, then where would the focusing ridges go? (it was a valid engineering decision)- No autofocus is the biggest drawback, however, the depth of field on this lens is huge. With focus peaking enabled and a little practice, you'll have it nailed in no time. A fisheye is not typically an action lens, so it's not like you're going to miss your favorite sports or toddler moment because of this omission. It just takes a bit longer to set up the shot.- No lens shutter? Same thing. Since it's not an action lens, this won't be a practical drawback.I decided to buy this lens first, and see if it meets my ultra-wide angle needs, before paying the much higher price for the 07 wide angle zoom. Now that I have it, I really like it and I will keep it, but I think I will add the wide angle zoom anyway, just because there are times when I want a really wide angle without such noticeable distortion.Would I buy this lens again? Absolutely.

Is this review helpful?
     Report

---

D. Hendrick

★★★★☆  Mini-Scopic Super Small Wide Angle!
Post date : Thursday, Jan 31 2019

For the price, the amount of fun I've had with this lens makes it easy to reccomend. On top of the fun factor this lens provides, it actually does produce some pretty decent images. While it may not be the fastest lens around, for walk around street photography it really is a fun option.Some people shy away from manual focus lenses, but manual focus on the Pentax Q is incredibly easy, couple that with the wide angle of this particular lens and it's even easier than usual.Perhaps the most notable thing about this lens when you take it out of the box is it's size, it's so crazy tiny. Honestly, it's like the pop out lens of my first point and shoot fell off and landed on my pentax. With the low price, high fun factor, and super small size, there's not much reason not to stuff this little lens in your pentax pouch.

Is this review helpful?
     Report

---