I sold my Da 12-24mm in order to get the Da 14mm. I was just too frustrated by the minimum focus distance of the 12-24mm. When you're shooting this wide, a strong foreground is often needed I find & you need to get pretty close to help fill the frame. I also found the Da14mm to be more flare resistant. They are roughly the same size/weight so that isn't a factor.

So don't discount the Da 14mm if you can find one at the right price.


Could I ask what dissapointed you about the Sigma 14mm? I've just bought one of these & am ok with it thus far example shot. I should try & use it more, but I'm enamoured with my Sigma 20mm & tend to reach for that first.

The Samyang 85mm (also known by various other names) is very good value for money imho - it can be hard getting the focus spot on, but it's sharp wide open, can blitz backgrounds & has a lovely tonal quality.

Here's a link to my Samyang shots on flickr. Also try the link to a flickr group dedicated to this lens in it's various guises.

The images in the linked thread look promising.

I have a similar lens, it looks a little later than the one you depicted & is a T-mount Tamron twin-tele 135mm f2.8 (I don't have the matched tc) I bought it cheaply mainly to play around with bokeh, it's a strange beast... it has 12 aperture blades & a stepless aperture. You set the aperture as normal with a clicked ring, but it has a second ring which is used to manually open & close the aperture to the set stops, so you can effectively leave it at any point in between.

Here's a link to 2 shots I have on flickr, one at f/4 & one at f/11 showing the nicely rounded bokeh.

I must admit that I haven't made much use of it, maybe I'll throw it in the bag next time I go out.

You can generate your own profiles link

Which will be fantastic if your main subject happens to be test charts !
but I'd agree with Mike... learn to embrace the distortion.

The new Bigma 50-500mm f/1.2 OS HSM has been spotted in testing !

Hopefully someone will be able to put it in laymans terms for us. It must be to do with the distortion, but I don't know the maths behind it.

The 4.5mm is a full circular fisheye for crop cameras isn't it ?
That means you'd get a circular image with dark corners, pretty specialist use I'd think.

The angle of view of the sigma 10-20mm is 102.4 degrees at 10mm.
The AOV of the 10-17mm fishy is 180-100 degrees across the zoom range, so considerably wider.

THIS THREAD is full of plenty of good examples & praise for the 10-17mm

Pentax 10-17mm, no question. Super sharp & awesome colour rendition.

Ignore the fact that it's "only" 10mm at the wide end, it is a misleading measurement where fisheyes are concerned. The actual field of view will be much, much, wider than your Sigma. 180 degrees in fact.

Forget your previous fisheye adapter experience. This is one of the sharpest lenses that Pentax currently manufacture imho.

When there are 1 line posts accompanied by 6 line signatures, the discussion gets extremely diluted. It's a shame that signatures aren't limited to a sensible amount of characters.