Kelda 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye CS Lens Review

Kelda 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye CS Handling and Features

The Kelda 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye lens is chunky, features an enormous, bulbous front element and a metal mount devoid of any electronic contacts. It is manual focus only. The aperture is also fully manual, and once set remains there until changed again. The lens is available in Nikon and Canon mount, and was supplied in Canon fit and a Canon EOS 600D camera body was used for this review. The lens bayonet fits smoothly onto the camera, with no play when locked in place. When removing the lens care needs to be taken as it will rotate beyond the point where it may be removed.

The Canon crop factor is 1.6x, so normally an 8mm lens would be considered to have a field of view similar to a 12.8mm lens on a “full frame” format. With a fisheye, with its 180-degree diagonal view, this is no longer true. Fisheyes of the full frame type, as opposed to those showing as a circle, can have various focal lengths, depending on the fine details of the design and the exact diagonal coverage. This lens is around 167 degrees on APS-C format and 180 degrees on full frame.

The aperture ring is nicely click stopped, the lens markings are printed as opposed to engraved and filled and the small petal lens hood is not fixed but may be removed via its bayonet fitting. The lens hood provided is very substantial. The focusing ring is smooth, not totally even, having a slight feeling of grittiness in its travel, but it works well, with the action being just light enough. All in all, the package is well put together.

Focusing is very difficult as there is so much depth of field that judging the sharpest point by eye is not easy. This is true either through the Canon optical viewfinder or the live view screen. However, it is entirely feasible to simply set the distances on the lens scale as there is enough DOF to amply cover any errors, especially at medium distances. For the lens testing, focusing was achieved using the screen plus magnification.

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