A bit of history

This lens was a strong argument for buying Pentacon Six and Kiev 88 cameras.

When it first went on sale, there was only one other available alternative for a medium format fisheye lens, and it cost 20 times more.

A usable lens?

Some people mock this lens, saying that you only use it once and then put it away in a closet.

Personally, I think that with a little practice, you can get some great landscape photos with it.

What the lens delivers

As you might expect with a fisheye lens, distortion is significant.

This can be annoying, especially if you do analog prints of your images and then can’t correct distortion with a post-processing software.

You must therefore take care to keep the camera perfectly level when shooting to ease distortion.

It’s also a good idea to avoid having straight lines at the edge of the image, as these will be distorted.

Can be useful for handheld photography at night

The practical advantage of such a short focal length with an aperture of F3.5 is that you can use slow shutter speeds.

This is useful if you enjoy handheld night photography.

In fact, with Ilford Delta 3200 pushed to 6400, you can get by with the light from street lamps by exposing at full aperture (F3.5) at 1/15 or 1/30 of a second without motion blur being a problem.

However, both at night and during the day, you should avoid photographing scenes that are too close to prevent distortion.