6mm/f2.8 fisheye Nikkor review

[Akira]

Becky and Konstantin of Grays of Westminster review the rarity.

I think this is the worst example of the handling of this rarest, invaluable lens, even though the humongous front element is scratched!  Ouch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s6wl7jwC4w

[Birna Rørslett]

Horribly scratched front dome and it certainly shows up in the footage as well. Plus a tiny tripod for that massive glass monster and hopeless ways of using a fisheye lens. Real amateurs

A lens such as this should be handled with care and used intelligently, by a true professional. Like our own Erik Lund [aka 'Dr. Lens'] on the one of the last NG trips to Scotland (May, 2016).

[Akira]

Oh, yes, he's the man!

[John Geerts]

Horribly scratched front dome and it certainly shows up in the footage as well. Plus a tiny tripod for that massive glass monster and hopeless ways of using a fisheye lens. Real amateurs

Very painful to see.

[Fons Baerken]

Would have chosen a sunny day for shooting 

[John Geerts]

Would have chosen a sunny day for shooting 

haha  that's just a minor drawback

[Birna Rørslett]

The venue was London, with all what that entails:)

At least it wasn't raining so they could test how the Fish stands up being brought in contact with its natural habitat

[golunvolo]

 

The venue was London, with all what that entails:)

At least it wasn't raining so they could test how the Fish stands up being brought in contact with its natural habitat

 

  It is hard to watch.. On the other hand, I remember the video footage, the custom minitripod and the spectacular images that came off from your meeting with this lens.

[Jack Dahlgren]

Watching her pat the glass with her hand made me cringe. They don’t seem all that good at using wide angle lenses.

[Birna Rørslett]

At the very least they didn't use a chisel on the front, like an earlier user must have done

Usually small imperfections on the front of a "normal" lens, in particular with longer focal lengths, do little harm and mostly are invisible in the photos.  For shorter focal lengths, scratches on the rear element are the worst offenders.  Yet for such a lens as the 6mm Fish, where depth of field nearly extends to the surface of the front dome, virtually anything up front will show up. As evidenced by the video.

[fish_shooter]

The venue was London, with all what that entails:)

At least it wasn't raining so they could test how the Fish stands up being brought in contact with its natural habitat

I have wondered how one of the 220 degree fisheyes would in fact work under water! A couple of technical issues. Dome ports for underwater housings are typically hemispherical when designed for fisheyes so match a 180 dgr fisheye well. So an unknown is how a 220 would work looking through one of these ports. The other issue is fitting the lens. Only very old housings have large port fittings (about 20 cm in diameter). My Seacam housings require the lens diameter to be less than 98mm in diameter. A special version of the superdome port as well as port extension tube was made for the 14-24 AFS lens due its just slightly too large diameter.

[Akira]

Also, it is not good to talk or speak with the naked lens element, front or rear, directed to the mouth.  The inadvertent spitting (acid) can damage the coating (essentially metal).

[Birna Rørslett]

Snell's window is around 180 degrees so you wouldn't get anything more of the above-water scene, perhaps some extra areas of internal reflections. I have a Meike 3.5mm Fisheye in m4/3 mount that is 220 degrees at least and it wasn't that useful in my Olympus housing with a port made for Olympus own 180 degree (non-circular) Fisheye. The tiny Meike does better out of water though.

Apart from its rarity (although the Fisheye 6/2.8 isn't among the very rarest of Nikkors, despite the widely seen claims to the contrary), the size and sheer bulk of this lens makes it hardly feasible to put in any underwater housing I'm aware of. It certainly would not go into the big dome of my old Awuatica housing, for example.

[Akira]

Apart from its rarity (although the Fisheye 6/2.8 isn't among the very rarest of Nikkors, despite the widely seen claims to the contrary), the size and sheer bulk of this lens makes it hardly feasible to put in any underwater housing I'm aware of. It certainly would not go into the big dome of my old Awuatica housing, for example.

It would only fit into the dedicated dome of a submarine or a deep submergence vessel?

[Birna Rørslett]

Now all that remains is finding that [Nikon-]Yellow Submarine

Looking through the inventory of Grays, I found -- and ordered -- the new Voigtländer Nokton 35mm f/1.2 for my Z fc. Price point wasn't bad either.  I wonder whether it'll arrive before I depart for Scotland last week of May?