#peleng

Sergey Kolesov

Artist

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Hey, thanks for your question, I tried to write a comprehensive response and also started to drift off into some other territories towards the end.The only fisheye lens I own, is the MC Peleng f3,5/8mm. The Blackmagic Production Camera 4k I use for video has a sensor size of 21.1mm x 11.9mm, which gives a crop factor of 1.7 on this lens when compared to a 35mm full frame photographic still camera, which makes it a 13,6 mm lens. On the BMPCC4k sensor the lens is able to fill the full frame.

In some cases I use digital editing in post-production to reverse the distortion of the lens and lose some of the FOV (as seen in the showreel below). With a full frame camera I’d try to do the same thing and preferably shoot on a higher resolution than the delivery format to get around scaling artifacts created by this method. Doing this kind of editing in 16 bits per channel can of course also help to avoid artifacts. 

On the BMPCC4k the results I get from this lens are ok. On my old EOS 550D (Rebel T2i) the lens gave me horrible results in video mode, especially in 720p.

It can produce relatively good results with still cameras when shooting in RAW and heavily edited in post. Some years ago I used that lens on the 550D in Photo mode remote-synced with a motorized camera dolly, which were heavily edited in Adobe RAW dialogue and DaVinci Resolve, and most people would have a hard time identifying this footage as shot on a cheap MC Peleng fisheye. These shots can be seen in this old showreel (most of the very wide angle real-estate shots in the beginning were made through the MC Peleng 8mm):

Generally I wouldn’t recommend getting this lens. I basically ran into having it 15 years ago, and still never had the budget to replace it. Also back then there was no Samyang as far as I remember. I personally haven’t ever tested a Samyang fisheye, but I would be a bit surprised if it was worse.

That being said, I actually like the challenge to create some decent results with badly performing photographic equipment. Probably not the right way to go when doing commercial work, but in an artistic context, it can add some unique character to your work. Not just quality wise but also in the way you approach your shots. In case of the Peleng the angle of light falling into it can create all kinds of weird artifacts.

Sergey Kolesov • "Hyenas game-textures research"

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Sergey Kolesov • "Deathloop. Panorama sketch"

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