Decisions, decisions… Should you go for a rectangular fisheye lens like the excellent 7Artisans 10mm F2.8 II Fish-Eye ED, which delivers that funky fisheye effect yet covers your entire image frame for regular shaped rectangular images? Or should you go for a circular fisheye lens that only utilizes a relatively small, circular region of the image sensor, but gives a full 180-degree viewing angle in both horizontal and vertical planes, instead of just on the diagonal?
For creative photographers, it can be a hard decision to make, but there’s no need. This Laowa lens neatly covers both options, zooming from circular fisheye at the short end to diagonal fisheye at the long end. It’s a genuine 2-in-1 lens but hang on a minute – I’ve seen similar lenses before. There was both a Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM, followed by a Nikon AF-S 8-15mm f/3.5-4.5E ED Fisheye that I’ve reviewed in the past. Both of these lenses were bristling with autofocus and a full complement of electronics, but were relatively expensive, designed for DSLRs rather than mirrorless cameras, and have since been discontinued.
