I got a PM from skituner asking me about my fisheye. I thought it would be usefull to post it here, so maybe someone else can also learn from it.
The idea of having a fisheye appealed to me ever since I got into photography. But as it's more of a play-thing than a serious lens, I couldn't justify spending like €600 on one from Sigma or Canon. Than I found out about the Zenitar, a Russian made fully MF 16mm fisheye. However since my EOS 350D has a 1.6x FOV-cropfactor, this would result in 25.6mm. Not quite a fisheye, more like a slightly curved wide-angle-lens. Than I discovered the Peleng, also Russian made and fully MF, but at 8mm great for cropfactor-cameras. On a full-frame-camera it will give a round picture with a black border, but on a cop-factor-cam it'll only have black corners (and those can easily be cropped of or corrected in Photoshop).
I ordered mine from eBay-member 'kabacan' and 5 days later it arrived. I got it straight from the factory in Minsk, Belarus and it came wrapped in brown paper in a Russian tupperware box.
(not mine, but it looked similar)
I ordered mine with a Canon EF-mount, so it fitted without problems. The lens is operated fully manual, but because of the wide angle that's no problem. When stopped down to f/8 (for best sharpness) the DOF reaches from 0.3m to infinity, so you don't need to worry about that.
With the extremly wide FOV it's likely to get the sun in view, or unintended add your elbow or feet to the picture.
At first it's lot of fun, but the effect gets tiring quickly, so my example has been gattering dust lately. Still it's a nice little toy for just €160.
Center-sharpness is really good a f/8, although it gets a little soft at the corners. There's also quite some CA.
Some example pics:
Peleng 8mm FIsheye
Threaded Mode
