RADOJUVA

For the opportunity to review the lens of the MS Peleng 3,5 / 8A (Belomo EWP Fisheye Lens MC 3.5 / 8 A Made in Belarus) lens, many thanks to Ise, the author of the blog http://inzoomnet.livejournal.com /

Review of MS Bearing 3,5 / 8A

Instead of the legendary MS Bearing 3,5 / 8A (or at least MC Peleng 3,5 / 8A) my copy is written in Latin 'Belomo EWP Fisheye Lens MC 3.5 / 8 A Made in Belarus'. If anyone knows what 'EWP' is, please post it in the comments. As it turned out, MC Peleng 3,5 / 8A is simply an amazing lens.

View of the lens MS Bearing 3,5 / 8A

MC Peleng 3,5 / 8A is an ultra-wide-angle circular (circular) fisheye lens. This means that the lens has the strongest barrel distortion, and the image that the lens forms is inscribed in a 24mm circle. MC Bearing 3,5 / 8A is therefore called circular (lat. Circus - a circle), that the image is obtained only in a circle, which is located in the center of the image, only a black border remains on the sides. The principle of the lens is clearly shown below:

This is how the photos from MS Bearing 3,5 / 8A look like

MS Peleng 3,5 / 8A 'sees' on 180 degrees in all directions. With such a lens need to learn how to work, but if you get used to it, you can shoot very interesting scenes. When I used MC Peleng 3,5 / 8A, the sun constantly entered the frame, the sun does not enter the frame only when you turn your back to it. Also, my shadow, arms, legs constantly got into the frame, because the lens 'sees' almost everything that is in front of the photographer.

Focusing on the lens is smooth, the focus ring rotates 270 degrees. Attention: when focusing through the optical viewfinder, it is very, very difficult to visually notice that something in the viewfinder is changing. Since the lens has a very short hyperfocal distance, you can generally forget about the focus ring, and use lens always focused on infinity. When I was shooting on covered apertures, I did not notice much difference in the picture in what distance the focus was focused by the lens. When focusing, the front lens does not rotate, and the trunk of the lens lengthens by only 1-2 millimeters. The minimum focusing distance is only 22 cm.

View of the rear light filter and the aperture of the lens of the MS Peleng 3,5 / 8A lens

The aperture control ring and aperture preset ring are located in front of the lens. The diaphragm presetting ring has two inscriptions with arrows: Unlock - open the diaphragm, open the diaphragm and Lock - close the diaphragm, closed the diaphragm. The minimum aperture is F / 16. The aperture preset ring can be used to set any F-number from F / 3.5 to F / 16. My copy already has 9 aperture blades, although on the Internet you can find options with fewer petals. The lens is weak aperturebut with a wide angle lens aperture not so important. The lens can be easily take off. I shot without problems with shutter speed about 1/10 s on the cropped chamber.

How to use with modern cameras?

'A' lenses with an interchangeable shank, such as the one in this review, are very easy to use on almost any modern digital camera (both DSLR and mirrorless), just select correct adapter. The replacement 'A' shank usually has an external M42 thread and an 'H' mount (similar to Nikon F). For use on modern cameras, the easiest way is to add the required adapter from M42 to the desired system or from Nikon F to the desired system to this shank.

MS Bearing 3,5 8A on a modern camera

The lens has a very strongly convex front lens and cannot use light filters on the front lens. Light filters are installed on the rear lens of the objective. The cap on the lens does not snap into place, but simply puts on, you need to be careful not to lose it. The Bearing itself is assembled soundly, the package includes a wardrobe trunk and light filters. By the way, this is not an old lens, it is still being produced, on the BELOMO website (manufacturer) you can find an interesting PR about the fact that the less electronics in the lens, the more reliable it is :) It's a pity that BELOMO now produces only 2 lenses ...

Sample Photos

The lens turned out to be weak in terms of sharpness at F / 3.5. But when you close the aperture, the sharpness in the center is just superb. When moving away from the center, the sharpness drops slightly. The lens can easily catch small glare in backlight. In the photo, sometimes strong chromatic aberration.

If you distort and try to remove the black border from the image, then the final cropped image will be similar to the image from a 16 mm lens with strong distortion. For such purposes, a linear fisheye is better MS Zenitar-N 2.8 / 16 “Fisheye”. The lens edging of the circle changes at different aperture values. The geometrical centers of the image in the circle and the center of the frame on my copy do not match, my MS Bearing 3,5 / 8A on the camera Nikon D700 slightly 'shifts' the circle down. Photo on APS Nikon D700 FX without processing:

Sample photos on Canon 350D without processing. On the Canon 350D I used a lens with a shank KP-A \ N and Nikon-Canon adapter. EGF lens on APS-C Canon cameras will be 12,8mm, while the cropped sensor cuts out the central part of the image created by the lens, but the black corners still remain and cannot be corrected during RAW processing. Roughly speaking, on cropped cameras, the MC Peleng 3,5 / 8A behaves like a regular linear fisheye lens.

Catalog modern brand lenses 'Zenitar' и 'Helios' can look at this link.

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MS Peleng 3,5 / 8A - unique lens. Its ability to 'look' at full 180 degrees can be used to achieve extraordinary images. Even though this is a manual focus lens, focus problems can be forgotten.

See Related - Overview Samyang 8mm 1: 3.5 UMC FISH-EYE CS II Aspherical NI.

Material prepared Arkady Shapoval.