Russian Zenitar 16mm f/2.8 Fisheye for Canon 10D If you shoot with a Canon 10D, or some other digital SLR that has a crop factor due to the small image sensor (1.6x in the case of the 10D) then you're probably hurting for a wide angle lens. I know I was. Even a Canon 20mm f/2.8 turns into a 32mm on the 10D, which isn't bad, but I've never really considered 32mm very wide. The only other real option is the 17-40mm f/4 zoom... which costs $800, is pretty slow in my book, weighs a ton, and only gives you 27mm at the wide end. No thanks. You could go with a fixed ultra-wide, but that'll cost an arm, if not a leg, as well. Enter the Russian made 16mm f/2.8 Zenitar. I took a real gamble on this one, but at $150 I figured what the hell. I was actually very surprised when I received it (straight from Kiev)... it's built pretty well! The aperature ring has nice stiff detents at half-stop intervals, and the focus ring (oh, did I mention this is a manual focus lens?) is well damped: certainly better than the manual focus ring on any Canon AF lens. Mine came with an EOS mount adapter already bolted on, so it mounts right up to the 10D. My only gripe is that the mounting flanges are too thin, so there's a little play at the mount. Not a huge deal for the price, but it does spoil what would have otherwise been a near perfect bargain. Despite this minor annoyance, then lens functions as advertised. The 16mm fisheye gives you an equivalent field of view of about 25mm on the 10D. This somewhat minimizes the fisheye effect, which I'm not that fond of anyway. As I mentioned, this is a manual focus, uncoupled lens. That means you do all the work, although the camera will still meter for you after you set your aperature. The body simply displays "00" for the aperature value (meaning it doesn't know the aperature), but metering is as accurate as with any of my other Canon lenses. Focusing an ultra-wide on an autofocus SLR body is no picnic. However, it's not THAT hard, and given the extreme DOF of this lens, even at f/2.8, missing focus isn't something that occurs all that often. Now the fun part... converting fisheye images to rectilinear. I use Panorama Tools. It's a free Photoshop plugin... you have to know what you're doing to use it though. There's no real point and click GUI. Do some searching online, and I'm sure you'll find the info you need to get started. The above image was shot at f/2.8. As you can see, there is some fisheye distortion, but it's really not that bad. I'm VERY pleased with the sharpness of the lens, even wide open. You will notice some purple fringing, the result of chromatic aberrations in the lens.   This is the same image converted to rectilinear format via Panorama Tools. The resultant image (which you have to crop a bit to accomodate the effects of the transformation) has an actual field of view of about 20mm. Not too shabby for $150... Of course, you can spend a bit more and get an AF lens... both Canon and Sigma make good fisheye lenses, for about $500 or so. I'll stick with the Zenitar for now though... $150 well spent. Want to read some of my other Equipment Reviews?