Looking At Another Fisheye

Pergear (Brighten Star) lens. I bought mine here.

For whatever reason, I seem to be behind in the times when it comes to what's new in    photo equipment. Granted, I am quite content with "living within" the capabilities of my existing equipment, and only when I am confronted with some new challenge will I be motivated to look for, and possibly purchase, some new piece of equipment. Lately I've been giving away seldom used pieces of kit when they become at best irrelevant, or at worst, boring.

In an earlier post I replaced my older Peargear 10mm F 8.0 pancake fisheye lens with a Brighten Star (a.k.a.Pergear)  10mm F 5.6, fully aware that there were some features I was less than pleased with. As I mentioned, I considered the change from F 8.0 to F 5.6 would make it more difficult to control my "blue sky exposure" to obtain the interesting skies I prefer as my background.

Brighten Star 10mm Pro. For a more detailed description click here.

Now I will be the first to admit that I didn't stop looking just because I purchased that lens. I knew it wasn't the perfect solution to all of the exposure problems that I encounter, but was intrigued by the challenge of making it work in challenging situations.

My wandering eye fell upon another Brightin Star fisheye lens. It was a 10mm F 5.6 lens, specifications identical to those of the pancake lens I just purchased. I  noticed that this lens replaced the petal lens hood with two rectangular "wings". On closer examination, I saw some real innovation in the design. I liked that there were separate distance scale in both feet and meters. I'm sure the extended focusing knob would make it easier to select the proper distance setting. The icing on the cake is the placement: Both scales are visible when viewed from above. Closer examination shows multiple aperture settings ranging from a wide-open F 5.6 to a minimum aperture setting of F 22. 

Photo Source: Click here.

As you can see from this photo of the chrome variant, both  scales are visible when viewed from above. As I wear progressive bifocals, I can appreciate that I wouldn't have to squint at both scales being crowded into a tiny viewing window. I wonder if anybody will see fit to adding this twin-scale configuration to a lens more suited for casual street photography. It would certainly get my attention.

I have to admit, based on features alone, I must own this lens. I'm going test the first Perger/Brightin Star lens first to see how it performs. If it passes some basic sharpness tests, the innovative Pro version will be on its way.