The Pergear Lens Cometh

Sunday, June 19, 4:04 am:

Package being processed at carrier facility.

San Francisco Ca Distribution C,

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Photo Credit Peargear

t’s been sixteen days since I placed my order for this flat fisheye lens. Like a spirited long-distance romance, I wondered to myself, “Will the magic still be there? Is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship?” Hard to say at this point. 

With a focal length of 10mm, this will be the widest prime lens I have. I didn't buy it because it was a fisheye, but rather in spite of it. It's all about the size. The lens is so flat that it comes in a shallow plastic box, one that could easily be stowed in almost any pocket. I saw myself carrying this lens as an emergency wide angle when I needed to get more coverage. I actually carry the compact Fuji 27mm lens as a backup lens in case my primary short zoom lens conks out. The Pergear will serve the same purpose, hopefully with a little more "edge."

Photo by Kiev photographer Oleg. Click here.

My Pancake Lens Fever is starting to recede as the first blush fades after using some of my other lenses. Granted, this lens will be more compact than those classified as pancake, or very compact, lenses. This Peargear fisheye will be my first "body cap" lens, one that sits nearly flush to the front face of the camera body. In addition, it has a focusing lever which suggests a minimum focusing distance of 0.3 meters. That caught my attention.

Photo by Iurii Zvonar. Read his post here.

As you can see, this lens is really flat, almost flush to the body. An while it's a fisheye, it produces a full framed APS sized image. I have a 10-17mm Tokina fisheye I used with my APS Nikon DSLRs, and found the image curvature minimal if I was careful to keep straight vertical and horizontal lines a far from the frame edges as possible. Used with care, the curvature at the image edges doesn't shout, but instead  merely stage whispers to the astute viewer. It also occurred to me that if I were to switch to a square format, most of the distortion would be cropped away.

Hopefully the Pergear will arrive early next week. The next images you'll be seeing will be from the new lens. How many of them totally depends on whether it becomes my new muse, or spends the  rest of its life on the Island of Misfit Toys.