We have compared two Fisheye lenses the Peleng and Samyang. We had placed them face to face, and analyzed their pros and cons. Here you can find results of this "battle":

Before you meet them, see the features of both:

As you can see, the specifications are very similar. The Samyang allows a minimum opening of F22, Peleng has only F16. But minimal distance for Peleng is 22cm, against 30cm distance which has Samyang.

Exterior appearance. Construction.

Both have a metal base. Fisheye Peleng has stronger base, but not modern. The Samyang looks more finished and has more modern style. But here you can find plastic elements and rubber grab part of the focus ring.

The Samyang 8mm is longer than the Peleng 8mm and has a sunhood. The bulging of the front lens is also more prominent.
Peleng Lens has good carrying case. Much more better than the Samyang has.
If you are use the Full Frame camera with the Samyang you should to cut the plastic hood. That will give you full circle camera whose sensor has a size of 35mm negative.

Control

As you know, these two lenses are completely manual. Samyang has two rings. There are the focus and aperture selection. Peleng has the third ring UNLOCK. But you can select maximum aperture very quickly at Peleng.

Price

The Samyang and the Peleng have like prices.

Image

The test is to take a photo of an interior that has a large window with light which stands before the camera. We wanted to assess lenses at highlight areas.

Obvious results:

1) The Peleng Lens has a bigger strain at the borders.

2) The Samyang 8mm cuts black corners

At these distances it is impossible to know which one has better optical settings. So we will make cuts at 100% resolution of the image to see its actual performance:

The Peleng edges have more clearly distorts than the Samyang. This means that the Peleng is a real fisheye. Samyang is not.

Photos made from one point using Peleng 8mm and Samyang 8mm

Peleng 8mm	Samyang 8mm
	F/4
	F/8
	F/16

Full Frame (Canon EOS 5D)

Samyang 8mm

Peleng 8mm

Angle of view

Angle of view of Peleng 8mm is 180 degree for all Cameras.

Angle of view of Samyang 8mm is 180 degree only for cameras with APS-C sensor. For Canon angle of view will 167 degree, and for Olympus only 139.

Transforming the image

It's time to rectify both images and check the result. We used the same setting for both, and this is the result:

As you can see, the correction on the image of Peleng gives a correct result, result of the Samyang is lower.

You need to create a special configuration for this purpose, which is basically this:

Lens Type: Circular Fisheye
FOV: 145.28044 (set automatically)
Focal Length: 8789
Crop Factor: 1.61539 (automatically set)
Lens parameter a: 0.015
Lens parameter b: -0015

You can save these settings if you want to apply them for all images generated by this lens. The most important setting is the focal length of 8.7 mm, then the correction of the parameters A and B.

We applied these values to the original image of Samyang, the result:

Conclusion

Our conclusion is not clear ... Both of these lenses have its own cons and pros. I think it's better to have the corners, because when you correct photo with photoshop with Samyang you losing field of view and if you wish to remove fish-eye effect in the image and make it a little bit more panoramic with applying your fisheye it’s impossible to achieve with Samyang.
- The Peleng has macro 20 cm. It’s very fun to do macro photos with Peleng. But Samyang 8mm has a 30cm macro. It’s one of the biggest Samyang defect. You can say it’s only 10 cm! But difference is really huge.
- The unlock ring in video mode is a great advantage because it is quiet and fast. You can open 16 and then you can open or close the aperture manually with great speed and smoothness.
- The Peleng with full frame camera gets the perfect circle with a diagonal of 180. The Samyang makes it worse.

- The Peleng on 20% wider than Samyang.

If you want to have a lens for a few photos and you don’t like to correct photos and you don’ care about angle of view the Samyang 8mm is for you. Made in Korea.

So if you want to be free and not to limit yourself in expressions of your creativity and you like macro or panoramas and you don’t have any problems with using Photoshop you should to have the MC Peleng 8mm f3.5. Made in Belarus.