Pentax HD8M-P 8mm f/3.5

The Pentax HD8M-P gives you a massive 167 degree fisheye view on APS-C Pentax bodies, and the aperture and bokeh rankings are solid at the 71st and 70th percentiles. But optical quality sits at the 18th percentile, which is a real letdown for a lens that's supposed to be about image quality. It's a fun specialty lens if you can find it cheap, but the soft optics and lack of stabilization make it a tough sell at full price.

Let's talk about what this lens does well. The aperture performance ranks at the 71st percentile, which is well above average for a fisheye. You get a minimum aperture of f/3.5, and while we don't have the max aperture spec, the ranking suggests it lets in a decent amount of light. Bokeh comes in at the 70th percentile, which is a pleasant surprise for an 8mm lens. At this focal length you're usually shooting everything in focus, but when you get close to that 12 inch minimum focusing distance, the background blur is actually respectable.

Now the less fun part. Optical quality overall sits at the 18th percentile. That's disappointing, and it lags behind most of the competition. The hybrid aspherical element helps with distortion control, but this is still a fisheye, so distortion is kind of the point. The real issue is likely sharpness and chromatic aberration at the edges. Macro performance is a real weak spot at the 12th percentile, one of the worst we've seen in this category. If you want to get up close and personal with tiny subjects, this lens will fight you every step of the way. Autofocus ranks at the 54th percentile, which is ironic because this is a manual focus lens. That score is probably based on category averages, but the takeaway is that you're doing all the focusing yourself, and the lens won't help you out.

Stacked against the competition, the HD8M-P has a hard time standing out. The Sigma Art 17-40mm f/1.8 DC is a completely different beast, a fast zoom with a much wider aperture and better optical performance, but it won't give you that 167 degree fisheye look. The Sony E PZ 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS is a kit lens with stabilization and autofocus, and while it's not a fisheye, it's far more versatile for everyday shooting. The Tamron Di III VC 28-300mm f/4-7.1 is a superzoom that covers almost every focal length you'd ever need, but it's heavy and slow at the long end. The Panasonic LUMIX S S-R28200 is another versatile option with a much broader range. The Nikon NIKKOR 20059 is the closest in spirit, a prime lens for a specific system, but it's not a fisheye. The Pentax wins on pure wide angle drama, but loses on optical quality, versatility, and features. It's a specialty tool, and you have to really want that fisheye look to choose it over any of these alternatives.

We can't give you a proper price to performance ratio because we don't have a current price in our database. One listing shows INR 47,199 in India, but that's a single data point and we won't pretend it tells the whole story. What we can say is that this lens occupies a weird middle ground. It's not cheap enough to be an impulse buy for fisheye experimentation, and it's not good enough optically to justify a premium price tag. The 18th percentile optical score means you're paying for the field of view, not the image quality. If you find it at a steep discount, it might be worth grabbing for creative projects. At full retail, you're better off saving for something sharper.

The Pentax HD8M-P is an 8mm manual focus fisheye that gives you a 167 degree diagonal view on APS-C Pentax bodies. That's a huge field of view, and it's the main reason anyone picks up a lens like this. The optical design uses 10 elements in 7 groups with one hybrid aspherical element, and the whole thing weighs 443g, so it won't turn your K-3 or K-70 into a dumbbell. But the scores tell a mixed story. Aperture sits at the 71st percentile and bokeh at 70th, which is solid for a specialty lens. Optical quality overall lands at the 18th percentile, and macro capability is down at the 12th percentile. This is a one-trick pony, and the trick is very wide and very distorted.

We don't have a price in our database right now, which makes value hard to pin down. What we can say is that this is a manual focus lens with no stabilization and no weather sealing. Build quality ranks at the 40th percentile, so it's about average for this category. The removable hood is a nice touch, especially if you want to use it on a full frame K-1 in crop mode and get that circular fisheye look. Just don't expect it to be your everyday walkaround lens. The versatility score of 33rd percentile says it all.

Skip this lens if you care about image sharpness. The 18th percentile optical score means it lags behind most of the competition, and that softness will show up in your photos. Skip it if you shoot in bad weather, since there's no weather sealing. Skip it if you want autofocus, because you're not getting any. Skip it if you shoot macro, since the 12th percentile macro score is one of the worst we've seen. And skip it if you want a versatile lens, because the 33rd percentile versatility ranking tells you everything you need to know. This is a specialty fisheye for Pentax shooters who know exactly what they're getting into, and anyone else will probably be disappointed.

The Pentax HD8M-P is a lens for a very specific kind of shooter. If you want that extreme 167 degree fisheye perspective on a Pentax APS-C body, this is one of the few options available, and the removable hood adds some flexibility for full frame users. But the 18th percentile optical score is hard to ignore. You're getting a huge field of view at the cost of image quality, and the lack of stabilization and weather sealing makes it a fair weather, tripod friendly lens. The aperture and bokeh rankings are genuinely good, but they don't make up for the soft optics. If you're a Pentax shooter who loves fisheye photography and you can find this at a good price, it's a fun addition to your kit. If you're looking for a sharp, versatile wide angle lens, keep looking.