WTB: Fisheye for Nikon

[lynweber]

Looking for a fisheye lense for my Nikon D5000 doesnt have to be Nikon Brand. Thanks!

[inkista]

Diagonal or circular? And budget?

[lynweber]

Diagonal and hoping for less than $300 doesnt have to auto focus with my camera as I plan to get a D90 soon

I am located in Indiana USA

[inkista]

Two possible choices I can think of.

The Russian 16mm Zenitar--won't seem particularly fishy on a crop body, but it'll be <$200 on eBay.

Or the Rokinon/Samyang/Vivitar/Opteka/Phoenix 8mm/7mm/6.5mm fisheye. (It's a generic lens manufactured in Korea that gets rebadged a lot). This one will be considerably wider/fishier and is designed for crop body use. Goes for about $300-$350. You can find these on Amazon. I think (but I'm not sure) that the Opteka 6.5mm is the cheapest one at the moment.

Both of these are manual focus and manual aperture control. Your EXIF will probably be semi-empty, and you'll be limited to shooting in M or A modes. But I think the D90 does stop-down metering, though, so that should be ok. Essentially, because there are no electrical contacts, the body can't communicate with the lens, so it can't set the aperture.

Obviously, neither of these is likely to be as nice to use as the Nikon 10.5mm, but if a fisheye is only going to be an occasional-use lens, these might make more sense.