Irix 11mm f/4.0

Maybe that can be corrected with lens lcp files? But 'out of the box' objects a getting wider as they are off center. That causes confusion looking at pictures of an ongoing kitchen remodeling project. The '2x4's look like at least '2x12' close to the edge. The rectilinear lines are great though. Everything is straight.

Very well constructed and quality product.

I have had a full frame Nikkor fisheye lens for my Nikon and have loved it. My hope was that I could eventually find a similar lens for my Canon system and I sure found what I was looking for with the purchase of the Irix 11 mm Blackstone lens. In fact, it has a slightly wider field of view than the Nikkor lens. My biggest concern in using the lens is keeping my toes out of the picture. The lens is sharp and has minimal vignetting and gives me the opportunity to create unique viewing angles

Excellent optical results..Used on Canon 80D with outsatanding performance.

The lens is fast and very sharp.

I already own the 15mm Firefly and couldn't wait to add the 11mm Firefly to my kit. I loved it so far for long exposure and astrophotography. I use it on my 80D, so it's focal lengthis a bit more that the 11mm, but it still works great for what I use it for.

you can't find another ultra wide lens with such price, but not the all story, this lens have solid build, not so heavy, very easy take focus in the night and the sharpen is so good for high resolution camera.I use this lens for night and day landscape with 150mm filters system

This lens does exactly what the most expensive wide angle lens will do. I've been doing architectural photography now for forty years and only use the best equipment. This lens fits right in with my equipment list.

1. Extremely sharp, even wide open.2. Practically straight lines (unprecedented for this focal length)3. Enormous depth of field (essentially unnecessary to focus at F8 and higher)4. Very solid construction, top quality glass and moving parts.Currently using it to create image records of interior architecture.

Seems well constructed - nice packing with metal case. Looks quality all around. Not much usage yet but a good addition to the arsenal

I bought this for a trip to the Grand Canyon, and couldn't be happier with it. I've found myself pulling this lens out and using it in many situations that I wasn't planning on, it's really opened up a new creative potential that I didn't have before.Build quality so far has been superb. There have been reports of the infinity focus stop being off from the factory, that isn't the case with my piece. Infinity focus is dead on.Chromatic aberration with this lens is also minimal.

Super wide angle!

I'm using this lens on a Pentax K-1 II, and it fully meets my hopes and expectations for a high quality UWA. The build is excellent. The materials used, focus action, everything down to the packing is top notch. What's even even better is the optical quality matches. It is center sharp wide open, and the corners quickly start to catch up as you stop it down, and for a UWA, they are pretty darn good even wide open. I really can't find anything to complain about, and at this price point, I don't think you can beat it.

I am very pleased with this lens. It has a very solid feel and works smoothly. The images are unusually sharp. This lens is at least as good as lenses which are much more expensive. I am eager to see additional lenses from this manufacturer.

Very cool lens. Super wide rectilinear lens. No fisheye effect. It does stretch the corners of the image a bit but not bad and easily correctable in Lightroom.Does a good job of astro/night photography too.It is built like a tank, will last for many years!

Exceptional build quality except for the lens cap (I just purchased a Lens Hoodie (medium size) by Lenscoat to make things easier). Ultra-wide at 11mm lenses, by any company, are not as sharp as for example a high end prime 35mm F/1.4 released in the last 5 years with that said this lens is sharp with good colors and good micro contrast in the middle of the frame (check out my photographs they should speak for themselves). The artistic options opened up by this lens are amazing. Photoshop 2021

Great build, very sharp, low distortion for 11mm. Cap needs to be carefully placed on and removed. Don't stay very well put. This is an only minor thing. Overal great buy.

Great fish eye lens. Very sturdy and quality of pictures is on par with Tamaron, Canon ect. This is a manual focus and if you are not used to manually focussing on object this can be very difficult and the results are not great.

This lens is much better than I had anticipated or imagined. I really didn't know how much I would like it until I made a few shots that weren't normal for the situation or composition, but it rendered the images far greater than thought possible. The resolution is fantastic. I'm using it on a Nikon D810 and couldn't be more pleased. It has become a staple in my bag whether I'm shooting waterfalls or vistas. I hope to try some astro shots at night, and haven no doubts it will perform remarkably well.The gel filter holder works very well and I keep a 3-stop ND on it almost all the time. This is a keeper.

Irix, a plucky Swiss company has produced several high-quality no-frills lenses at incredible prices, that fill certain niches that the big companies like Canon, Nikon, and even Sigma, have left open. I'm a big wide-angle fan, so I was extremely curious to test out their new 11mm manual focus f/4 lens. It comes in a lightweight ("Firefly") and a heavier weight ("Blackstone") version, which is presumably more durable and slightly more expensive. I opted for the lightweight version, the Firefly.I had been using the Sigma 12-24mm auto-focus zoom f/4.5–5.6, which I had taken around the world. I discovered, however, that I wasn't entirely satisfied with its edge sharpness. So I replaced it with Sigma's new 14–24mm f/2.8 zoom, which was twice as expensive, but which was both a faster and a sharper lens. I figured I could live with 2 mm less of a wide angle. I had briefly looked at Canon's 11–24 mm f/4 USM lens, but it was both huge and expensive (list: $2700).Then I met the Irix 11mm manual focus f/4.2 super-wide Firefly and fell in love. It's a light-weight, full-frame lens, apparently the widest you can go before fisheye kicks in. And I couldn't believe its price at $525 (I was expecting it to be over $1000). The heavier Blackstone edition is $650. I got ahold of one and tested it out. Here are five results: a studio test with a rather jerry-rigged grid I set up, the sun through fall foliage on my street at home, Paterson Falls after a rain, the New York Marathon from the middle of Fifth Avenue, and my 3-year-old grandson looking up at a dinosaur head at the Museum of Natural History in New York. The lens performed fine in all cases. I might add, that super-wides like this one are idea for small architectural spaces, especially in cramped archeological sites.I was looking in particular at three factors: edge sharpness, distortion levels, and color fringe.The lens performed quite well in the first two areas, sharpness and distortion. Although its depth of field is quite large, it's still important to remember to focus. You don't have to be very precise, but be sure the focusing ring is in the right range. I was quite happy with the sharpness.At 11mm distortion is inevitable, of course, and there are many situations in which it is not objectionable, for example, most botanicals, tight interior spaces, most landscapes. You want to avoid wide angles of any kind with medium distance architecturals, where you expect lines to be rectilinear, and of course, with closeups of people, where you risk making caricatures of their faces. This lens distorts less than would be expected at this focal length.As for color fringe, it is visible at high enlargements, certainly more than the 14–24mm Sigma. This is adjustable in Camera Raw. You probably won't notice it in normal enlargements.Overall, for wide-angle afficcionados, this lens is a blessing. It's the widest lens you can reasonably buy and carry around, that delivers good sharpness and relatively low distortion levels at an incredible price, in exchange for having to deal with manual focus and a fixed focal length. To my mind, it's more than worth it.I recommend the Think Tank Lens Changer 25 or 50 for convenient portability.Joel Simpson

I didn't even realize there was a lens this wide that wasn't a fish eye. The difference between this and my Nikon 16-35 @ 16mm is staggering. I've used it in interior real estate and an air museum, it did good, I think it's pretty sharp but I haven't had that much time with it. I like the Nikon chip, it shows when it's in focus and the infinity "lock" works well. I think the build is pretty good, I'm anxious to use it more. I'd buy it again, no problem. Can't use filters on the front, so I bought the gel filters and they're OK. I used the 3 stop and it was fine. 4 stars on picture quality because I haven't used it that much. I think it will be fine.

Did much research on wide angle lenses costing up to $2500 and this IRIX 11mm is wide as can be and creates a nice clean sharp image. Its a big lens for a prime but so far, I am happy with its performance.

Strict dedication to specific shooting

Great landscape lens. Almost 120 degree view. Would also be great for churches, museums, etc. Sharp, a little heavy but well worth the price.

I use it primarily for videos from our airplane. I like the rectilinear projection much better than the fish-eye projection used by the action cams (GoPro, etc.) It's a great wide angle lens!

Why I Bought It:I acquired this lens for my Canon 5D Mk IV entirely for my real estate photography, and I'm so glad I did. My go-to lens is a Tokina 17-35 f/4 ATX Pro, which is a great lens, but in some of these bathrooms, tiny bedrooms, and walk-in closets, even 17mm on a full frame just isn't wide enough. I grappled with whether I should spend $500+ on a lens just to shoot bathrooms, and finally convinced myself that if I get 1 to 2 extra gigs because of it, it will pay for itself. My logic turned out to be solid. First shoot with it, and the client LOVED the shots I got with it. She didn't think it would be possible to get these shots, so I wound up looking like a hero.Pros:(1) This lens is sickly insanely wide. It's so wide that looking through the OVF is almost disorienting. As I said above, I'm able to get shots that are otherwise impossible. In the first photo I posted (straight-on shot of the bathroom sinks), I was only about 3 feet from the forward edge of the vanity.(2) Build quality is outstanding. It feels like a $3,000 lens. Way to go, Irix!(3) Minimal barrel distortion, shockingly minimal for such a wide lens. What little BD there is gets eliminated in one click with the native lens correction profile in Lightroom.(4) Tack sharp at f/10 from image center almost to the edges (I rarely shoot any real estate in anything other than f/10 so I can't tell you about the rest of the aperture range).(5) Great color and contrast, especially for such a wide lens.(6) So much lens for the money(7) While it's a manual focus lens, the focus confirmation chip works flawlessly with the Canon's AF system. Basically just hold your focus button down (I have my camera set on back-button focus) and turn the focus ring until you get the chirp in the area you want in focus.(8) It's not a full manual lens. Aperture is controlled from the camera, so you get both live view (critical in real estate photography) and a clear non-stopped-down view through the OVF.Cons:(1) This lens does produce quite noticeable lateral chromatic aberrations. However (a) it's unreasonable to expect otherwise on an 11mm full frame lens on a DSLR. Different frequencies of light get bent at different angles. When you stretch the field of view to 126 degrees as this lens does, those disparities inevitably produce purple fringing along color borders. These are the immutable laws of physics. I'm curious what this lens could do on a mirrorless camera with a shorter flange distance (this supposedly reduces LCA's). (b) The LCA's are easily correctible in Photoshop. Lightroom's chromatic aberration removal tool is useless on any lens. I go into Photoshop and use the camera raw filter, and slide the purple CA removal tool all the way, and it gobbles the LCA's right up without destroying any detail elsewhere. I know I spend more time defending this con than complaining about it, but in my heart of hearts, I feel that the LCA's are excusable here, especially considering what this lens succeeds at doing - grabbing a 126 degree field of view.(2) It's heavy. I got the Firefly version. I can only imaging how heavy the Blackstone version is. But really, so what? This isn't a lens for taking on hikes. This is a specialty lens that real estate and architectural photogs will want to have in their bag along with lots of other heavy stuff.(3) a tad soft at the edges, but again, remember what this lens is doing - 126 degree field of view.Bottom Line: GET THIS LENS!

I am very pleased with this lens. Beautifully made and gives a great wide-angle view.I must say however, that I was less than pleased with the Amazon packaging. The Irix box (which contains an Irix tin, inside which is the Irix lens case with the lens itself inside) was just tossed in to a MUCH larger Amazon box with just some of the 'airplus' air cushions and not very many of them: because of the loose packaging it meant that the Irix box with the lens inside could easily bang around. As a consequence, both the Amazon box and the inner Irix box were knocked about and the Irix tin inside the Irix cardboard box was dented. Despite this the lens seems fine since the lens itself, as mentioned, was inside yet another lens-case packaging inside the above-mentioned (dented) tin - and just as well! For a $900 AUD item I think it is reasonable to expect more secure packaging.

I took a chance on this lens and I am so glad I did. The widest had had was 14mm and I thought going to 11mm would not make much difference. Was I ever wrong. In small rooms it makes a big difference. I am still amazed at how it is able to capture such a large field of view without producing a fish eye effect. What little distortion it does produce is easily fixed in most cases in post processing lens correction. If you are on the fence on getting this lens you need to get off it and get one. You can't beat the price and you will love it.

I liked everything in this lens, sharpness, build quality, acurate foucs... every thing.

A lot going for this Lens. 11mm would be a start. Any Landscape photographer would love to have an Ultra-Wide Angle Lens in their arsenal. But for the longest time the choices have been discouraging, it was simply out of reach for a mere mortal. Now it's finally affordable. Second, Build-Quality is superb. No complaints there. Third, you can insert a gel filter at the base of the lens. Fourth, its size. It's good for such a super wide angle lens. Fifth, it's rectilinear with minimal distortion. Lightroom easily corrected it (yes, it means that LR has its profile already). I have only taken this Lens for a spin just once and I am attaching some photos I took with it. I gave the IQ only 4 stars but it should be around 4.5. Is it sharp? You bet. But really for me it's the overall rendition it gives. And oh, the Infinity click is such a welcome feature. When it got dark, I just waited for that click and I was all set. Brilliant! I can't wait to take this lens to some epic locations.