Great lens - High fun factor - but a fisheye is "no wide angle"

Preliminary to review - can be seen already from the title - a fisheye lens must not be confused with a wide-angle lens.
That was not my ambition when buying this lens. The typical distortion has always been desired, and you should make clear beforehand.

The Fisheye and delivery:

The SMC DA 10-17mm comes in the usual cardboard box, therefore, which even includes a carrying bag with Velcro and a lens cover made of aluminum except the Fisheye itself, which is only attached / is. The lens hood is firmly mounted on the lens and serves as a counterpart to the aluminum cover. The lens cap is inside the edge lined with a kind of velvet to leave on the lens hood scratches and thereby the lid is also sufficiently strong. Bayonet side there are the usual plastic cover.

Feel:

Particularly impressive can be the lens through the focus ring to adjust, the subjective feeling in my objective is in any case very solid - it is exterior made entirely of metal. There is no game in focusing and also as little play on the bayonet (K-5). The lens hood extends far enough beyond the lens and also protects them from accidental contact with the lens, for example a table top. The lens is including lens shade and bayonet cap ~ 8.2 cm long and about 6.8 cm in diameter, which as a pack size for the camera bag more interested than the net amount of 7.2 cm from bayonet flange toward the lens hood.
Basically, one can say that the processing really nothing to be desired.

Function:

A Fisheye with F3.5 - 4.5 is certainly at first glance not very bright, but you are mistaken here at the Pentax lens enormous. When shooting outdoors in good weather with a lot of light here is very often an aperture of 10 and more necessary not to überzubelichteten itself with 1 / 1000th of a second shutter speed to. This effect, the outdoor very bright scans despite manual white balance and auto iris with a lot of light is consistently available. For me, I've gotten very often the exposure outdoors in use and reducing approximately between one to two f-stops with 1/3 gradation on exposure.
Thus, the lens already collects a lot of light - that's also in the house or in darker climes noticeable - and is based on the detection angle (10 mm) of almost 180 degrees, which makes up almost a full semicircle yes, somehow logical.
This results in even an advantage, because if you do not diaphragm the Fisheye one has a slight blur in the edge region, if only one stop is dims what is displayed, completely sharp - this results in then "thought sharp" an aperture range of 4.5 at 10 mm to 5.5 with 17 mm focal length.
Since there is a fixed mount lens hood here you have at this lens a small disadvantage, you can theoretically use any filters, so it is impossible to shot with ND filter or polarizing filter or IR filter. This circumstance can be changed if necessary by himself "something" tinkering, but this has the disadvantage of having to vignetting.
Finally, two criticisms that are not really, because the optical laws of light refraction can not wegreden yes.
In practice, resulting in a lot of light low optical effects, which is called chromatic aberration and it is one of the objective errors. These chromatic aberrations show up as color fringing at the edges of objects, where as usually violet to blue very thin line is "light and dark" visible. This effect only occurs in very bright conditions and decreases when stopping down strongly. Exposure compensation can also take remedial action in this case.
If we are honest, then there is really no yes lenses without chromatic aberration.
Another point that speaks against the now usual trend for ultrasonic motor, the rods autofocus of the lens, because the rod is still working by motor from the camera. This too is solved very quickly and precisely due to the really very tiny movements of the lenses in the lens inside. The volume of the mechanism when focusing is not uncommon loud.

Conclusion:

The Pentax-Fisheye is a very creative lens, a tool for many impressive prospects. Thus the Little Planets (surreal circular panoramas) are possible as well as easy panoramas with centered horizon or 180 degree photos with spherical distortion or the portraits with thick nose - just a very creative lens.
A Fisheye replaced definitely not a wide-angle lens in the classical sense and it is this principle should be considered thoroughly before buying. In photographers circles saying for Fisheye "love it or you hate it" and that's the conclusion of actually sense behind it.
For me personally, the SMC DA 10-17 is a lens that brings tremendous fun, the scans very well and given me enormous potential of possibilities - both from the camera and Photoshop.