Cheap Lens, Expensive Camera - Dartmoor Landscape Photography - Bowerman's Nose

The Pergear 10mm f/8 Pancake Fisheye Lens

Back in 2018, I published a blog post called Shoot, Print, Surprise. If you haven’t seen that blog post (and watched the video), then now is the time to watch it because there’s a SPOILER ALERT coming up.

In that video, I capture some of my all-time favourite images of Dawlish Warren beach. The best bit though was that I did it using a 15-year-old Nikon D80. I did have the advantage that I was using a Nikkor 16-35mm f/4 lens though. One of the key messages in that video was that the camera body is a lot less important than the lens you attach to it.

Here we are in 2021 and I’ve decided to flip the idea on its head. This time it’s a cheap lens on an expensive camera. To be precise it’s my Nikon Z7 with a Pergear 10mm f/8 pancake fisheye lens. I picked up this lens in the height of lockdown as I thought it would be a bit of fun. And fun it is!

In the video below I head to Bowerman’s Nose on Dartmoor to put this lens to good use. The point of the video is not to tell you that you should all ditch your expensive glass but that you should try different things and have fun with your photography.

Enjoy!

Bowerman’s Nose, Dartmoor

Here are the photos you saw me capture in that video. While they will never compare in quality to the photographs I can capture using a Nikkor 14-30mm f/4, I think the lens has done a pretty good job of capturing the scene.

 

Bowerman’s Nose #1, Dartmoor, Devon - Nikon Z7, Pergear 10mm f/8 pancake lens, 1/30th sec at ISO 64.

Bowerman’s Nose #1, Dartmoor, Devon - Nikon Z7, Pergear 10mm f/8 pancake lens, 1/30th sec at ISO 64.

Bowerman’s Nose #2, Dartmoor, Devon - Nikon Z7, Pergear 10mm f/8 pancake lens, 1/30th sec at ISO 64.

Bowerman’s Nose #3, Dartmoor, Devon - Nikon Z7, Pergear 10mm f/8 pancake lens, 1/30th sec at ISO 64.