Hi, I'm selling my used Nikon DX ED 10.5mm f/2.8 fisheye lens and I'd love to pass it on to another aspiring ski photographer. I'm asking $350 plus s/h, Paypal payment only.
Why so cheap for a fisheye? Well, to be honest, the lens is very scratched. It originally belonged to a newspaper photographer who got a bit too close to a chicken coop while photographing chickens at a county fair, and scratched it up nice and good.
That's the bad news. The good news is that this is an opportunity to buy an expensive lens for half the usual price. I bought it because I wanted to get experience with a fisheye lens without dropping 600-700 bucks, and I've been completely satisfied with it. I'm selling it now after 2 years because I'm finally ready to move up to a completely unblemished lens.
Despite the scratches, this lens is still capable of taking amazing photos. I quickly learned where the scratches affect the image most, and how best to hide the flaws while framing the shot. In fact, my first published image in a ski magazine (the Tim McChesney shot below) was shot with this lens. In other words: despite the scratches, you can still shoot professional-quality images with this lens.
It's also great for follow-caming with your video-capable DSLR, and you don't even have to worry about scratching it a bit! Here's a link to an edit shot entirely with this lens:
https://www.newschoolers.com/ns/cult/news/read/news/id/4896/eid/21817/t/Watch+this+edit/
PM me with any questions!
Here you can clearly see the scratches:
Here's a sample image. With a clean lens, the sun would have a nice clean flare - here you can see that it's a bit blurry. For this reason I usually try to avoid shooting directly into the sun with this lens. The worst spot on the lens is near the bottom of the frame, which is very convenient because usually you can hide it in the snow.
Another example. Again, the bad spot is hidden in the snow. I LOVE this lens for in-air followcams!
One more example, in this one you can actually see the worst spots on the lens: on the rail a few feet down from the top, and down and to the right in the rail's shadow. Really not that noticeable, except to the guy who already knows where the spots are.
