City skyline with a fisheye. C&C appreciated

Stradawhovious · Mar 19, 2011

I was able to get my hands on a fisheye lens for the afternoon, and decided to take a shot of the skyline of my city, and the main vein of trafic coming into and out of it. I would like to know what you all think. Any suggestions on composition, crop etc. are very welcomed.

imagemaker46 · Mar 19, 2011

How wide was this lens, apart from a little curve to the light post it doesn't look very fisheye.

PASM · Mar 19, 2011

Maybe clone-out the join in the tarmac, bottom-left.

Stradawhovious · Mar 19, 2011

imagemaker46 said:
How wide was this lens, apart from a little curve to the light post it doesn't look very fisheye.

Nikkor 10.5mm 1:2.8 Fisheye is the lens that was used. This lens has almost a 180 degree field of view, and under normal cricumstances is extremely fisheye-esque.

The fisheye lost its effect some since the majority of the subject is a mile or so away. With this shot, the blue car in the center bottom third of the frame is almost directly under the bridge I was shooting from. My goal wasn't to have the pronounced fisheye effect (but I did want a little...) , it was to get as much FOV as possible to get the crossing highway, skyline and sky. Even my 28mm lens doesn't come anywhere NEAR this FOV.

Stradawhovious · Mar 19, 2011

PASM said:
Maybe clone-out the join in the tarmac, bottom-left.

Yeah, that is distracting... isn't it. Good catch! Thanks!

RauschPhotography · Mar 19, 2011

As someone else had mentioned, this picture doesn't look very fisheye. Personally I'd up the contrast a little to give it a little more pop, but it looks pretty good!

Bram · Mar 19, 2011

Let's see that at night.

Stradawhovious · Mar 19, 2011

Second edit.... I think this one is MUCH better...... I'm a bit upset with Photobucket.... It seems to have ruined the IQ. The original file isn't anywhere near as soft as this looks.....

Bram said:
Let's see that at night.

Not the area of town I want to be lugging $2,500+ of gear around after dark.........

dylanstraub · Mar 19, 2011

The light on the left side is a little distracting as well. IMHO this shot would look better at night but i understand being cautious about where you bring your gear. Maybe shoot a skyscraper instead. IDK what goes through peoples mind but I don't think I look like a terrorist. I loved having a wide angle lens but I always got people telling me to stop taking pictures of their building. People are touchy and you can't have any reasonable expectation of privacy in a public building. Sorry, my mind wanders sometimes.

GrantH · Mar 19, 2011

I always have to say your lucky for living there in your threads haha, but I linked you to an image below that is almost the same makeup as yours. Maybe it will help you. I like your photo, but IMO the city looks 10x better in the evening/early night.

http://glimpsepa.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/minneapolis.jpg

Stradawhovious · Mar 22, 2011

I got bored after work tonight, and decided to give this one another go. Here is a different crop, differnt edit, and I used my EXTREMELY limited PS skillz to try to get rid of that light unsightly lamp post.

spacefuzz · Mar 22, 2011

I liked your original composition, but I like the lighting of the different crop. Thank you for removing the lightpost, that was extremely distracting!
I really like how the roads intertwine, too bad you cant do a long exposure at blue hour / sunset.

Stradawhovious · Mar 22, 2011

spacefuzz said:
too bad you cant do a long exposure at blue hour / sunset.

Who says I cant?

Its in the cards. Need to wait for a decent day. So far, just dreary rainy weather.

xjoewhitex · Mar 23, 2011

I really don't see how this has the fish eye effect at all, I also have the 10.5 and its pretty obvious when you use it. Unless possibly you have distortion control turned on but I didn't think it would work that well.