Fisheye Lens

[carlostau]

half the price? nah, you can grab the nikon 10.5mm fish for maybe $100 more than the sigma. shop around.

No, I meant half the price of a Nikon 12-24. The 10,5 is great, but it's fixed.

 

[Mav]

Just got back from a brief trip to Chicago. Here's what a Nikon 10.5DX fisheye lens will do.

And from a trip in February to Taiwan:

Conensus this. :lmao: Don't listen to what old-timers on forums say who have either never used fisheye lenses and are just going by what other people say, or who have no idea how insanely useful and versatile fisheye lenses are nowadays with the advent of so many great image processing and fisheye conversion programs like DxO and Image Trends Hemi. My fisheye is a no-brainer lens for any travel kit because it's so wide, so compact and lightweight, and it's also an f/2.8 so it's fast and will work well in low light. And with a 160-degree horizontal field of view and 180-degrees diagonally, it's far wider than any rectilinear wide angle lens out there. A 10mm rectilinear lens on crop body DSLRs is still only about a 100-degree horizontal field of view and nowhere close to a fisheye.

If you want to make the same boring photos as everybody else, get a traditional rectilinear wide angle. If you actually want to make interesting photos that stand out, get a fisheye lens and some software. Kidding of course. Both have their uses and I think the lenses are different enough that you can have both in your kit at the same time and not have much overlap. I can get a lot of photos with my fisheye that simply aren't possible with even the widest rectilinear lens, and vice versa. That said, I have the new Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 (rectilinear) on order. I would have bought either the Tokina or Nikon 12-24 f/4 awhile ago, but I'm partial to needing f/2.8 for a lot of the available light photography I like to do where I'd just get sunk with an f/4 or slower. Can't wait to try out my new toy - just gotta wait until June before they ship.

 

[Mav]

There is also no refuting that the useable range of a fisheye is a lot less than other lenses, like say, a prime of most kinds. It is also very easy to get tired of 'the look".

who are these people that say this? I can do plenty of refuting all day long on that one. I personally get tired of the nothing in focus look of primes shot wide open to the point that I've sold most of mine. I do a lot more with my fisheye than I ever did with any of my primes.

Here's the usable range of a fisheye.

full fish:

hemi converted:

rectilinear conversion (90%), with some residual barrel distortion left in intentionally:

^ Even that one is still wider than pretty much any rectilinear lens. If you want less of a distorted look, then simply crop to the center of the image to get the equivalent of a much narrower view of a rectilinear lens. The only real limitation here is that it gets difficult to compose exactly what you want. In that case, just get a regular rectilinear lens.

 

[lostprophet]

...

stunning photos!!!

oh and I just love my Sigma 15mm F2.8 fisheye

 

[RebelTasha]

Mav I can't see your photo's only X's I hope they come back!

 

[Mav]

Fotki gets screwy at times. Hit refresh. They're still showing up for me.

 

[Helen B]

One of the properties of proper fisheye lenses that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet is that they don't suffer from natural illumination fall-off in the same way that rectilinear lenses do. Notice the corners in Mav's 'full fish' photos: no darkening.

Best,
Helen

 

[Village Idiot]

Peleng makes an 8mm fish that's competely manual and cost about $250-$300

It's not the best quality glass in the world, but I rather liked the one I got to play with.

 

[bapp]

I know this isn't very constructive.. but does nobody else think that Fish-eyes are just awful???

 

[Mav]

I know this isn't very constructive.. but does nobody else think that Fish-eyes are just awful???

how so? Example? Use one of mine if you want.

 

[Mav]

One of the properties of proper fisheye lenses that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet is that they don't suffer from natural illumination fall-off in the same way that rectilinear lenses do. Notice the corners in Mav's 'full fish' photos: no darkening.

Best,
Helen

Interesting, although most of the photos I posted were Hemi converted where the corners end up getting chopped while straightening out the verticals. Same with the full rectilinear conversions.

here's one that wasn't, and you can see some vignetting. I usually disable vignetting correction in DxO because it adds too much noise in the corners, and I usually like the effect of some subtle vignetting anyways. On this one the noise added from bringing the corners up a stop or two would have been distracting.

And another, this is full fish believe it or not.

You can see some very subtle vignetting in the corners there. I think both of those photos were shot at about f/4.


The one with Chicago's Hancock Tower is full fish too, but stopped down a bit in good light so I can't really see any there.

 

[bapp]

I think it is the unnatural distortions you get when using fisheyes at their widest. IMHO they are just not pleasing to the eye. I get a kind of sickly feeling when I look at them. As if on the deck of a boat in rough sea.

Dont get me wrong I have seen very effective uses of the below 10mm lens but I cant help getting the sense that many people use these lens' as a substitute for creativity.

For example:

This image is, interesting. Architecturally, stunning shapes, vertical and diagonal lines drawing us into the image. Fish eye or no fish eye.. there is interest to be held within.

Where as this image relies on the lens to create the interest..

Here is an example of what I would call using a fish eye to add interest instead of creating it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bazcraig/2082936950/in/set-72157603985719763/

 

[Mav]

I think it is the unnatural distortions you get when using fisheyes at their widest. IMHO they are just not pleasing to the eye. I get a kind of sickly feeling when I look at them. As if on the deck of a boat in rough sea.

Dont get me wrong I have seen very effective uses of the below 10mm lens but I cant help getting the sense that many people use these lens' as a substitute for creativity.

For example:

This image is, interesting. Architecturally, stunning shapes, vertical and diagonal lines drawing us into the image. Fish eye or no fish eye.. there is interest to be held within.

http://images35.fotki.com/v1154/photos/1/1055548/6080333/DSC_5341dh-vi.jpg

Where as this image relies on the lens to create the interest..
http://images31.fotki.com/v1093/photos/1/1055548/6080333/DSC_5285dh-vi.jpg

Here is an example of what I would call using a fish eye to add interest instead of creating it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bazcraig/2082936950/in/set-72157603985719763/

All fair points. I don't use my fisheye for artisitc effect as much as I use it for putting myself right in the middle of something. Like somebody on another forum has mentioned, "it's like being there". No other lens can really do that. I'm not trying to be creative as much as I'm just capturing a scene in its entirety. On the train station shot (#2) I could have easily done a full rectilinear conversion but then it would have just looked distracting in a different way with excessive stretching - that's what happens with extreme wide rectilinear lenses (Chicago Hancock Tower example). You can crop to the center more to avoid the excessive stretching and get a more normal looking photo, but then you've cropped away enough that you've no longer captured the scene in its entirety - just a portion of it. Anyways, it's all a matter of personal taste. Some hate it, but I love it.

The example that you linked from flickr is a circular fisheye, not a full-frame. That has a full 180-degree horizontal and vertical view and is a much different type of lens than the full-frame fisheye that I have. If you want to talk about very special purpose, that would be it.

 

[asfixiate]

Mav
How did you do the "sparkler" one. That's pretty cool.

All your shots so far looked cool but this is intriguing.

 

[Mav]

thanks! 5 second exposure at f/4 and iso400 with the setup on a tripod obviously and on its side. That way your 160-degree "horizontal" view becomes vertical and you can park your tripod right next to where you fireworks are going off and track them up into the sky. Triggered with my ML-L3 wireless release just before they lit off, and manual focus at infinity.