Phisheye Photos (a little photo heavy)

[crimbfighter]

I finally had the opportunity to go walking around downtown yesterday with the 8mm fisheye. In short, I...love...this...lens! It's a ton of fun! I've barely begun to scratch the surface on the creative ways this lens can be used. I am a bit frustrated in the effect the crop sensor has on it, though. I really wish I had a full frame to get the full effect of the circular image this lens produces.

Anyway, I was happy with a couple of the photos. I've found some interesting challenges with this lens, though. One, is the CA around the edges is pretty pronounced, especially when I push the blues in PP. Not too hard to PP out, but then again, I think it adds character to the lens! Another issue, is just the super wide angle. You really have to pay attention to the position of the sun, distracting objects, where your feet are and other things around the edge. You don't notice them when you're focusing on the center of the frame, so you have to look carefully from side to side before releasing the shutter. Just something I wouldn't have thought about. You also have to watch carefully for lens flare. And since the angle is so wide, you can't hold anything up to block the sun...

All in all, though, I think I'm going to have a ton of fun with it. I just can't wait until the day comes when I can put it on a full frame! Here are the best 9 photos I got from the hour or so I was out with it. There's obviously no EXIF data with this lens. For all of these, I put the aperture at f/5.6 and left it. Shutter speeds varied, depending on lighting, from 1/50 to 1/320. All PP was just color, contrast, lighting and sharpness adjustments. My favorites are 2, 8 and 9. These are as much for sharing, since there's 9 of them, but feel free to C&C if you wish/can.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7 Same as #6, just with selective coloring for the door. I'm not sure on the selective coloring, :thumbup: or :thumbdown: ?

8

9

 

[Derrel]

Excellent job on the first two shots. The first shot, of the skybridge, is just a DAMNED FINE job of using that lens on a crop-frame d-slr!!! The second shot's pretty decent...it would have been even nicer with more leaves on the tree, but stll good. Ah, but that first shot...sublime!

 

[crimbfighter]

Thanks Darrel! Agreed about the leaves. Shoulda gone out two weeks earlier!

 

[jamesdavidboro]

Yeh i agree the 1st shot blew me away! No5 is interesting but the rest just left me wanting a little bit more.

 

[Blake.Oney]

This wasn't shot with a fisheye, and it's just an experiment I did, but you could get the effect the way it's meant to be with that lens.

I made a couple mistakes when doing this. I only did a one level pano. You need to shoot the top of the horizon, the middle, and the bottom in a 360 degree view. Then you stitch them into one big pano and save it as a jpeg. For the software I'm linking you have to reduce the size. When I first tried it my file was like 120mb and the program crashed. I reduced it a lot. To like 20 mb I think and it worked fine. I don't know what the limit is, though. After you save it as jpeg you just open the program and then open picture from it, and click a button and it makes it birds eye. Here is a tutorial and at the very bottom of the page is a free download of the program. Panorama Tutorial - Deformation, stitching and Web viewing

I don't know if this is something you'd be interested in, but just thought I'd throw it on here in case since you have the perfect lens to do it with.

 

[twoboysnmygirl]

I agree that #1 is amazing, love it!

I think the selective coloring isn't really needed in the door shot, I really like it without!

I love the curve of the sidewalk in #9. Good job! :thumbup:

 

[crimbfighter]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. It's kinda funny, when I took that first one, of the skybridge, I really didn't think it would be the best liked of the bunch. Just goes to show you how you're blinded to your own work sometimes

I have to say, the more I look back at the selective coloring on 7, the more I regret doing it. Eh, well, never know till you try.

@Jamesdavidboro: I know what you mean, as far as being left wanting more. After more reflection on the photos, some of them seem to lack clear purpose. Almost as though they're neat because of the unique effect, but that effect isn't being put to it's full potential because it's not emphasizing anything. That's something I'm certainly going to work on.

@twoboysnmygirl: I'm glad you noticed the sidewalk. That was one of the reasons I like that one. It's almost like a Yin Yang, or something.