Very Wide-Angle Non-Fisheye Lens for 35-mm?

[fmw]

Could you explain the differences in fisheyes for digital and 35mm in a little more detail please. I dont fully understand what you mean by diagonal vs round. Does this mean that fisheyes for 35mm shouldnt be used on APS sized sensors and vice versa? You say fisheyes on 35mm are very sharp, is this not true for aps fisheyes?

Apparently, the article answered your question about the diagonal full frame. You can use a fisheye for 35mm on an APS digital but it will no longer have a 180 degree angle of view. The angle of view will crop as with any other lens. Yes, fisheyes for APS are very sharp just like those for 35mm or larger formats. It is pretty hard to show sharpness with a 72 dpi jpeg but here's an architectural interior shot I made with the Nikon 10mm full frame fisheye on an APS sized sensor. While you really can't appreciate the sharpness, the depth of field is pretty obvious.

 

[fmw]

Forgive my ignorance, but: What's a "prime" vs. a "zoom" lens?

Prime is a term I never encountered until the internet happened. It refers to a lens of fixed focal length. Zoom lenses have adjustable or variable focal length, hence the ability to to "zooom" in and out. Fixed focal length lenses don't do that but are simpler and outperform zoom lenses by any measurable standard. However, they outperform the very best zoom lenses only by a little because zoom lenses have evolved into very effective photographic tools.

In the pre digital days I used zoom lenses only very rarely and never for anything critical. With digital, my zooms outnumber my fixed lenses by 2 to 1. Times have changed. Most photographers in this day and age, don't have a single fixed lens at all.

The image above was made with a fixed lens of 10.5 mm focal length. It doesn't zoom.

 

[usayit]

However, they outperform the very best zoom lenses only by a little......

.... but are several times the cost ...

 

[usayit]

As for panoramae, that's what I do now, I just get sick of the post-processing and there are problems when there happen to be nearby objects in the scene I'm shooting of a distant object (e.g. when I was at Meteor Crater, I shot a 27-picture panorama of a ~160° field, but there were signs right under me that were highly distorted and chopped into pieces as a result).

I wouldn't give up on panorama so quickly.... especially if you are really serious about landscapes. I observed a friend of mine and I have to admit... there is a lot involved that I originally thought. It isn't as simple as just mounting a camera on a head shooting a bunch of pictures and stitching them together. In the end, the extra work and effort was well worth it and the results were far better than any cropped panorama taken with a single lens and shot.

IIRC, he had a very sturdy tripod, special head with degrees rotation with preset marks, shoe mounted level, and the camera was mounted exactly on a particular axis. I'm not sure but I believe the camera and lens had to rotate around an axis that is right at the film/sensor plane. He had the viewfield already calculated for the particular lens he was using and the presets on his head was set so that the photos overlapped EXACTLY 25% on each side. What was kinda surprising was that he avoided wide angle lenses at all costs. It was counter-intuitive at first until he explained that wide angle lenses introduce horizontal and vertical distortions (straight lines are no longer straight) that made post-processing more difficult and inaccurate. I believe he shoots with either 35mm or 50mm lens... dont' remember though.. long time ago.

After everything was setup precisely and double checked, he used a wired remote and started to take the photos. The presets on the head made it easy to get rotating the camera exactly perfect to the degree without much fuss. Once back at home, he stitched them together. All of his precise setup made everything line up and very little post processing was necessary.

Thats about all I remember as I never went through the process myself... now that you've joggled some memory cells, I just might go ahead and try it out.... A quick search found this site that might be of some interest for you (and I):

http://www.panoguide.com/howto/

 

[fmw]

.... but are several times the cost ...

They are several times the cost of junk zooms, not great zooms. Most are cheaper than great zooms.

 

[usayit]

They are several times the cost of junk zooms, not great zooms. Most are cheaper than great zooms.

Actually.. thats what I meant.... hence bang for buck in terms of image quality, primes are the way. Or if $$$ is no object... high end zooms.

 

[Zatodragon]

Sigma's 15-30mm lens sound like it could be right up your alley. Was designed for full frame use, and of course, will work awesome on digital bodies. Take a look at that one.

 

[xfloggingkylex]

FMW, great picture. So that is a diagonal fisheye correct?

Pentax (what I shoot) makes a fisheye in their DA series (digital only) that is a 10mm-17mm 3.5-4.5. it says in the specs that it has a 180 field of view, but this is only for full frame correct? And am I correct to assume that the pentax is a diagonal?