What lens took these?

[ChrisF79]

Greetings:

A realtor in my town has these pictures up on the MLS and I was wondering if you guys could speculate as to what lens he is using. Also, what do you think of the pictures? The wide angle-ness* shows so much but is it too much distortion?
http://www.chrisfarrugia.com/temp/1.jpg
http://www.chrisfarrugia.com/temp/2.jpg

* yes, that's a word =)

 

[Mav]

Looks like a full frame fisheye lens with the Image Trends Hemi plug-in. That de-fishes it in the vertical direction to keep people and walls looking normal, but leaves horizontal things curved to maintain the maximum field of view. You can also do full rectilinear conversions, among other things. Very nifty lens! I have one. For Nikon DX cameras, their 10.5mm fisheye will give a 160-degree horizontal angle of view, and a 180-degree diagonal angle of view. Compare that to a 10mm rectilinear wide angle which only goes to about 100 degrees horizontal, and wide angles seem long in comparison.

 

[Big Mike]

It's against the rules to display photos that are not yours, I changed them to links.

I can't tell what lens these were taken with. There is some distortion but the verticals all look straight..which makes me think there may have been some post process corrections.

With these types of shots...it's not essential that things are displayed accurately, without distortion. It's much more important to show the space.

 

[Tennessee Landscape]

could an 18mm focal length take that shot?

 

[D-50]

When ever I shoot residential interirs I always go with my 10mm. 18mm is not wide enough at all. Those had to have been taken with some sort of fisheye lense because a typical 10mm will not distort things like that.

 

[usayit]

When ever I shoot residential interirs I always go with my 10mm. 18mm is not wide enough at all. Those had to have been taken with some sort of fisheye lense because a typical 10mm will not distort things like that.

You can have a ultra-wide 10mm (just like yours ) AND a fisheye with the same focal length 10mm. Canon's line has a 14mm non-fisheye but a 15mm fisheye. Ie... there is no such thing as "typical" 10mm.

For me.. it looks like it has been stitched.

 

[Meysha]

As a real estate photographer, I would never send this as a finished product to an agent. Even though it is showing the full room and space etc, it's too distorted to give a proper representation of it.

Personally, I try to recreate each space as lifelike as possible. I shoot at 10mm wideangle (not fisheye), and correct the distortion in the walls etc in photoshop.... ending up with something realistic.

IMO, it's an interesting photo - i just wouldn't use it to market a place, personally.

 

[ChrisF79]

Those pictures are taken by the local company in town that does the 360 degree virtual tours. So if I go in with a non-fisheye 10mm lens, then should I just use a plugin in Photoshop to fix it?

I don't have a 10mm lens yet so that would be the next purchase.

 

[Rick Waldroup]

Having shot a bit of real estate in past years, I would not be surprised to find out this is an image from an Ipix type of system. They are used to create the Virtual Reality shots you see on real estate sites, hotel sites, and so on. It really is a cheap system.

It works like this. Usually the photographer is using a simple P&S with a fish eye attachement on the lens. He sets the camera up on a tripod, shoots a 180 shot one way, rotates the camera the other way, using a click-stop head on the tripod, shoots another 180. Later, those two shots are stitched together and then "opened" up to create the VR. After the photographer shoots the VR shots, he then finds a spot in the room, usually in a far corner and shoots one more shot. This too, is later opened up, run through a program to straighten it up a bit and you have your extreme wide angle shot.

This is a very in-expensive set-up. A cheap P&S digital camera with a fish eye attachement and the software. That way, one camera and one lens does both the VR and the still shots. That is why you find so many realtors using this. However, you are really limited in what you can do when it comes to lighting and so on. They almost always have to be shot with available light and flare is a huge problem.

There are several other systems out there like the Ipix. Here is a link to Ipix.

http://www.ipix.com/index.html

 

[Alex_B]

Those pictures are taken by the local company in town that does the 360 degree virtual tours. So if I go in with a non-fisheye 10mm lens, then should I just use a plugin in Photoshop to fix it?

I don't have a 10mm lens yet so that would be the next purchase.

If they do virtual tours, then there is also the possibility that these images are just side products and not really meant as what would be shown a customer to advertise something.

Very likely that they are stitched from a row of images taken vertically as a cylindrical projection: camera on a tripod and rotated around the nodal point of the lens. On full frame a 17mm could do the job, on a crop sensor, a 11mm could certainly do as well.

 

[abraxas]

Too much distortion regardless of what the lens used was. I like the sigma 10-20 wide angle. Correct distortion with photoshop although I've found 'some' is acceptable.

 

[ChrisF79]

Too much distortion regardless of what the lens used was. I like the sigma 10-20 wide angle. Correct distortion with photoshop although I've found 'some' is acceptable.

When you are mentioning fixing the photo in photoshop, how exactly are you doing it? Which plugin do you recommend?

 

[D-50]

You can have a ultra-wide 10mm (just like yours ) AND a fisheye with the same focal length 10mm. Canon's line has a 14mm non-fisheye but a 15mm fisheye. Ie... there is no such thing as "typical" 10mm.

Lets not get into symantics here, I used the word "typical" because most people using a 10mm wide angle are not using a 10mm fisheye. Do you assume all 10mm are fish eyes unless stated otherwise?

 

[MelsBels]

He's definitely using wide angle.
You can also edit the photo to look like it is 'magnified' towards the center or a 'virtual tour' snapshot... by using tools in Photoshop or Gimp. In my Gimp program, the tool is called the Perspective tool.

 

[Meysha]

When you are mentioning fixing the photo in photoshop, how exactly are you doing it? Which plugin do you recommend?

I don't use a plugin to correct the distortion. I just use the skew function (of the move tool. Click on the dotted line outlining the image, then right click on the image and select skew) to correct the slanty walls, and then stretch it out a bit to make up for the fact it looks short.