Fisheye Lenses

Lunch at the top of the Tower of the Americas.  This is a situation
where the fisheye distortion actually works... not only was I able to
get all of us in the frame but I got the rest of Earth in there too!

There are all sorts of different lenses available today. There are long telephoto lenses, medium telephoto lenses, standard telephoto, wide telephoto, prime, macro, tilt-shift, wide angle, fisheye, portrait, and all sorts of additional specialty lenses. The list goes on and on...

Lately I've been doing a lot of writing about long telephoto lenses for shooting photos of wildlife but I've been wanting to write about a completely different type of lens since arriving back from our long journey to San Antonio. This is a lens which provides a bit of a strange view and one which I had just used for the first time on this trip. For certain applications, this lens really was a great choice... the fisheye lens.

I've wanted a fisheye lens for years. It really is an odd lens though and it can be difficult to use. It is called a fisheye lens for a reason... the view is so wide and distorted that it appears as though you are looking at a fish looking through a round fishbowl. The distortion can be minimized by how you shoot as well as minimizing it in post-processing but it is this distortion that gives us such a wide angle view.

Another situation where the Fisheye lens works...
there was no way to fit the entire Tower of the
Americas into the frame without this lens.

While we were planning our trip to San Antonio, I tried to plan out all the sights we would see and how I would shoot them. I tried envisioning this city I hadn't seen in three decades. I studied maps and photographs. I wanted to be sure I had the correct lenses for the job.

I knew we would be in tight quarters fairly often and that there would be a good sized group of us. This meant I would need a very wide angle lens in these situations so I could not only get all of us in the frame at the same time but so we could easily see where we were at that moment too. 

I decided to get a wide angle prime lens... a 16mm, f2.8 lens that also had two converter lenses available... an ultra wide angle converter and a fisheye converter. This lens and the two converter lenses proved to be invaluable for this trip.

When we arrived back home and I had a chance to review all the photos I shot on my big desktop graphics monitor, I knew that I made the right decision in going as wide as possible with my lenses. Big groups of people are difficult to shoot in tight quarters so wider fields of view from my lenses was definitely the way to go.

That being said, there were times where that 'fisheye' look really looked strange... almost making you dizzy as you view the photo... distorted faces... too many straight lines sometimes curving so much it is hard to believe they are actually straight in real life. These few photos needed some editing.

In this photo below, the view is a bit distorted with too many curved lines but the biggest problem for me is the distorted faces. So, I applied some digital correction to the image by 'bending' out some of the typical fisheye bubble. Because I used a fisheye lens here, I was able to capture both Sheila and Adam as well as the environment around them and off in the distance... 

This next image was very distorted in its original form because of shooting with the fisheye lens in such a small, confined space. That being said, I needed the widest lens possible in order to capture the entire room in one single frame. Since I used the fisheye conversion lens, the walls and doors at the sides of the frame were curved... again, to correct this distortion, I applied a bending out of the view to eliminate most of the fisheye bubble. This one showed the most improvement from post-processing on the computer because those curved lines which were supposed to be straight were so close to the straight edges of the frame. If I had used a standard lens for this shot, I never would have been able to get the entire space in the frame... not even close...

I managed to shoot a lot of shots in Union Station in Chicago that looked perfectly fine in the fisheye view but some of these shots needed some de-fishing. This one below was one which benefited a little from eliminating the fisheye bubble. In this wide and straight corridor, the view appears more natural and easier on the brain if it is de-fished...

Sometimes, the fisheye lens is the perfect option... I love when you use a fisheye lens to exaggerate the curvature of the Earth. This last shot from the top of the Tower of the Americas looks great with that fisheye bubble and curved lines (but, unfortunately, shot through glass causing some reflections)...  (Did I mention that we had nothing but overcast skies and rain the entire week we were in San Antonio?)

Overall, I love the very wide view and the 'feel' from using a fisheye conversion lens. Most of the photos I shot with the ultra-wide converter and the fisheye converter lenses look just fine as they are straight out of the camera. Some of the images, however, benefited from de-fishing though so it was nice to be able to accomplish this in post-processing on my graphics computer. 

There are some rules to follow to get the images to look good when using lenses this wide. First, when you shoot the photo, try to keep the horizon in the middle of the frame unless you want to exaggerate a curved horizon line. The further you move the horizon up or down away from the center of the frame, the more that straight horizontal line will curve (see my photo, above, shot from the top of the Tower of the Americas). 

The next rule is to try to keep people near the center of the frame... do not put people at the very edge of the frame (that is rarely a good idea anyway)... everything near the edges of the frame will be distorted the most. If a person is near the edge of the frame they will curve... they will be stretched... their faces will be distorted. Basically, those people you put near the edges of the frame will begin to resemble Gumby!

Sometimes trying to eliminate the fisheye bubble will result in even more distortion in much more noticeable places so this doesn't work for all shots anyway. It there is a pattern of any sort near the edges/corners of the frame, de-fishing will only make the image worse. That pattern will get distorted the opposite direction making things look either just as distorted as the original fisheye version or worse. The other problem with de-fishing an image is that you might narrow the field of view down so much that you may as well have not used the fisheye lens in the first place. 

Being that this was a family trip and focused on family in an unfamiliar and culturally contrasting environment than 'home', I do love that I was able to get all of us in the frame while also seeing and recognizing the broad landscape in many shots by using either my ultra-wide angle conversion lens or my fisheye conversion lens. I was able to effectively capture big landscapes from confined spaces. Some don't like the curves of a fisheye lens but, for certain applications I feel it looks great and gives a very wide view with a minimum of fuss for the photographer.

There definitely is a time and place for these odd little lenses!