Just bought a Rokinon 8mm Fish-eye lens to play – slightly fiddly to use as its all manual with open metering, but seems to work ok:

Engineering museum by brf, on Flickr

There’s one available for my camera, but I can’t imagine what I’d do with it… Plus it’s £800.. like that shot though – looks like a cat’s eye.

This was only £240 and comes with mounts for most SLRs…

Hmm.. been tempted by the OM mount adapter for mine but.. I dunno.. just too many things to mess about with 🙂 Fisheye is one novelty that can work though but it’s still a particular effect that you could imagine getting fed up with.. no..?

Novelty value only I think…

Try and take the most bizarre pics you can and post them up… Gotta have a sense of humour with that lens I reckon 🙂

Perfect for portraits! 😉

Slight fisheye is good for interior photography, tends to make rooms look bigger 🙂

This one makes my house look like a narrow boat – really long and thin – will post some up later (need to get the Tripod out for indoor ones)…

A very elongated Kitchen..

Kitchen by brf, on Flickr

That’s pretty good. I bet that would straighten up nicely too.

That’s not exactly a “true” fish eye but it looks ok. They are very much a novelty lens and you’ll no doubt go round using it for everything for a few weeks to come and then resign it back to the bottom of your camera bag where it will gather dust.

Yep – I think that’s exactly what will happen 😉

I’ve got that lens too – it’s made by Samyang but branded as various things. It’s really good for the money imo. I partly bought it for video but I use it quite a bit (probably too much 🙂 )

Cows by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

Morecambe Prom BMX-4 by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

Carpe Diem – band profile pic by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

St George’s Works-14 by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

Nice photos 🙂

Will have to keep experimenting…

A quick trip into London to get a Visa and saw this opportunity:

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel by brf, on Flickr

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel by brf, on Flickr

It’d be good to get onto the platforms where the champagne bar is – the roof there should look good through the fish …

Wasn’t so impressive inside – you really need to get close to subjects to distort them nicely.

Captures a wide fov though:

St Pancras Station by brf, on Flickr

have ya tried taking a pic of yer todger with it? Not for posting here, i mean just out of interest

I have a 10mm nikon one that I use for doing things like this;

Office360 by fettling, on Flickr

It’s a 360 degree panorama shot as a light probe – composite of 42 photos means the hdr version records light information.
I then use them to light my CGI work.

I’ve never had the time / patience to play with photo SW eg HDR, but that composite looks pretty impressive – plus you used a quality lens rather than my cheapo gimmick 8mm 😉

CM – Still can’t get my todger in the frame, need an even wider angle lens 😉

footflaps, you could stitch things together yourself in photoshop to creat a 360 pano without the top and bottom or lightprobe stuff would be a total 6 shots.
I used Autopano because it takes the hard work out of the equation when you are dealing with 42 images!

I also have a nodal ninja panoramic head which keeps the lens axis in the right place. Dont see why a landscape view wouldn’t work straight off the tripod though.

Cheers – will have to investigate some SW…

I’ve got one of the Pentax fisheye zoom lenses. At the wide end it’s a proper fisheye effect e.g.:

Nearer the long end it can also be used to give a more normal wide angle effect if you keep the horizon central and crop to panoramic:

When I first got the lens I was guilty of overusing, however I’ve calmed down now so only use it occasionally. It’s pretty small though so easy to keep in the bag. I’ve also got a normal 10-20mm zoom that gets a lot mure use, but having the fisheye can be fun.

I like that Eiffel Tower shot!

Great shots.. the pics on here got me interested in it, now I want the Oly 8mm.. cheers guys! 👿

I did have a bit of a play with de-fishing software and got some useable results. Here’s the original shot:

and here it is de-fished:

There is some noticeable CA on the de-fished shot (most noticeable in the trees on the left) but overall it’s not too bad.

I quite like that one fished, actually.

How about partial de-fishing?

Love the pics!!!

I have been so tempted with a Sigma 4.5mm circular fisheye recently

partial de-fishing

That proper made me chuckle. Always fancied a fisheye, but I have a 10-20 which I only use occasionally so I can’t really justify it

The oly one has a 180 degree field of view diagonally. A review said you have to be really carefully not to get your feet in the bottom of every shot 🙂

Why are they called fish-eye lenses? Is this really how fish see the world?

I’ve not seen many fish using a DSLR with an 8mm lens…..

I think it’s because they look like fish’s eyes.

But I suspect that is how they see the world to an extent. However.. would the different refractive index of water require their eye lenses to be more bulged out to get the same field of view as a normal eye?

Footflaps – you just cost me £300…

(won an Oly 8mm one on eBay!)

Excellent – been over-using mine all WE, will post a few soon…

I did really want the 9-18mm why dangle, but having bought this I’m struggling to get worked up about the 9-18.. squares are for squares 🙂

You had any luck de-fishing btw?

What’s the defishing software you used epicsteve?

Diagonal 180 degree field of view.. 😯

Elements has distortion correction.