How Do You Obtain Fish Eye Look ??

[BlueNoteBelzy]

General Question: How do you obtain the wide angle fish eye look? Will any wide angle lens do or is there some special type you have to buy.

Thank You
Greg

[bondarnes]

A fish eye lens works best. For Nikon dx that would be the 10.5mm Nikkor.

[EuroEclipse]

Don is right. Getting an actual Fisheye lens is best. If you want to do it without buying anything, you can also do it in photoshop... but it's not the same. You lose out on some parts of the image.

[mickmcco]

The 10.5 Nikkor is a neat little lens, you'll enjoy it.

[venchka]

Trouble with crop cameras and fisheye lenses is that you loose quite a bit of the FOV. If you are trying to re-create the look of full frame fisheye photos, a crop body won't get it.

My other question would be: "WHY?" Fisheye lenses were hot about 20-30 years ago when they were new. After the new wears off, the photos don't hold that much appeal. One other thing: When the fisheye lens was new, there weren't many, if any, lenses that could come close to the fishye lens' FOV. Today there are a lot of lenses that come very close to the fisheye FOV without the distortion of a fisheye lens.

That's my personal opinion.

[CaptainTom]

The whole purpose of a modern fisheye lens is to GET the distortion. It's called art.

[venchka]

Right. They aren't exactly modern anymore.

[bondarnes]

Originally Posted by venchka

Fisheye lenses were hot about 20-30 years ago when they were new.

More like 40 years ago.

[venchka]

Fair enough. I wasn't paying close attention to camera lenses 40 years ago.

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by CaptainTom

The whole purpose of a modern fisheye lens is to GET the distortion. It's called art.

Actual you de-fish it with software for 180 degree coverage. I actually don't know of any fine art photographers using fish eyes.

[sanmay]

I am also looking for this.

I few months ago, I came across a post somewhere it contained an action on how to do
fish eye in PS. Anyone know if it?

[Kirk]

New to the forums, hi.

I just thought I'd jump in on this thread and add that 20-30 years ago when the fish eye lens was popular, there was not a real big extreme sports industry happening.

Now that extreme sports are huge business, extreme wide angle and fish eye lenses are very, very popular in that genre of photography. Skateboarding, BMX, Motocross, Snowboarding...all of these are very successfully and popularly shot with wides and fish eyes.

So, if you are interested in shooting extreme sports, a fish eye or very wide angle lens is pretty important and necessary.

[venchka]

Back in the Dark Ages, fisheye lenses were used in sports. Like around the pole vaulting & high jump pits. Nikon still holds the record as far as I know. 6mm. f/2.8. 220 degree field of view. 1972. So, I was around at the time. I still owned a pair of Nikon F bodies and 3 lenes then. I was more interested in longer lenses and larger formats.