Sydney from the Harbour Bridge pylon lookout
When I was suffering from Gear Acquisition Syndrome one of the earliest items I bought was a fish-eye lens. I’ve always liked the eyecatching effect but could never justify the cost of the Nikon item for a “toy” lens, until I found this :
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/822797-REG/Rokinon_FE8MAFN_8mm_Ultra_Wide_Angle.html.
Mine is branded “Rokinon” but apparently it is also sold under other names, all made in the same factory and selling for around the same price, give or take a few dollars.
Sydney at dusk
By cropping the top and bottom you can get a quick panoramic view, just take care to have the horizon central in the viewfinder, or else it will come out looking like this :
It is manual focus only, but really that is not a problem because of the incredible depth of field you can get with this lens. Set the focus to around 1 metre, aperture to f8, and everything from about 70cms to infinity will be in focus. Or set it to the minimum focus of 30cms for closeups and still be OK out to around 4m. This next photo was taken with the camera sitting on the road surface, propped up slightly by the lens hood :
What a fish might see if it was sitting on the road on the Hay Plains !
(I certainly did not have to worry much about the traffic out there!)
It’s got a nearly 180 degree field of view , not just horizontally but vertically as well, so you have to check your toes are not peeking into the bottom of the frame !
These cars were really in a straight line !
If you don’t like the curved “straight” lines on the edges you can use software to fix it up, to make it look more normal, but I am still learning to get that right.
