Steve Pearce Photography - Weekend Through a Fishes Eye

STEVE PEARCE PHOTOGRAPHY

A Weekend Through a Fishes Eye!

As part of my hot air ballooning weekend, I hired a Canon 15mm, full frame fisheye lens. I had some specific shots that I wanted to get of the ballooning - shots such as from inside the balloon while it was on the ground. You can see the ballooning pictures here. During the weekend, waiting for the weather to sort itself out for ballooning however, I had plenty of time to wander around Berlin and shoot some familiar sites from a new perspective!

The lens is not a true fisheye - that is one that produces a round image on a 35mm frame, but it covers the full frame with a 180 degree view from corner to corner. This means that across the frame is just under 180 degrees and from top to bottom is less - I can't say what it is, it's wide but not 180. The lens is just a little larger than a 50mm lens and is fairly light.

Here are some of my impressions of the lens:

When you first look through the lens, it just
seems like an extreme wide angle, but as
soon as you tilt the camera and lens up
or down from level with the horizon......

wayheyhey get a load of that distortion!

You have to be careful, especially when taking portrait shots where the angle of view from top to bottom is almost 180 degrees, not to get yourself in the shot!

I noticed something a couple of times in the edge of the frame and then realised that they were my feet!

When you come to situations like this
and put the camera up to your eye,
it is as if you can see around corners!

With most standard lenses, I find myself taking steps backwards to get everything in. With the fisheye, it's the exact opposite. You stand in front of something and hold the camera up to your eye only to see acres of sky in the frame. In this shot, I kept moving forward to frame Berlin's Neue Nationalgallerie nicely and to get this sculpture in a decent position in the foreground, but when I was happy and moved my eye from the viewfinder, I saw that I was a couple of inches away from the sculpture! I found this on the ballooning day as well - I shot a couple of frames in the basket of the balloon and was trying to tell the other people in the basket with me - smile, you ARE in the picture!

I found that large open squares make a
good subject. You can get a least two sides
of the square in, along with plenty of sky!

The fisheye lens is great. Just think of all those times you have stood under a dome roof, not being able to fit everything in and wondering how you could make some interesting out of a scene - with this lens, there is just no issue!

People shots are quite a laugh too!

I had a lot of fun with this lens and I am tempted to buy it. It's pretty expensive at 600 - 700 Euros, and not one you would use too often, but it's fairly light and it would be great to know you have a lens in your bag which will fit everything in, wherever you are! At 50 Euros for a weekends rental though, I think I will just have to rent if I need it again. I would definitely recommend renting one though, it's a lot of fun!