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Getting Creative With Fisheye Camera Lenses
Aug 13, 2005 One of those Cosina lenses has just come up on eBay today - ends in 9 days: search eBay for some of these words: 24mm SUPER WIDE ANGLE LENS IN PENTAX K MOUNT- EXC. But the Pentax 28mm f2.8 lenses seem to come up all the time. Apparently there are two different Pentax-M versions - and the later one is said to be better (as is the Pentax-A version). Pentax K1000 35mm fully manual SLR camera. I've had it for years. Pentax A 50mm F2 lens. I bought it from B&H Photo. Phoenix 0.25x super fisheye lens.
Creating highly distorted and dynamic images, fisheye lenses can be a lot of fun to work with for photographers looking to capture a different perspective. At around 10-17mm on full-frame cameras, and wider on 35mm cameras, they're wider than an ultra-wide angle lens while having smaller apertures for capturing a greater depth of field. When coupled with filters, they open up a world of creativity, whether you're shooting with circular or full-frame fisheyes.
What Is a Fisheye Lens?
A fisheye is an ultra-wide angle lens designed to create significant visual distortion in the images it captures.
- A circular fisheye captures 180 degree views in all directions, creating a circular image with the edges of the frame being black.
- A full-frame fisheye only captures 180 degrees along its diagonal, therefore filling the frame with the image and eliminating any black edges.
- With 35mm sensor cameras, a fisheye will typically have a focal length of around 8-10mm, but this will increase to around 10-17mm if shooting with a full-frame camera.
What Are the Advantages of a Fisheye Lens?
A fisheye allows you to capture compositions and perspectives that a wide-angle or ultra-wide angle lens just can't and offers unique creative opportunities. When used to your advantage, the distortion and dynamism of fisheye lenses can create aesthetically pleasing images and add a different perspective to the scene.
![Pentax k1000 film camera Pentax k1000 film camera](https://www.saatsmediacloud.com/img5b3dede2b3ea2_l.jpg)
- Fisheyes are good for documenting extreme sports and underwater photography as they give the viewer a similar perspective to that experienced by the photographer.
- The distortion of fisheye lenses also gives the images a dynamic element, with straight lines curving, and the viewer's eye pulled up, down, or to the sides of the image frame.
What Should You Look for When Buying a Fisheye Lens?
Keep in mind that the focal length of any lens increases for cameras with a smaller sensor than 35mm. Some manufacturers, such as Pentax, create fisheye lenses specifically for cropped sensor cameras with shorter focal lengths, down to 1mm, so that they can still produce a 180-degree image.
- While a classic fisheye lens captures a 180-degree view, you can also find lenses that expand that to 220 degrees, although these tend to be heavier.
- Most fisheye lenses have a small aperture for a large depth of field, creating sharply focused images from back to front. This can make it difficult to isolate your subject from the background, which you should take into consideration when composing images.
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