As a photographer I found that many other photographers tend to treat a fisheye lens as a “fun” lens but they really don’t take it seriously. Most of them would say the lens is a novelty and the effect wears off quickly. I beg to differ and I’ll give you 6 reasons.
It's so wide and fun to use!
Introduction to Fisheye Lenses
Yes it is indeed fun to use a fisheye lens but to me it’s a very very useful lens. It is able to capture images of up to 180 degrees in front of you and everything you see and more gets caught.
Note: This part might get a bit technical, so if you like you can skip it (but it's good to know!). It might surprise you but there are actually a few kinds of fisheye lens:
- Circular fisheye lens - it only covers a circle within the frame
- Full frame fisheye lens - meaning it covers the whole frame, not to be confused with the sensor size
Circular vs Full Frame Fisheye (source: wikipedia)
And each of these fisheye lenses have their own so called mapping functions (or projections) which are based on some mathematical equations and names that scares me. But you can read all about it on wikipedia here.
Types of Fisheye Projections. Source: wikipedia
Recommended Lens
The lens I use and highly recommend to everyone are Samyang fisheye lenses. I have the Samyang 8mm f2.8 fisheye lens for my Fujifilm camera but they make them for all kinds of camera brands too. Why Samyang?
- It's the only lens to produce stereographical projection. See the animation above and you'll understand why a stereographical projection looks more natural for photography. This is especially true when taking people.
- It's sharp. Excellent image quality from Korea here.
- It's small. So small and so light, I almost always carry it whenever I have my camera. Indispensable when going on holidays.
- It's super easy to use. Set your focus to hyperfocal (e.g. for f4, set focus to 800 meters) and everything will be in focus. It's a manual focus lens, but you don't need autofocus for this kind of lenses.
- It's affordable. Compared to many lenses, the prices of Samyang lenses are a steal. They are also very well constructed and mostly metal.
Now here are my 6 reasons to love a fisheye lens!
#1. It makes great group photos
This is especially true when doing a wedding dinner table-to-table shoot. You can get everyone in the frame without them having to leave their seats and relocate most of the time.
#2. You Don't Miss Anything!
Large rooms with hundreds of people? No problem. You want the ceiling with that?
#3. Perfect for Selfies
Who says you only can take selfies with a smartphone?
Just a few shots of me and my wife during our trip to Laos last year! No tripod, no problem.
#4. Interior Photography Never Looked Better
Any room would look bigger with a fisheye. It's excellent for real estate agents and interior designers to capture any room with just one click!
#5. You can Convert a Fisheye Photo into an Ultra Wide Angle Lens!
If you are on a budget and can't afford an ultra wide angle lens OR if you don't have time to switch lenses, never fear you can easily "Defish" your fisheye photos and make them rectilinear ultra wide!
Before. Tadaaaa. After!
The process is quite simple using Lightroom. Anyone interested to find out how can just comment below and I'll be happy to share.
#6. It's fun. It really just is.
Did I mention it's fun to use? No other lens can match the fun factor of a fisheye lens!
Hope this inspires more of you to go pick up one of these great lenses. :) And if you like my work, please do follow me, resteem and/or upvote my post! Thanks for dropping by!
Here's another post by me for your reading pleasure: My Fujifilm X-T2 Review