Difficulty choosing... Fisheye vs UWA...

[night86mare]

shots that work better with fisheye effect

either due to greater coverage required, or distortion emphasis

 

[giantcanopy]

For a start I would second the use of an UWA. It has more applications. FE can be pretty niched.

At least thats what I think. I had lots of fun with my UWA. But it took me much considerations if I really wanted to get an FE for occassional usage.

Ryan

 

[Kit]

Contrary to beliefs, it is possible to get a straight horizon with a fisheye lens (without defishing) if it is far away enough...

Er..... fisheye or not, your centre axis will always be straight. Distance is irrelevant.

 

[ombre]

woah, great shots nightmare and tomcat... very hard to decide since both creates nice pictures at certain times or another.

Hm.. seems like I will take the cheap Zenitar to start... and defish them if necessary... I'm seldom a serious landscaper anyway, though the perfect straight lines look good, I can live without for now... if I like a UWA next time, I'll just top it over. Afterall, its about the cheapest FE around, and I just want to cover range.

Got a deal today, hope the lens is a good one!

Thanks a lot for helping with the pictures!

 

[tomcat]

Er..... fisheye or not, your centre axis will always be straight. Distance is irrelevant.

Not really true in practice. FE (and UWA) distorts more the closer the subject is to the lens and that includes straight horizontal lines at the centre of the frame. What's more, to minimise the distortion, the camera has got to be dead centre perpendicular to the horizontal lines.

If the straight line is the horizon very far away at the centre axis, the camera is for all intents and purposes pointing perpendicularly to the horizon... hence the straight line at the horizon.

If the subject with horizontal lines is in the mid-distance or close to the camera, it could suffer distortion even if it is at the centre axis as most of the time it is not practical to be perpendicular to the subject because of space or compositional constraints. Even if the distortion at the centre axis is minimised, the rest of the subject slightly off-centre would still distort when shot with a FE, most of the time in a visually unesthetic manner. This would be where a UWA would be better off. Example...

This is not a keeper for me.

 

[tomcat]

woah, great shots nightmare and tomcat... very hard to decide since both creates nice pictures at certain times or another.

Hm.. seems like I will take the cheap Zenitar to start... and defish them if necessary... I'm seldom a serious landscaper anyway, though the perfect straight lines look good, I can live without for now... if I like a UWA next time, I'll just top it over. Afterall, its about the cheapest FE around, and I just want to cover range.

Got a deal today, hope the lens is a good one!

Thanks a lot for helping with the pictures!

Thanks.
Both the FE and UWA are actually niche lenses for adding that touch of drama to your images. However, getting either of them does not quarantee good pics all the time. You would need to learn when and where they could be used to their greatest effect. A lot of the time, people would say that it is very difficult to use these lenses and the lenses would sit in their dry cabinets most of the time or they would eventually sell them off.

Though I have both, I actually find the most use for the wide angle end of my full-frame 24-70mm for landscape shoots.

 

[ombre]

Thanks.
Both the FE and UWA are actually niche lenses for adding that touch of drama to your images. However, getting either of them does not quarantee good pics all the time. You would need to learn when and where they could be used to their greatest effect. A lot of the time, people would say that it is very difficult to use these lenses and the lenses would sit in their dry cabinets most of the time or they would eventually sell them off.

Though I have both, I actually find the most use for the wide angle end of my full-frame 24-70mm for landscape shoots.

Just got my FE... the pics ain't fishy at all really... it distorts about as much as my kit lens would have (corners abit more of course)... except wider... all in all, seems like a UWA with round corners... the center is almost preserved. Coz i'm on a cropped body I guess.

Wonder if its a good thing, its abit neither here nor there now.. Maybe i'll just defish it most of the time. =X

Now I gotta learn how to use it, any tips for starters with a FE?

 

[tabako]

I suddenly wondered something, the human eye is considered wide angle right.

How come there are no distortion when the eye is looking at something? Why can't lens copy the human eye design. Is it because the "sensor" of our eye is concave, film and digital sensor are flat, thats why lens can't copy human eye design.

 

[chalib]

I suddenly wondered something, the human eye is considered wide angle right.

Nope. You got wrong information.

 

[night86mare]

I suddenly wondered something, the human eye is considered wide angle right.

How come there are no distortion when the eye is looking at something? Why can't lens copy the human eye design. Is it because the "sensor" of our eye is concave, film and digital sensor are flat, thats why lens can't copy human eye design.

in general, it is agreed that when the human eye CONCENTRATES on something, the perspective is roughly 50mm in 35mm film terms.

but peripheral vision is a lot more than that, but there is no such thing as all the details being captured at once, i suppose.

anyways, this is really a topic for another section, you can search, it has been discussed before i think.

 

[Kit]

Not really true in practice. FE (and UWA) distorts more the closer the subject is to the lens and that includes straight horizontal lines at the centre of the frame. What's more, to minimise the distortion, the camera has got to be dead centre perpendicular to the horizontal lines.

If the straight line is the horizon very far away at the centre axis, the camera is for all intents and purposes pointing perpendicularly to the horizon... hence the straight line at the horizon.

If the subject with horizontal lines is in the mid-distance or close to the camera, it could suffer distortion even if it is at the centre axis as most of the time it is not practical to be perpendicular to the subject because of space or compositional constraints. Even if the distortion at the centre axis is minimised, the rest of the subject slightly off-centre would still distort when shot with a FE, most of the time in a visually unesthetic manner. This would be where a UWA would be better off. Example...

This is not a keeper for me.

If you've studied the FE photos better, you'd realise the distortions stems from the centre outwards. Past the dead centre of the frame, they will be stretched towards the left and right side, top and bottom. There will be a point where a line will be dead straight, that's the dead centre.

The reason why you think objects nearer to you distort more is because they are further away from the centre of the frame. Shoot something flat and you'll realise it. Lines at dead centre of the frame will always be straight. Its common sense.

 

[Kit]

Frame a photo with the horizon at dead centre. Then pull a string right in front of your camera, cutting the frame at dead centre too. Both the horizon and string will be straight, regardless of distance.

 

[ombre]

I suddenly wondered something, the human eye is considered wide angle right.

How come there are no distortion when the eye is looking at something? Why can't lens copy the human eye design. Is it because the "sensor" of our eye is concave, film and digital sensor are flat, thats why lens can't copy human eye design.

Because Lenses are made by man, Eyes are made by God ^^.

In fact the image cast on our eyeballs are inverted. =P (same with the lenses actually)

I was also thinking about this on the train actually... but hm... human vision is not lossless... but we'd never find out through our own perception, coz we'd imagine what we do not see anyway. Smth to read up would be "gestalt psychology, principle of closure". And his other principles too.

I personally will consider the human eye wide angle. Yes nightmare is right that when a human is consciously processing his or her own perception, its roughly... I remember a site quoting 42mm in 35mm film terms.

However this is debatable. Which consciousous perceives roughly 90 degrees FOV.. our peripherial vision is roughly 120 to 135 degrees... furthermore, we can actually see nearly 180 degrees if we allowed ourselves too. It will lack details.. but hm. And otherwise, all peripherial vision is recorded in our subconscious memory too... imagine this, a ball is suddenly kicked towards your face from the extreme side of you, in a normal case, you'd be able to react without thinking. You can actually see it.

Anyway I just reviewed some of my test shots... the zenitar is pretty sharp stopped down... However, its not really fishy at all! All my pics look like they're taken with a UWA. =(

Anyway, anyone can recommend some de-fishing programs? I tried using the barrel correction in photoshop but it takes away the edges of my pictures.. hmm.

 

[night86mare]

Anyway I just reviewed some of my test shots... the zenitar is pretty sharp stopped down... However, its not really fishy at all! All my pics look like they're taken with a UWA. =(

any shots to show?

 

[Lolrence]

I think it all depends what you're shooting. Personally, I've a fisheye that I sold off, and currently have a sigma 10-20 for my landscapes. Sometimes, when I composing my scenes, I'll want shapes/forms to fall in a specific way, that leads the eye in a certain way etc, and that's something I can't really achieve with the fisheye, (again, very dependent on what outcome you want) since it's curves almost everything and tend to make certain elements (dependent on scene) that I find distracting even more pronounced. I personally find it harder to compose my photos with a fisheye cause it's not as easy to visualize the photo you wanna take as using a UWA.

Take note, all those point above are IMO.

Another thing to take note is that if you shoot landscapes often, will it bother you to de-fish every single photo that you want at the end of the day? It'll be a real bother, and you might not be able to keep the de-fishing consistent.

 

[tomcat]

Anyway, anyone can recommend some de-fishing programs? I tried using the barrel correction in photoshop but it takes away the edges of my pictures.. hmm.

I like Fisheye Hemi.
http://www.imagetrendsinc.com/products/prodpage_hemi.asp
It's not free though.

 

[giantcanopy]

Anyway I just reviewed some of my test shots... the zenitar is pretty sharp stopped down... However, its not really fishy at all! All my pics look like they're taken with a UWA. =(

Coz i'm on a cropped body I guess.

You answered urself in an earlier thread.
You used a full frame FE on an APS-C sensor.

Ryan

 

[ombre]

any shots to show?

no artistic shots, just some snapshots... without close inspection, it the distortion doesn't seem to be obvious... i believe even the 18-55mm or 17-85mm fairs much worse.