The Fish-Eye

ERHAPS THE MOST surprising thing about the full-frame fish-eye lens is its ability to focus as close as 4 inches from the subject. Equally surprising for the first-time user is the bending of the horizon line that occurs with this lens. And the bending is further magnified when one tilts the lens at angles of 30 to 45 degrees to the horizon. In my mind, it’s a welcome “global” view that this lens provides of up-close-and-personal subjects while still rendering the whole scene in exacting sharpness. The only caution I would offer is to really check the edges of your viewfinder before shooting, as you may discover your own feet or other unwanted elements showing up near the bottom or sides of the frame. It truly is a wide angle of view.

It’s always with me, my fish-eye lens, and I embrace its vision with great enthusiasm when the right landscape presents itself—or when I wish to distort, to “fatten up,” a normally familiar subject. When seeking out landscapes, I’m almost always looking for those scenes that are almost devoid of any “living-room furniture”: deserts, prairies, plains, and of course coastlines. Imagine my joy at coming upon a dead rockfish, washed ashore from what I surmised was a meal (if only a bite or two) for the many sea lions that live out on the rocks adjacent to Oregon’s Yaquina Head Lighthouse.

    A full-frame fish-eye composition of a fish? Who would have thought? Crouching down low and moving close, I set the lens to its smallest aperture (f/22), focused on the fish, and adjusted the shutter speed until 1/30 sec. indicated a correct exposure. As the waves came in, I fired off several frames each time.

Fish-eye lens, f/22 for 1/30 sec.

There are many nature parks in Florida’s Everglades, and one such location provided another opportunity to put the full-frame fish-eye to work. On this particular afternoon, there were a number of cormorants drying out their feathers while sitting atop a small fence bordering the main path that ran throughout the park. I was amazed at how close these birds would let me get, so close in fact that I was soon reaching for my fish-eye lens.

    The bird allowed me all the time in the world to shoot this close-up, whimsical portrait. Handholding the camera, I set the aperture to f/22 and focused as close as I could—4 inches, in fact. After that, I simply adjusted the shutter speed until 1/60 sec. indicated a correct exposure and fired off far too many frames (a total of seventy-seven exposures, to be exact). Sometimes, when the situation before me just seems too unreal, I get caught up in it, a bit more enthusiastic than the scene really warrants, to the point where I just start firing off shot after shot without stopping to ask myself, “Is this really necessary?” In this case, it certainly wasn’t, since this was hardly an action-filled subject. Heck, the bird just sat there the entire time! It had no plans to move, fly, or do anything but keep its eye on me. And seventy-seven exposures later, what did I have to show for my efforts? Some seventy-six additional shots that are 99.9 percent exactly like the one you see here.

Fish-eye lens, f/22 for 1/60 sec.

If you could crawl inside your oven, what view would you have when someone takes out a cooked pizza? Before resting my camera and full-frame fish-eye lens on the bottom rack at the back of the oven, I engaged the camera’s built-in flash, setting it to rear curtain sync, and put the camera in Aperture Priority mode. I chose an aperture of f/16 for maximum depth of field and prefocused the camera to its shortest focus point of 4 inches. (Autofocus was turned off, as usual.) In addition, I engaged the camera’s self-timer to fire 5 seconds after I first pressed the shutter release. All that remained was to explain to the model that he needed to just stand there for a few seconds, acting as if he were about to take the fresh-baked pizza out of the oven. Getting my model to do exactly as I directed was the easiest part of the shoot, since the model in this case was me! Holding the pizza with one hand and firing the shutter release with the other, I held the pose you see here for 5 seconds, and voilà.

    For those who don’t know about rear curtain sync, here’s a brief explanation of how it works: Instead of the flash firing at the beginning of the exposure, rear curtain sync triggers the flash to fire at the end of the exposure. With the camera in Aperture Priority mode, the initial exposure took into account the light outside the oven in my well-lit kitchen, which was the available light on me. Then at the end of the exposure time, the flash went off and illuminated the interior of the oven, along with the pizza and my hand in the oven mitt. Easy stuff—really, it is! (P.S. Never put your camera in a hot oven. This oven may appear hot, but trust me, it was at room temperature—in fact, it wasn’t even turned on. The glowing red coils were achieved in Photoshop via an adjustment layer and shifting the red in the Color Balance menu.)

Fish-eye lens, f/16 for 1 second