Fisheye Photography or: How I Learned to Tame the Curves
I’ve always loved ultra-wide angle (UWA) lenses. I have owned Tokina 11-16mm on my Canon 400D, Canon 17-40mm and Sigma 12-24mm on my Canon 5D, which the latter is the widest rectilinear lens you can mount on a 35mm or pretty much any other format camera. UWA lenses are challenging to work with, and at times unsuitable, but using them correctly can also be very rewarding. Fisheye lenses are 10 times more difficult to use and 100 times less useful than UWA lenses, but they can result in unique photos. The reason for both being so bad and good at the same time is that they are so difficult to tame. They distort the images so much that they remind us of a “fish eye”. Go figure how bad that is! But as they are so difficult to tame, there are far less GOOD photographs taken with them, and this opens up a lot of opportunities. By following a few rules, you can produce images that are wider than ultra-wide, looking almost rectilinear and very impressive. If you want to know how, keep reading!
When I was considering buying a mirrorless camera, one of the ideas was to buy a small affordable fisheye lens to try out my hand in fisheye photography. Shortly after buying the Sony NEX-6, I ended up buying the Rokinon 8mm F2.8 from Amazon on a Golden Deal for a very sweet price!
I’m not going to write a review on this lens, but shortly, it’s a very sharp, tiny, well-built “full-frame fisheye” lens with the only drawback of being very flare-prone. By full-frame, I don’t mean it fits a FF camera, but that it captures 180 degrees diagonally (in another word, it’s not a circular fisheye). It’s all manual of course, but you really don’t miss the autofocus in a fisheye lens. Everything is pretty much in focus in pretty much any aperture, as long as you don’t stick it up close to something. Even then, stopping down to F8.0 would put everything back in focus. As easy as that.
What I want to talk about is “how to do fisheye photography as if it’s not done with a fisheye lens”. Before starting, I should say that I don’t recommend this lens for beginner photographers. Composing with a fisheye lens is extremely difficult, as EVERYTHING around you will be in the frame. This usually results in clumsy, crowded and inherently distorted photos that are shear ugly to look at. The first 10 photos you take might be funny, but it soon becomes “too much” and too distorted for everyday use. So if you don’t know the basics of composition, and/or don’t have an experience with an UWA lens, do yourself and your pocket a favor: Don’t buy a fisheye lens! Start with an UWA lens. At least you don’t have the problem of distortion, and they are less wide than fisheye lenses.
There are two ways of shooting with a fisheye lens: To get the fisheye effect (read bulged-out and distorted), or to try to avoid it. The former is very easy: Just shoot pretty much anything with lots of lines in it, and you’ll see how the center is bulged out, and the lines are heavily distorted out.
Basically, any straight line that does not pass from the middle of the frame will be curved. Some people like this effect, and some don’t. I’m among the latter. If you want to avoid this effect, you have two options: Not shooting objects that have straight lines that does not pass from the center, or, trying to “defish” the image afterwards. Defishing can be done in different ways and with different softwares (and I’m going to touch on that shortly in the end), but mostly it does not result in normal-looking photos. Some of the defishing algorithms result in stretched, out-of-proportion images that IMO are better not used. So if you want to NOT get that fisheye effect, you really have one option, and I say it again: Do not shoot objects that have straight lines that does not pass from the center. Or in another word: Compose you images in such a way that the straight lines DO pass only from around the center of the image.
There’s one more important point. When shooting with a fisheye lens, a slight tilt of the camera up and down, or a small rotation to right and left result in even more distorted perspective (and renders the image useless for defishing afterwards). ALWAYS, ALWAYS try to level the camera. The built-in digital level on many recent digital cameras, including Sony NEX-6 is a heaven-sent for fisheye photography. Use it all the time!
If you follow the above advices, your images will look very much like the photos taken with an UWA lens, and even undistinguishable from one.
I bet you couldn’t guess this was taken with a fisheye lens!
About defishing. I haven’t tried many defishing softwares myself, but I looked around to see what suits my purpose. As I said, most of the defishing algorithms result in excessive distortions that defy the purpose. The only one that I found pleasing is the Image Trends Fisheye Hemi plugin for photoshop. Ken Rockwell has a very extensive review on it that you can check out. The Fisheye Hemi does not defish the image totally. What it does is reducing the bulging of the center and straightening the curved vertical lines (the horizontal lines will be left curved). It especially makes the portraits and group portraits a lot better, but you can also use it to your advantage in other cases. Take this example, for instance:
Original photo
Defished with Fisheye Hemi plugin
At the risk of repeating myself again: The important point is to keep the camera leveled. If the camera is not leveled, the defished lines will be oblique, and hence awkward. The combination of all these points, and choosing your subjects carefully can result in strikingly wide and impressive photos that does not “shout” fisheye!
Working with a fisheye lens and getting a presentable photo (read: not ugly) is quite difficult, but it opens up a lot of possibilities for creativity. Just choose your subjects carefully (not a lot of straight lines around the sides), compose even more carefully (especially to not include your feet in the frame!), level your camera, and use a modest defishing technique, and you’ll get impressed. And last but not least, remember that rules are for breaking! :-)