Got out and created images several days this week. I decided to buy an ultra wide-angle fish-eye lens to provide me with another tool for landscape work. The fish-eye lens is interesting due to the 180 degree field of view. When you stand in place and look straight ahead, everything you see with your peripheral vision (without moving your eyes or head), ends up being in the image when using a lens like this. Since this lens is fixed at 7.5mm, it is not possible to zoom. If you want to be closer to your subject, you have to physically move the camera closer. The lens can cause some very interesting distortion as well. When standing near objects, they tend to appear to curve in towards the center of the image. If you want to get all nerdy and technical, you can read up on these lenses here: Fish-eye lens

Let’s start with a couple of standard images taken with my normal gear.

Now, since that last image is of the Pastol Bay tug, using a standard lens, I’ll show another image of the tug taken with the fish-eye lens.

Notice how the perspective has changed? Of course I’m not standing in exactly the same spot (different days), but I did try place the camera so I would have a comparison image.

This image is a more typical landscape taken with a fish-eye lens. But, if you look closely at the bottom corners, you can see the dock appearing to curve into view. I had the tripod placed with two legs directly against the edge railing on the dock.

The “Smiling Wall” was an exploration of using the fish-eye lens with closer subjects.

This image is taken with the front of the lens less than 8″ from the memorial face.