elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Hi all,

I've enjoyed helping on here, and from time to time, I've enjoyed asking for help, and receiving excellent help too.

I've just be the fortunate one to receive a new Sigma 8mm lens, or 'fish eye'. While the images are really unusual, I've put each into my Affinity Photo, and cropped the center area with a 16x9 rectangle. I'm enjoying the results, but I think I'm still on my 'learning curve' with this lens.

Do any of you all have/use an 8mm lens? And if so, any secrets or suggestions you'd like to share? Thanks.

Bill

User ID

What format ?

The widest FE I’ve found for FF corner to corner is 11mm. I do use a 7.5mm for corner to corner but only on m43.

If you’re using the 8mm for the 16x9 on DX that hits me as about perfect. I find the “circular fisheye” thing to be very limiting. If I want that once every tenth blue moon, I use a front thread auxiliary lens despite the compromises.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Cropping depends on the camera, i.e.: full frame vs. crop sensor.

I use an Opteka 6.5mm for Aurora photography on occasion. Works amazing well for full sky imaging!

No secrets... Just enjoy the lens and its distortion!

bwa

Opteka 6.5mm on full frame Sony mirrorless

(Download)

Quixdraw Loc: x

Don't have an 8, but have used wide lenses back into film days, and still do. They are great for working very close to subjects, for deliberately exaggerating foreground / background relationships, for exaggerating body parts - someone close reaching toward the lens will appear to have an enormous hand, for example. I once used a 20 mm to slim a subject's hips by tilting the lens. They also render interesting effects when used on circular subjects. A rather specialized tool, mostly fun, but on rare occasions perfect for the job at hand. Enjoy!

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

bwa

tradio Loc: Oxford, Ohio

8mm is a specialty lens that I would play with for a weekend and then be ready to pass it along. My widest is a 14-24 and I haven't had it on in two years...

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I love ultrawideangle rectilinear lenses, but not so much fisheyes. They are a kind of one trick pony, and the look gets old fast. The lens you have was, I believe, designed as a full fisheye for full frame. The circle look gets very old very fast, and cropping as you are doing fills the frame, but it is a very radical crop, so you are losing a lot of resolution.

One suggestion, using it as you are, is that after you crop you can apply the IMADIO fisheye hemi plugin, if you use Photoshop. This will straighten the verticals, although the horizontals will still keep their curves. Ken Rockwell did an informative review:

https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/fisheye-hemi.htm

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I have a Meike 6.5mm fish eye lens. I thought I had a very wide angle non-fisheye, but I don't see one listed in my inventory.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Jerry, you must have a gazillion lenses, for which you need to check your inventory. I'm kidding, of course. But I'm certain now that you have more lenses than I do.

Kymarto, thank you for the lead for the Fisheye-Hemi. I see that it's available as a plug in for my Affinity Photo. I think I know what my project tomorrow will be ... after I trim some trees in the morning.

BTW, just to share a thought. I thoroughly enjoy working on my image in the spirt of High Dynamic Range. Even in my physics class, I teach my students about the huge dynamic range our eyes have, far greater than our DSLRs. Hence, the drive for HDR. Now, the fish eye? While HDR helps to approach the range our eyes can see, a super-wide angle lens actually does create images wider than our eyes can see. My editing a 16x9 rectangle in the center gives me "almost" a non-bending of a very wide image, which I like a great deal. But the bending? Well, thanks to Kymarto, I now know a solution to the pending too.

BTW, since I've just dropped a major hint for us all here, to realize our eye captures and send to our brains an image with extremely great dynamic range, our when it comes to our color vision, our eyes do have one significant weakness. Can you all figure out what that might be?

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

I have a 9mm, 1:8.0 fisheye lens, for my Olympus OM-D E-M1, M4/3 camera.
I believe it was intended as a body cap and as such it is almost always mounted on the camera.
When the grandkids are around, it's a neat little lens to have some fun with!
When it's light outside, I'll go and take a picture or two and post it here.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I try to keep my camera inventory small, selling what I'm not using. I still have to check my inventory at times, though. I have several lenses for Nikon, but only two for Sony and one for Fuji.

fetzler Loc: North West PA

I recently posted a few fisheye images. Embrace the distortion and enjoy. This lens has a focal length of 3.5mm and is for MFT

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-700332-1.html

badapple Loc: Twin Lake, Michigan

Wow. Neat effect.

stan0301 Loc: Colorado

I use the Tamron 8-16 a lot - regularly make 20x30’s no problem at all

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Thank you Stan. I'm glad I'm not the only one exploring and enjoying the super wide view lens.