A fisheye in Taiwan

Back when the internet was young, and photo.net was the place to learn about photography, I saw a great fisheye image by Daniel Bayer of climbers traversing Capitol Peak’s famous knife-edge ridge. I haven’t seen many since. Fisheyes – especially the circular variety that project a full hemisphere onto a circular image – are mostly deployed for novelty effect (think comically distorted kid with nose close to the front element), or in pretty well-defined shooting situations (I’m sure we’ll see some for the opening ceremony of the World Cup). That said, I’ve always wanted to try one. As explained in this excellent article a fisheye is not merely a really wide lens but rather a completely different way of projecting the three dimensional world onto a two dimensional plane. The occasion of a work trip to Taipei prompted me to rent one (from LensRentals.com, whose service I highly recommend) and give it a try

Comments are closed.