Fisheye lenses are rather unique creative niche lenses and until I went to Palm Cove I didn’t really think I had a need for one – but up there, a fisheye was the only way to capture the tall palms on the beach with the ambience and field of view I wanted. For those images I used the cheap Samyang/Rokinon fisheye but it is manual focus and the front of the lens isquite close to the camera body meaning I often imaged my left hand in the shot inadvertently, nevertheless, this is a great lens if you are on a budget.
Now that Olympus has created a superb weatherproofed pro quality Olympus f/1.8 fisheye lens, I just had to test it out, and what better test is an indoor art exhibition of Australian surrealism at Melbourne’s Ian Potter in Federation Square titled Lurid Beauty – Australian Surrealism and its Echoes. I highly recommend anyone interested in art to see this very affordable exhibition, I really enjoyed it.
These were shot hand held without flash using the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Micro Four Thirds camera.
A fisheye view of Lurid Beauty:
Anne Wallace Sight Unseen:
Tom Moore Self-preservation 2014:
Dusan Marek Equator 1948:
Herbert McClintock Three Faces 1940:
Tim Schultz :
Hein Heckroth Australia painted whilst a “German enemy alien” during World War II at the camp in Hay, NSW 1941:
There are many more wonderful works including more from James Gleeson – do yourself a favour and check it out.
Architectural uses:
Melbourne’s Regent Theatre in Collins St which is so contrasty it is very hard to photograph:
Melbourne’s Federation Square:
and to show how well the lateral CA is controlled:
Melbourne’s famous back alley ways:
the very popular Hopetoun Tea Rooms:
Obviously I have applied some post-processing on the above images to make them a touch more surreal still.
This lens is not for everyone, but does add another very useful tool to a photographer’s kit.
I am looking forward to shooting some Milky Way Astroscapes with it as the f/1.8 aperture plus wide field of view should allow nice long 40-60sec exposures without star trailing.
If you do not like the fish eye effect, there are some de-fishing processing options to flatten the image out to a more natural looking image.
