I picked up the Lensbaby Fisheye Optic at Imaging USA this year. Initially I thought I would have pretty limited reasons to use it. I might pull it out for the occasional odd portrait or something but a true 180° fisheye is most often used in rap videos and at skate parks, neither of which do I often photography.
But, I am finding it a lot more useful than I originally imagined. Human vision is a funny thing. We are aware, via peripheral vision, of almost 180° of the world but we only have good focus on about 10° of our vision. Our eyes and brain see a lot but we only focus on a small sliver of that. As distorted and odd as these round images look, there is something familiar to them just because they do show the world as we see it… sort of. On a full-frame sensor camera, like the Canon 5D MKII, a 12mm fisheye like this Lensbaby optic, produces a round image and much of the sensor never sees any light. The view is so wide that you have to be careful that you don’t get your feet, camera strap or elbow in the shot.
In spite of all the distortion that the lens gives, it provides a very deep depth of field even when focused very close and shot at f/4 (the aperture I used on these shots).
There are a few drawbacks to the Lensbaby fisheye when you use it in their Composer rig. First, you have to be very careful that the image is centered properly or you end up with some of the elegant sphere getting cut off. It is also manual focus and because everything looks so small through the viewfinder, you really have to shift to Live View and digitally zoom in to focus properly. This is not a big deal if you have a little time to compose your shot but tends to prevent any “on the fly shooting.”
Anyway, it’s a fun addition to the arsenal of obscure lenses that I seem to love and fawn over. It is also a good bit cheaper than the Canon EF 8-14fmm lens f/4 L USM (which will set you back $1,400 and only stops down to f/4 while the lens baby goes to f/2.8). I am sure that the Auto Focus of the Canon would take a lot of the leg-work out of using an extreme fisheye and that the optics are cleaner, but I have heard reports that the clarity, when stopped down and used properly are not worth the price difference.
But, enough camera geek talk. I hope you enjoy this somewhat unusual view of Louisiana and Mississippi during the winter that I photographed yesterday on my ride back from Lake Bruin. I’m looking forward to putting this lens to more remunerative use on my next portrait assignment. All in all, highly recommended.
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