The First Five Minutes with a Fisheye

[R]

When I made the switch from film to digital, I sold my 16mm f/2.8 Fisheye-Nikkor, and missed it ever since. I thought I made some pretty exciting images over the years with it.

Since Abby was unable to shop for either my birthday or Father's Day, we decided that we would get a new fisheye for the digital age, the Tokina 10-17mm AT-X. I like Tokina lenses; they are a little cheaper than Nikkors, very well-made, and this one has the quirky advantage of being a zoom, which the Nikkor is not. I don't know how useful the zoom feature will be. Time will tell, I guess.

Within a few seconds of getting it out of the box and on my D100, I heard thunder, and stepped out onto the back porch to see. A gust front was approaching from the west, and in the course of a couple of minutes I had made some nice images, including this one. It's simply not possible to capture this kind of image without an ultra-ultra-wide lens, or a fisheye.

This image has not, by the way, been "de-fisheyed" in software. Anyone new to the fisheye scene should be aware that any straight lines that pass through the center of the frame, like the horizon in this image, are rendered straight. Straight lines that are farther from the center of the frame are rendered with more and more curvature. (The horizon is below the center of the frame due to my cropping some of the yard out.)

http://myweb.cableone.net/abbysm/pix/approachingstorm01.jpg

[stefan]

very very cool :2thumbs:

hopefully we'll get to reap the benefits of your new toy :popcorn:

[waltny]

How is that zoom feature of the tokina?

[R]

How is that zoom feature of the tokina?

You know, at first I was a bit skeptical, since hey, it's a fisheye, and fisheyes don't traditionally zoom. In Utah last week, though, I found the feature pretty useful, mostly for little bits of trimming, particularly when I wanted to shoot something at a downward angle and still crop my feet out of the frame.

I imagine it was built as a fisheye because Tokina's CAD/CAM is optimized for zoom optics. (They only have two primes in their catalog, both macros.) The only other issue is one noted on several review sites, chromatic aberration, which I am finding I am able to manage quite nicely in Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw dialog.

I have a lot to edit, but there will be some images from this lens in my next gallery.

Sample from the Alpine Pond trail at Cedar Breaks...

http://myweb.cableone.net/abbysm/pix/fisheyesample01.jpg

-Richard

[Redpb]

I really like the first one. I kind of get the 'something wicked this way comes' or 'poltergeist' feel. Very cool.

[waltny]

Looks good Richard. I posted up a bunch of fisheye shots in my Indianapolis thread.