Landscape and Fisheye

[susan_winn]

<p>I am new in the wonderful world of Landscape photography, I am trained in Macro. So I need help deciding if a Fisheye lens would be okay for landscape. </p>

<p>I have a not so exciting Nikon D200, and last weekend I rented the 12-24mm F4G ED-IF AF-S DX while hiking. I did enjoy the pictures, but I just want wider! I liked about this lens is the sharpness, and the ability to play with DOF. <br>

This weekend I will be hiking a 14er that has magnificent aspen changing. Recommendations on a lens? Would a fisheye work or would you recommend something else?</p>

<p>I am looking for wide, sharp, and creative. As of right now, I want to play and no intention on selling, however, that would be a nice result. </p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

 

[SCL]

<p>You could always do a pano and stitch the frames, then you wouldn't have to deal with the fisheye distortion.</p>

[JamesFarabaugh]

<p>Only use the fisheye if you particularly want the fisheye effect. If your sole reasoning is to get wider then I would follow Stephen's advice and start stitching.</p>

[frode]

<p>Sure a fisheye can be used for landscapes, but its projection will be quite different from an ordinary rectilinear lens. The two images shown here and also two other images shown by following the links are examples of images that are taken with fisheye (projection not altered):<br /> http://www.photo.net/photo/17544070<br /> http://www.photo.net/photo/17542582</p>

<p>The fisheye used here is a so called full frame fish eye, i.e. it fills the whole image (not only a circle). The diagonal angle of view is (very near) 180 degrees.</p>

<p>The key to get images that is not looking ... well "fishy"... is to control the lines and curves in the image. Straight lines going through the center of the image will also be straight lines in the final image. Other lines will be curved. But often lines that in reality was straight may look natural even if they are strongly curved in the image.</p>

<p>A fisheye can give you</p><div></div>

[Robin Smith]

<p>I am a great fan of fisheyes and I feel the same as you. I leap from 24mm to fisheye. You can defish a fisheye image in image processing to produce a perfectly serviceable non-distorted wide angle shot (although it will no longer be 180 degrees). But I, personally, don't do this. I just embrace the fisheye look. If you are careful then in fact the fisheye effect is not necessarily that strong - you just have to be alert to where you put your objects and whether they will show excessive distortion. Very often natural subjects are not so noticeably distorted - it is straight lines than can be noticeable, so you need to place them where it looks good in the viewfinder. I think you have to be particularly careful around bodies of water, or you get the effect as shown above, which you may or may not like. But I love the fisheye look.</p><div></div>

[Robin Smith]

<p>another</p><div></div>

[Robin Smith]

<p>yet another</p><div></div>

[susan_winn]

<p>Thank you everyone, this has been very helpful! I think the best will be just to get knee deep and try it out. I think I will try the stitching and just straight forward fish eye. never know what magic might happen. Thanks!</p>

[craig_shearman1]

<p>A fisheye is inherently a special-purpose lens. Unless you're going to make fisheye pictures your "thing" it's most likely a lens you would use on rare occasion for a special purpose, not something you're going to use every day. <br /><br />When I went to the Grand Canyon a few years ago, I had the same urge to "go wide" to be able to take it all in, and bought a 12-24. I've used it some, but actually more indoors than out. There are some occasions for the sweeping vista shot, the sort of two-page spread you might see in National Geographic or the beginning of a movie to establish the overall scene. But beyond that, telephotos to bring out details of the landscape are just as useful, IMHO. </p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>Most of the interesting parts of a panorama are within 30 degrees of the horizon. You can capture that in a stitched panorama using a "normal" to medium telephoto lens. An extreme wide angle lens or full-frame fisheye captures a lot more sky and dirt than necessary. In general, use a wide angle lens to exaggerate something in the foreground.</p>

<p>Stitching software works by distorting each frame in a fisheye fashion to blend without corners, then converts the results into a cylindrical or rectilinear projection. A rectilinear projection can only approach 180 degree coverage asymptotically. You need several shots with a 25% overlap, rotating the camera on a vertical axis. If you use a pan head, the tripod must be first leveled, otherwise you lose much of the panorama by cropping away the jagged or curved edges. Photoshop does a decent job of stitching, but a dedicated program like PTGui is a lot more precise and flexible.</p>

[JamesFarabaugh]

<p>I have had good luck stitching with Hugin.</p><div></div>

[dcstep]

<p>Sigma makes a great 15mm f/2.8 diagonal fisheye for Nikon and Canon. I use it for "big sky" shots:</p>

<p><a title="Wave-cloud Passes By by David Stephens, on Flickr" href=" src="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3921/14872255998_d2e397f468.jpg" alt="Wave-cloud Passes By" width="500" height="333" /></a></p>

<p>and "in tight" landscapes:<br>

<br>

<a title="Fall Color - Explored by David Stephens, on Flickr" href=" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5503/10338024396_d943795e46.jpg" alt="Fall Color - Explored" width="500" height="333" /></a></p>

<p>and the occasional 2:1 or 5:2 crop to give an pano feel:</p>

<p><a title="Dawn at one of my favorite wildlife watching spots... by David Stephens, on Flickr" href=" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5463/9532377770_2046892ae5.jpg" alt="Dawn at one of my favorite wildlife watching spots..." width="500" height="250" /></a></p>

<p>I wouldn't want to leave it out of my bag. I de-fished all these shots in Raw conversion.</p>