architecture Urban perspective (Redux)

This version is obviously better than the previous simply due to the light and the sky color. As good as it gets in this category of architectural images...

Photo très intéressante. L'effet du fisheye combiné avec le grillage et le ciel bleu donne une perspective différente des immeubles.

 

Beau travail!

Great use of the fisheye lens; it really shows how wonderful they can be for creating a completely unique perspective. Excellent composition exposure. Kudos on the decision to "frame" the picture with the overhead structure.

This is a new version of this photo with better light and a better blue sky, taken another day. Do you like it better? What about the general composition?

 

Also, what do you think of the semi-circular fisheye? The photo is uncropped. This old (30-35 years) and rare lens is a unique 12 mm, somewhere between the 15-16 mm full frame fisheyes and 6-8 mm circular fisheyes available today. What do you think of this format? Do you find it different/new/refreshing or just distracting?

If you can manage to fit a polarizer on the lens via monkeying around like taping step up rings on, or if it has a filter thread, i think you could get better color saturation and an a bluer sky, (which IMHO could have a could or two in it to spruice it up). To me thats really all it could use to be better. Fisheyes are real fun to play with.

I felt that I needed to put an explanation for my rating, which after perusing the ratings of others, appears quite low.

 

In terms of the aesthetics rating, I consider my rating of 7 to be a good rating, perhaps I am a hard marker or this view appeals to others more than me. However my rating of 5 for originality is way off the other marks of 8-10.

 

I feel that for a circular (or in this case semi circular fisheye, the obvious photo is a cityscape, much as you have taken. Accordingly, I was unable to justify a higher rating, even incorporating the foreground structure. I must admit, I did not consider the rare nature of the semi-circular format in my rating.

 

This being said, the nature of a fisheye does make "original" images hard to obtain, and I feel that the photo overall is quite good. The only specific comment I would make relating to the composition of the image would be to say that the tables in the foreground in my opinion do not contribute to the image. If the same shot was taken, terminating at the base of the sun-lit building, I consider that the photo would appeal to my eye more.

 

Thanks for letting me comment on your shot, and happy shooting.

 

Antony.

Bien que je ne sois pas très fan du fish-eye, je dois reconnaître qu'ici l'effet est réussi.

I like this a lot: the fish-eye + the grid, do a lot for an uncommon effect. And also the diference in colors and styles of the buildings work well.

Bonjour confrère du Spotmatic! Je ne suis pas un fan du fish-eye également mais j'aime bien ce que tu as réussi avec celle-ci. À quel endroit as-tu trouvé un fish-eye comme çà pour le Spotmatic?

I'm pretty much with Anthony. It is a nice photo - good light. But I believe that fisheye should be used extremely carefully. I don't see any reason to use it here, instead of normal wide angle. Also, I think that this grid structure could be exploited better with the buildings... I don't think that 9/9 ratings are really fair, it is a personal preference, but there's little originality in this picture. Looking at all other fisheye photos, I find them pretty much similar - point in the sky, press the button, not much you can do in terms of composition...

Most people have never used a fisheye and therefore don't know just how tricky it is to compose with such a wide lens. It's really more than just pointing at the sky. You want both to maximize the typical curvature and to get a clean, not too busy composition. You must achieve this while having a lot of real estate to check through your viewfinder.

 

It took me four trips to the same place to actually get this picture. The first time, in December 2001, I identified the place and saw the potential of it, but the light was really bad. I went back the 1st of January, but the sky was changing and not very nice. I took a a few pictures, but the angle wasn't optimal - the east (right) tower was not exploited very well. I went back three weeks later, but again it didn't turn out well for various technical reasons. By then, I really knew what I wanted to do a finally got it right the fourth time.

 

By the way, you can't polarize with a fisheye. It's even worse than with a very wide angle. With a 180 degree angle of view, you get areas of the sky where the light is extremely polarized and others where it isn't at all. My lens won't take any filter anyway.

I didn't say it is easy to use fisheye. No! I never used it, but I strongly believe it is much much more difficult to take an excellent fisheye picture compared to any other lens. I still think that there's not much you can do about composition with such lenses - in one given location, you have very minimal control over the composition, you can't be very selective, use filters, focus on something and disregard the rest, and so on, and so on. That said, with whole respect to the time it took to take this picture, I do not think it is really worth 9/9 or 10/10 ratings. It is good, it is above average, but it doesn't make me wonder if I should think again about my way of thinking about fisheye photography... Fisheye works best in readily very unusual scenery, but in many other cases, just makes it more difficult to appreciate the original values of the picture... IMHO, of course. It is really really very personal.

 

I am not dismissing your work. I like it. I do not consider it the best photo ever, but, as you probably know, every person has a different way of perceiving photography...

Indeed, it takes time to get good with a fisheye.

Always a favorite!