Flowery fish-eye photos

I first purchased a fish-eye lens in 2012. That was an ASP-C f3.5/12mm lens that found much use for my "Looking up" series. When I bought the full-frame f2.0/6.5mm lens, I was able to triple the scope of my viewing to 190°. In contrast to the older lens, the new one produces a round image. 

Here is the same room (the baroque palace in Ludwigsburg) taken with the 12mm (effectively 18mm) and 6.5mm lenses:

Obviously, if you are photographing people, you have to be careful to not have them at the edge of the picture because they will be distorted. With a normal wide-angle lens the distortion will be the opposite, making them look broader.

In order to make the image look a bit more normal, I usually move the distortion slider in Lightroom to +100 and add a -100 vignette with +100 roundness and no feathering to create a clear black frame around the center of the photo.

The following pictures were taken in the gardens around the palace, also in Ludwigsburg. I've maintained the black border, left and right, as a frame.

As you can see, the fish-eye lens allows - almost forces - you to get up close to your subject, giving the viewer the feeling of being right there splashing in the water or smelling the flowers. The starburst appears when you close the aperture all the way to f22. I like that effect.

Which of these images is your favorite? Why?

2021

In 2021 we were in a lockdown, in home office, dealing with home schooling, not on vacation, looking for new ways to express ourselves since the old ways apparently might prove fatal.

While I still did a good number of portraits and weddings, I found myself not getting out into nature as much as I used to. Perhaps this stay-at-home attitude affected my way of visual thinking and I turned to my fish-eye lens again and again when I did go out.

Here are four relatively different views through the fish-eye lens, a bit of optic trickery which allows the camera to capture 190° with one shot (I was using a f2.0/6.5mm lens from Meike - affordable and good).

At f22 the sunlight turns into a starburst.

The photo-within-a-photo genre takes on new possibilities with this lens because so much of the worlds are captured by the extreme range of the lens.

For my attempts to make my photos take on an abstract quality, the fish-eye is often helpful.

The larger the frame, the more expansive is the story you can tell with one shot. I like reflections in puddles for the multi-layered experience they offer.

Have you used fish-eye lenses during your shoots? What do you most like using them for?