Difference between revisions of "Fisheye lens"
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| − | Fisheye lenses are extreme wide angle and render an image that is very distorted, in contrast with most lenses that are designed to minimise distortion. Fisheye lenses project severe | + | Fisheye lenses are extreme wide angle and render an image that is very distorted, in contrast with most lenses that are designed to minimise distortion. Fisheye lenses project severe distortion away from the image centre, only straight lines that pass through the centre will appear straight. The lenses are made in two forms: circular fisheye that project a circular 180 degree angle of view image within the film frame, and full frame fisheye that fill the frame with 180 degree angle of view diagonally. |
Originally developed for metereological usage their distortion limits use in general photography. | Originally developed for metereological usage their distortion limits use in general photography. | ||
Revision as of 17:51, 10 February 2012
Fisheye lenses are extreme wide angle and render an image that is very distorted, in contrast with most lenses that are designed to minimise distortion. Fisheye lenses project severe distortion away from the image centre, only straight lines that pass through the centre will appear straight. The lenses are made in two forms: circular fisheye that project a circular 180 degree angle of view image within the film frame, and full frame fisheye that fill the frame with 180 degree angle of view diagonally.
Originally developed for metereological usage their distortion limits use in general photography.
Origin
The term "fisheye" comes from the similarly distorted view of the dry world when looking up from underwater. Because of light refraction when entering water, the image seen of the above water world when looking up from underwater is a circle with extreme barrel distortion at the edges, exactly as rendered by a circular fisheye lens. This is the only way to project a 180 degree image onto a flat plane and the original use of these lenses was photographing cloud cover.
Full frame fisheye lenses were developed for general photography but the extreme distortion is obvious. In the Leica R Compendium Jonathan Eastland commented "...difficult to use with originality".
