Fabulous Fish-Eye Fun!
Photography Blog • 6th Sep, 16 • 0 Comments
At a pre-wedding consultation with one of our couples this week, they asked Lesley "what happens when it rains?". . . well, we told them, we always come prepared with a high stepladder and our fabulous fish-eye lens! This way even in the most confined of spaces we can easily capture every single smiling face, even within the full Group Shot.
You can also have lots of other fun with a fish-eye lens as the above shot illustrates, it was taken at the beautiful Haigh Hall Country Park situated near Wigan just outside of Bolton in Greater Manchester. We were there on a ‘reccy’ in advance of an upcoming wedding that Lesley Thomas Photography will be covering at Haigh Hall.
A ‘fish-eye’ is typically described as a lens with a very wide viewing angle, at least 180 degrees or more. And would you believe it, the term ‘fish-eye’ comes from the eyes of fish, although apparently not all fish do have sight with an angle of 180 degrees!
The history of the fish-eye lens is fascinating. According to Wikipedia, in 1851 cast-iron aquarium frames were shown at the Great Exhibition in London and the keeping of fish quickly became popular all over Britain. Soon, many curious fish-keepers began to wonder how tropical fish see and live life, and how their extraordinary view could possibly be imitated by humans.
Then in 1906 the American physicist R.W. Wood coined the term “fish-eye” in his paper, “Fish-Eye Views and Vision Underwater”, choosing this name because if a fish is looking upward it can see the whole sky as a finite circle.
The earliest example of a fisheye lens was manufactured in 1924 by R&J Beck of London. The so-called “Hill Sky Lens” was then used by meteorologists to photograph the entire sky to capture star constellations on one single photographic plate.
The design of the fish-eye lens was improved by the AEG Company in Germany in 1932 before the boys and girls at Nikon in Japan got involved in 1938, producing a 16mm f/8 fisheye lens with a 180 degrees viewing angle. Nikon made further improvements in 1957 before releasing the first affordable and widely available fish-eye lens for single reflex cameras in 1968, the OP Fisheye-NIKKOR 10mm f/5.6.
However, as you will know, we are Canon devotees and so we always use their amazing Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM lens, it is a beauty!
You can read more about Haigh Hall and Haigh Country Park here; http://www.visitnorthwest.com/sights/haigh-hall/
And you can read the full story of the history and Nikon’s development of the fish-eye lens at; http://www.nikkor.com/story/0053/
And more details of Canon’s superb fish-eye lens are here: http://www.canon.co.uk/lenses/ef-8-15mm-f-4l-fisheye-usm-lens/