I own a fisheye converter. Note, I did not say that I own a fisheye lens I just said a converter. Essentially this means that I can take the converter and attach it to a lens, and make that lens ‘fisheye’. I wouldn’t necessarily call it true fisheye – for that you would really need to purchase the glass. Fisheye lenses are quite a pigeon-holed genre of lenses. Yeah – they’re cool, and they can immediately cool-ify a shot because of that neat distorted ‘funhouse’ effect – but it’s not something I’m sure I would really invest in just because it is so niche. Anyway – for professional grade photos, a fisheye converter is not where it’s at. It looks cool, but the sacrifice in image quality for the effect isn’t worth it.
Example:
Took this with the converter. I can’t sit here and say that it doesn’t look cool: it does. However, check out all that distortion at the tips of the frame. That should still be sharp, and if it had been taken with a true (quality) fisheye lens, it would be. The converter just mucks it all up.
Now check out the crispiness of this:
Sharp the whole way through, even at the tips.
This was really a lovely sunset, and I was glad that I broke out the converter just for something a little different – but I don’t find the results to be print-worthy. The one thing I hated about this sunset was that gnarly little boat that made its way to the dock just as things were getting good. You can’t see it particularly well here, but it was destroying my shot.
Here is just one more from the other night – some nice rock action. Crooked horizon because I don’t fix these before putting them on here. Have to offer some incentive to buy the real deal prints!
deepsixphotography 